Well, it looks like I pulled the trigger on the sweet potato a little too early, turns out a plastic tray of ground turkey was hiding behind the stack of three quarter-full egg cartons. Sure, I bought it a week and a half ago, but meat takes longer than that to go bad, right? …right? No, seriously I don’t know.
Either way, tonight took things to the very basics.
Extra lean ground turkey.
Rice.
Full stop.
In theory, my personal menu grew considerably when my sister gifted me an Instant Pot last Christmas – per the included propaganda packet, it combines SEVEN commonly used countertop appliances – but in practice I just make a shit ton of rice now. Which is sort of like having super strength but only using it to open jars. The rice is killer, though. Pre IP, brown rice was probably my greatest kitchen adversary. The simplicity of it made failure infuriating, yet failure was inevitable. Inevitability is also infuriating. What I’m saying is that pre IP, my stress level was almost directly correlated to how many times I’d attempted to make brown rice. I’m getting a little worked up just thinking about it right now.
In a perfect world:
Rice + Water + Heat +Time = Beautiful, fluffy brown rice
But in that illogical hell of my pre-IP reality:
Rice + Water + Heat + Time + Probably Another Splash of Water + Just a Little More Time + Maybe One More Splash of Water + Another Minute Should Do It + Inevitable, Infuriating Acknowledgement of Failure = Soggy but crunchy (wtf?) disappointment
And now:
Rice + Water + Magic = Beautiful, fluffy brown rice + restored sanity I didn’t even realize I’d lost
That isn’t to say this dish is a winner. Even when cooked perfectly, brown rice has a ceiling of, what, maybe 5/10? No one’s lining up for plain rice. The only thing blander is extra lean ground turkey, which, if prepared correctly, should have the same taste and mouthfeel as that kitchen sponge you should’ve replaced last week. The key is not to prepare it with butter or salt or flavor of any kind, so it just shrivels up and dies in the pan. Admittedly, that’s less a conscious decision than it is a byproduct of me getting distracted by South Park reruns the second I put meat on the stove. The smell of smoke brings me back, but not until the turkey is 80%/20% burned/raw and I can only focus on damage control. That’s fine, I always say to myself, I’ll just throw everything in a pot and season it there. Which, yes, technically is a series of movements I have the motor ability to perform, but, no, is not an adequate replacement for not being a short-attention-spanned dumbass.
Without the introduction of flavor in the early aughts of the cooking process, somehow the nonflavor of the ground turkey festers and expands and eventually transcends the meat itself to the point where it becomes potent enough to overpower whatever seasoning you add after the fact. To be sure, this is a self-imposed blandness, brought on by my health-positive/flavor-negative campaign against adding salt to anything, and, let’s be real, salt is the only member of the spice rack that matters. The half cup of cumin and dusting of chili powder I threw in capitulated immediately, adding a sickly green hue and the idea of heat and little else. Garlic powder was a bust. Pepper tasted like nothing but made my nose tingle. All told, around $2 worth of seasoning made the ultimate sacrifice to elevate a 5/10 dish to a 5/10 dish. Whereas making the 3 second walk to borrow Neighbor Steve’s sriracha took it to a respectable 8/10. Don’t question how someone can be anti salt but pro sodium-heavy hot sauce. My brain works how it works.
Burned and Bland 