You’re probably going to kill me for submitting a recipe so close to the wire, but here goes! It’s nothing fancy, but out of all of our cookbooks, it is one we use by far the most regularly and it’s a really nice quick but tasty dinner.
Anyway, it’s a recipe from a Nigella Lawson cookbook, and it’s easy to change things around if you like. She calls it “Korean Keema” and the recipe itself is as follows.
Ingredients
- 2 portions of rice (to serve – I usually use 120g, but Nigella recommends 150g)
- 250g turkey mince
- 6 thin or 3 fat spring onions, chopped
- 125g frozen peas
- 1 teaspoon vegetable / groundnut oil
- handful of freshly chopped coriander
for the sauce
- 2 x 15ml tablespoons gochujang (red korean chili paste)
- 1 x 15ml tablespoon honey
- 1 x 15ml tablespoon rice wine
- 2 x 15ml tablespoons soy sauce
Method
- Whisk together sauce ingredients, and stir in minced turkey. Leave to steep for about 5 minutes. (We usually use a measuring jug for this).
- Blanche the peas in a sieve/colander. Heat a wok on the hob and add oil, followed by defrosted peas and chopped spring onions. Stir-fry for 3-4 mins.
- Add the turkey and its sauce, and stir-fry for a further 4-5 minutes until cook.
- Add additional water/rice wine to the mixture to prevent the dish becoming too dry (recommended 4 table spoons water, 2 tablespoons rice wine)
- Serve with rice with chopped coriander sprinkled on top
That’s it! As I said, we do mix it up – very easy with beef mince rather than turkey, and I often use maple syrup rather than honey to sweeten it up, or a regular onion instead of spring onion. Though, having said all that, the flavour from the chili paste is really strong so I think that helps if the precise ingredients aren’t available (and we really like it every time!).
One last thing Nigella said is that you can let the mince steep in the sauce beforehand, but not for longer than an hour because the salt in the soy sauce will react with the acid in the rice wine.