The Simple Mistake That Ruins Your Ground Turkey Dishes
One of the hardest parts of consistently cooking at home is figuring out what to actually make night after night. Even those who cook at a higher cadence than most, keep a personal recipe doc that stretches back years, and voraciously consume all manner of food media might still find themselves literally Googling "what do people actually eat for dinner." Once in a while, when the menu planning equivalent of writer's block settles in, ground turkey is often a shortcut out, bringing a bit of a different flavor to things like lettuce cups, chili, and meatloaf. You just need to — believe it or not — know how to buy it.
Ground turkey is typically pitched primarily as a leaner alternative to ground beef. But you still need to make sure you're buying a variety with some fat, or you'll sacrifice almost all flavor, while also flying dangerously close to dryness. Fat is tasty, moist, and essential to a successful dish. Just like you'd seek a certain blend for standard chuck patties (the best type of beef for juicier burgers is 20% fat to 80% lean), you'll need to calibrate your turkey for the avian equivalent, as well as for other minced poultry preparations. The higher the fat content printed on the package at the grocery store, the more juicy, flavor-saving dark meat has been incorporated in the ratio.
More turkey tips for maximum juiciness
The longer you have to cook your ground turkey, the more fat will render out, and the drier it will be. So, for something like turkey meatloaf, which might bake for an hour, reach for a higher fat content. You'll see a lot of 93% lean options at the market, but something closer to 85% will perform best in dense arrangements like meatloaf, or even smaller but similarly compact meatballs.
That 93% option will be a bit more suitable for burgers, which cook much faster, but it's still best to keep your meat on the fattier side if you want a moist burger. There's no one that doesn't love a juicy burger, whatever protein variety is in use. Even celebrity chef Bobby Flay goes so far as to brush his turkey burgers with canola oil for moisture insurance, so it's clear you've got to think ahead for similar success. And, in the event you can only find a leaner mix (or that happens to be what you've already got in the freezer), you can also introduce a little mayonnaise to your turkey burger to approximate the fat you'd have had built in with a darker meat grind.