Dinner Do-Over : Meat Sauce into Chili

With all these yummy recipes I've been dishing out for you guys, the leftovers in my fridge have been piling up! I always seem to make way more than me and The Mr. can eat. I am not one to waste food so I've come up with a few ways to take one dish and roll it over into a bunch of yummy "Dinner Do-Overs".

Dinner One: Pasta with Meat Sauce

What You Need:
1 lb ground turkey
1 carrot, peeled
1/2 onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, grated
olive oil
1/2 jar favorite tomato sauce (Or use my recipe Garlic Tomato Sauce recipe here)

What You Do:
Drizzle olive oil in pan add in chopped onion and grate in the garlic. Let that saute a bit then grate in 1 whole carrot.

Add in the ground turkey and allow it to brown (feel free to use Worcestershire Sauce or Gravy Master to "beef" it up).

Once the turkey has cooked out, drain your pan. There may be a lot of liquid and we want to get rid of that.

Add in your tomato sauce and let simmer on a very low heat to let the flavors meld. You want the sauce to be very thick. Think... Sloppy Joe.

Cook your favorite pasta to al dente and serve. My favorite for this was Barilla linguini, it actually has ridges in the pasta to hold sauce. Brilliant! 

Dinner Two: Turkey Chili

What You Need:
Left over meat sauce
1 can of red kidney beans, rinsed and drained
1 can of black beans, rinsed and drained
1/2 onion, chopped
red and yellow peppers, chopped
crushed red pepper (the wet one in a jar)
cayenne pepper
chili powder
2 tbsp brown sugar 

What You Do:
Drizzle a little oil in a large pot or dutch oven. 

Add in onions, peppers and beans to the heated oil and saute. At this time add in a few shakes of cayenne and chili powder and the crushed red pepper. Add as much of those 3 ingredients as you want depending on how hot you like it!

Stir in the meat sauce from the other night along with two tablespoons of brown sugar. This will give it a great "sweet and spicy" flavor. Cover, remove from heat and let rest for 5-10 minutes. 

If you'd like, top with cheese and pop it into the broiler. Or top with a dollop of plain Greek yogurt (sour cream substitute) and chopped green onion. 


*Bonus: Still have some leftover chili? Layer a baking dish with cream cheese, chili and shredded cheese, bake for 20 minutes and you have a crazy good dip for the big game on Sunday!



 

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