Every year along with the winter season in Southern California, I get a flood of requests from friends for a great turkey chili recipe. Wanting to be helpful, first, I try to steer them away from turkey chili altogether. As it turns out, people do not find this helpful.
When that hasn’t worked, I’ve suggested they use my regular chili recipe and substitute ground turkey for the beef and pork. But turkey chili needs — and deserves — a recipe all its own.
The challenge with turkey chili is that ground turkey lacks the deep, meaty flavor of ground beef. (There’s a reason chili con carne is not chili con pavo.) That leaner, milder meat just needs a boost, which I give it in the form of more of everything, including time.
Start with a base of onion (lots), red bell peppers (more) and garlic (loads), cooked until this mixture reduces to about a tenth of its volume.
Add tomato paste, which is also caramelized in the hot pan, and loads of spices — a variety of chiles plus coriander, smoked paprika and cumin — and you have a chili paste that is layered and flavorful.
It’s worth mentioning that underneath many of your favorite red, chile-stained Mexican stews is a base of pureed tangy tomatillos. With that in mind, I add tomatillo salsa to this chili, to give it needed acidity.
Oh, and did I mention it’s all cooked in duck fat? Duck fat is luxurious, has a high smoke point, and adds a welcome nuance of roasted bird flavor. The result is a rich chili so delicious, and the meat so moist (because it’s not overcooked), you wouldn’t know it wasn’t made of beef.
Beans are my favorite part of chili (so I would have been kicked out of Texas long ago). In Mexico there’s a saying that if you need to feed more people, put more water in the beans. I say: If you need to feed more people, put more beans in the chili. This is a saucy chili, and it can handle another can (or three!) of beans.
