I had plans to do a new recipe today, but turns out the universe also had other plans. Guys, this is the never-ending summer and I don’t know how to function anymore when I have to actually do stuff. ???? So I wanted to share updates of one of my favorite recipes that is packed with protein, flavor, and tons of veggies–these are awesome for meal prepping or when you feel like you need a little detox, but they’re also freaking delicious whether you’re trying to make healthier eating choices or not.
Spicy Turkey Lettuce Wraps
- Yield: 6
Description
These Spicy Turkey Lettuce Wraps are packed with lean protein, tons of veggies, and taste AMAZING!
Ingredients
20 ounces super-lean ground turkey
1/4 cup chopped green onions
6 cloves garlic, minced
1 tablespoon minced ginger
1 1/2 cups seeded and diced cucumber
1 medium red bell pepper, seeded and chopped
1/2 cup shredded carrot
1/4 cup chopped cilantro
1/4 cup chopped cashews
1/2 jalapeno, seeded and diced OR Sriracha sauce to taste
Juice of 2 limes (about 4 tablespoons)
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 tablespoon brown sugar
16 lettuce leaves (butter lettuce or trimmed iceberg lettuce leaves work great)
Instructions
In a medium bowl, combine the ground turkey, green onions, garlic, and ginger. Cover and refrigerate until dinner time or allow to stand at room temperature for 15 minutes.
When ready to cook, heat about 1 tablespoon olive oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Cook the turkey mixture until it’s browning and crumbly.
While the turkey is cooking, combine the limes, soy sauce, brown sugar, and, if using it, Sriracha to taste. Set aside.
Place the remaining ingredients in a large bowl. When the turkey is done cooking, add it to the vegetable mixture. Drizzle with the sauce and toss to combine. Serve immediately in leaves of lettuce. Makes 4 large servings.
Notes
Nutritional Information (for 4 servings):
Calories: 243.5
Fat: 6.5
Carbs: 14.1
Protein: 35.5
Fiber: 2.1
note
This recipe cooks very quickly, but the chopping can take some time. I recommend chopping ahead of time when you have a few extra minutes and then throwing it all together at dinnertime!
let’s time travel to 2013…
So you know how when you start eating healthy, all you can think about is food? Yeah. If you’ve got an extra 4 1/2 minutes (and really, even if you don’t), you need to watch this clip. It will make your Friday. It is how I feel at least once a day around 2:32 pm when I want to lay down on the couch and take a nap snuggled up to a bowl of linguine.
So anyway. These Spicy Turkey Lettuce Wraps aren’t pasta. But they are one of my new favorite meals and are so delicious that it helps remind me that really great food doesn’t have to be bad for me (not that pasta is bad, but, kind of like Oreos and Friday Night Lights, I can’t do it in moderation).
One thing about this recipe is that it cooks super quick, but there’s some prep work involved that can suck up your time. My trick is to do all the chopping and prep work earlier in the day when my older kids are at school and my wee one is napping so when I have five-million things going on in the afternoon and the thought of making dinner makes me want to curl up in my closet and sob, I don’t have to because all the hard stuff is done and dinner is ready in, like, 10 minutes tops.
how to make these spicy turkey lettuce wraps
You’re going to need super-lean ground turkey, your favorite lettuce leaves (I really like the living lettuce you can get at many supermarkets), green onions, cilantro, fresh ginger, lots and lots of garlic, shredded carrots (I just buy a bag of pre-shredded carrots), cucumbers (I love the mini English cucumbers that don’t need to be peeled), chopped red bell pepper, and chopped cashews. You can also add in half of a seeded, chopped jalapeno (I actually prefer adding Sriracha to the sauce because it’s easier to control the heat whilst feeding the kidlets).
For the sauce, you’re going to need (in addition to the Sriracha, if you’re using it) soy sauce, brown sugar, and lime juice. No, your eyes are not deceiving you, I forgot the limes in this picture.
In a medium bowl, combine the turkey, green onion, garlic, and ginger. Cover and refrigerate until dinner time or let it stand at room temperature for 15 minutes.
