close

Richard Johnson: Have you ever wondered what to do with leftover turkey, besides make sandwiches? Well, today we're going to make some hearty turkey chili, and this is a recipe that's going to help us enjoy simple food.

We've got some zucchini. We're just going to pop that in the oven real quick. And we have some that's been in there for about 10 minutes. So you can see, it's got some nice color, and that's what we're looking for. The other thing we're going to do is we're going to caramelize, or brown, our other ingredients as well. And to do that we have a nice, heavy pot that we've heated. And now we're going to add a little bit of oil — it doesn't take much — and we're going to saute our onions. And then as they start to brown, we can start adding our other ingredients. We don't want to add our ingredients too quickly because they're going to steam instead of brown, and we're not going to get that good flavor. Now we've also got some nice, colorful peppers. That's going to give us some great flavor. And we've got some chopped, fresh garlic. We don't want to add it too quickly into the process, because it can brown too much and then turn our dish bitter. So, we want to be careful about that.

Now would be a good time for us to add our turkey. And I always like to add my seasonings before I add any of my wet ingredients. And the reason I do that is because it brings out more of the flavor from those. So what we have is some chili powder, and I like to put a little cumin in my chili, so we've go that working pretty good. We can add some tomatoes — we're just using canned tomatoes — and some beans. That's looking pretty hearty already, isn't it? Let all those things get to know each other really well. A little vegetable broth, and just a touch of brown sugar for some sweetness.

Once you've got everybody together, you want to let it simmer and intensify just a little bit and then we can add our zucchini. Now by adding zucchini to this dish, we're getting more vegetables into the mix, which is always a good thing, and our portions will be lower in calories and fat because we're adding vegetables. Cover it up and let that simmer for about 15 minutes. And what we end up with is a beautiful, fast, flavorful, hearty turkey chili that's high in fiber, lots of vegetables. What a terrific way to enjoy simple food.