When ready to cook, heat about a tablespoon of olive oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add the turkey and cook until done.
While the turkey is cooking, whisk together 1 tablespoon soy sauce, the juice of 2 limes, a tablespoon of brown sugar, and Sriracha to taste (if you’re using it). Keep in mind that what’s a little spicy in the sauce will be not spicy at all once you mix it all together.
In a large bowl, combine the remaining ingredients. Add the cooked turkey mixture.
Drizzle with the sauce and toss to combine. Spoon the mixture into lettuce leaves and eat like a taco. This makes 4 generous servings–it could conceivably serve 5-6, though.
Nutritional Information (for 4 servings):
Calories: 243.5
Fat: 6.5
Carbs: 14.1
Protein: 35.5
Fiber: 2.1
Questions & Reviews
Oh, wow! These were fast, easy and delicious! I remember I tasted the sauce while the turkey was cooking and I was worried… nearly ready to tell my boyfriend to order a pizza instead. So glad I didn’t. Once the sauce mixed in with the meat and veggies it all came together PERFECTLY! My boyfriend and I almost finished all 4 servings by ourselves… and he asked for these again just a few days later. 🙂
This was the first time I tried “Living Lettuce” and it was great. I cook a lot with ground turkey and this is a great weeknight meal. The recipe was delicious and I even ate the leftovers for lunch the next day!
Delicious! The lettuce I bought ended up being too holey, so it became a salad. 🙂 So good! Thanks for sharing so many great ideas!
There are delicious! But be careful, since they are labeled as gluten free I made them for my sis-in-law who has celiac disease and they made her super sick the rest of the day because I used the soy sauce from the picture and not a GF one. Wheat is a sneaky bugger!
Hahahahaha that clip was awesome!!
Can you give any clue on the Sriracha sauce? Maybe a scale with a rough idea of amounts for mild to burn your tongue off? We had these tonight, and all my family loved them, but they did not even have a hint of spicy because I was a little too light on the sauce! Thanks for all your hard work, our family’s dinners are a hundred times better since I found you –love me some OBB!!!
Loved your first book ever since I got it for Christmas a few years back. Great website too. Everything I’ve tried has turned out awesome!
my daughter Lacey is a groupie of yours. I make a turkey wrap similar to this, but i put the vegies in the wrap instead of mixed w/ the meat and I use Chinese five spice. I would like to try this one for a change though.
Yum – had these for dinner tonight. I doubled the recipe for our family of seven (2 adults, 2 big kids and 3 little kids) and we had tons of leftovers! I’m not complaining because my lunches are taken care of for the week, but in case a family of more than two kids is wondering if one recipe is enough, believe me- it’s plenty! 🙂
what if our kids like it
looks good
I have a stupid question. What does living lettuce mean? (I am obviously not good on eating organic or too healthy if I have to ask this question, right?)
Not dumb at all! 🙂 It’s just lettuce that still has the roots attached. It’s usually packaged a little differently (like in a clamshell plastic thingy) and it stays fresh a little longer.
I was thinking of putting this in a spring roll wrapper…do you think that would work/be yummy?
For SURE. I’m just being lazy with the lettuce. 🙂
Can’t blame a girl for taking the easy route 🙂
Fabulous recipe! They were Sunday dinner tonight, so fresh and tasty. I accidentally doubled the sauce (4 limes instead of 4 T – duh) but I stirred a spoonful of natural peanut butter in with the remaining sauce and it made a tasty drizzle! Thanks for another great recipe.
Those were awesome! And that clip is hilarious!!
Thank you so much for responding! I love your website and understand all you are saying. Just thought I would put out there that more vegetarian yummies would be amazing.
Would love to see some more vegetarian recipes or.desserts. It seems like obb is turning into an advertising hotspot! Love the old recipes
The video clip wasn’t an ad, I promise, just something I found funny. 🙂
As for the rest, we try to post a little of everything, we really do, but we are rarely able to post exactly what everyone wants all the time. Sometimes we’re dessert heavy (late fall/early winter) and people want healthy meals, then we post healthy meals in January and people want “real” meals, we post real meals and people want desserts. I’m not being defensive, I’m just trying to explain where we’re coming from. If we’re going through a phase you’re not crazy about, we’ve got 700+ recipes in the archives and new posts coming every few days, so things will almost always turn your way soon! 🙂
We just had these for dinner tonight and they were so good! I doubled the sauce to make them a little more appealing for my kids. My husband said they were the best lettuce wraps he has ever had. Filling but light and fresh – so yummy! Thanks for the recipe.
Okay ,my sister and I have a dispute going about how you count the points for weight watchers …is a serving 4 wraps or 1? In other words is a serving with six points one wrap or 4wrapsfor six points?
4 wraps for 6 points. And you could probably get six wraps out of the mixture. What I do is just divide the mixture into four equal servings, put them in a little bowl, and serve the bowl with a plate of lettuce leaves.
That was hilariousness! Thank you for the video. It was like horror/angst movie (not that I’ve ever watched one) with PASTA! Your recipe looks delicious!
First, love you, because I love lettuce wraps. Second, that can’t be Portland in the winter because there is sun! And no drizzly rain, or pouring rain, or freezing rain. Just sayin’
Love the healthy recipe, and especially the nutrition facts. So are the nutrition facts based on one serving of 4 servings, or the whole batch? Thanks in advance.
One of the four servings. 🙂
My daughter was watching the clip over my shoulder. She asked why the man was so sad. I told her he stopped eating noodles and it made him sad. She said she would be that sad too.
And I am definitely trying the lettuce wraps. Your chicken ones are amazing so in excited to give these a try:)
I LOVE that you post Portlandia clips!! I grew up in the Eugene, OR area (Portland’s sister city and just as weird!) and now live just across the river in Washington… This show cracks me up! And, food-related, your recipe looks REALLY good! I’m not much enticed by the whole lettuce-wrap-thing usually, but this looks easy and yummy and I think I have been inspired to try it. 🙂
My brother lived in Eugene and then another brother served his mission there (oh, and my husband was born there!) They have LOTS of stories, including one involving my sweet uncle and his favorite plants he could only get in Eugene. Apparently he meant rhododendrons and NOT marijuana. I once asked my brother if he’d ever seen Portlandia and he said that it’s more real than you can imagine, lol.
Also: have you seen the missionaries clip? HILARIOUS.
Thank you Kate, I loved the video! We have been trying to cut out pasta as my husband got diagnosed with diabetes in January. Oh, how I miss pasta and sugar (but liking the extra weight loss :)) Thanks for the healthy recipe.
Yayyyy! I’m a big fan of nutritional information ever since I’ve hit my 40s.
Okay, first of all…that clip was beyond hilarious 🙂 And, that wasn’t a sarcastic smile.
Our family does a version of this recipe at least 3 or 4 times a month. We sometimes do lettuce, but most of the time we use rice paper wraps. We also keep all ingredients separate, so our opinionated 8 year old kiddos cam make their own custom creations! Our dip of choice is a spicy peanut sauce. YUM!
“What happened to you?” “Fettuccine doesn’t count!” Hilarious!
Thanks for the great recipe! And I loved the clip! My husband and I have been eating healthier for the past month and I already have more energy and have lost weight! I would suggest a low-sodium soy sauce, and raw cashews which really taste better than regular salted or roasted cashews 🙂 I would probably not use the brown sugar but ground dates instead which are pretty sweet!
I hope you include more healthy/vegetarian recipes in the future 🙂
LOL! The non-meat meatball was pretty funny. I feel this way about ALL things SUGAR! I can give up pasta, but not sugar sweets. 🙁 And a stick of celery sure doesn’t taste as a good as a nice chocolate brownie does!
BAHAHAHA I haven’t seen Portlandia before but that clip is awesome. “This is demeaning, this is demeaning to pasta.” Love it. Thanks for the clip and thanks for the recipe. I’ll pretend it’s country fried steak when I eat it. 😉
BTW I’m sure these lettuce wraps won’t need any imagination to make them delicious. Just want to put that out there! 😀