House Beautiful

Recipe of the Week: Turkey Ragu with Gluten Free (or Regular) Pasta

During my tenure at my previous job, I could always count on my colleague Jessica to slip into my office with her pretty, white Cheshire grin and with tales of the new recipe she’d tried out at home the night before.

As long as I’ve known her, she’s always had her finger on the pulse of everything restaurant and recipe-related.  I loved walking over to her office, grabbing a cookbook from the stacks piled on her shelves and plopping down to read a couple pages.  Usually, my IMs to her went something like this:

Hey, so I want to go somewhere where I feel super cool tonight and eat a good steak.  Thoughts?”

or

“Haaay, so my college roommate’s visiting Savannah right now.  What’s the name of a good, authentic restaurant somewhere near downtown?”

I’m telling you, the girl always pulled through like a newly acquired Zagat in a strange, foreign land.  Well lo’ and behold, this week we’re super excited cause my ever knowledgeable friend and former colleague is becoming our new food guest blogger!!

Her recipes/restaurant suggestions/general expertise in healthy and nutritional ingredients have always been spot on, so I’m delighted to share her sage advice with everyone.

Just back from a trip to South Africa (why did She wants to lead… the glamorous life! just pop into my head?), Ms. Jess is sharing her very first recipe for Covet Living.  Oh how exciting!  Here goes:

Hello everyone. I’m Jessica and I’m going to be doing a little food coverage for Covet Living.  The theme of this week is the joy of cooking at home.  I LOVE restaurants – I read menus and recipes constantly and have recently become obsessed with creating restaurant quality food at home.

Part of the problem is that I don’t have the heart to use half of the ingredients that Paula Deen does so my versions are always a little healthier. I always try to use the best possible ingredients that are available to me and use herbs and spices to bring out the flavor in my food. My most recent conquest was a turkey ragu with gluten free linguine.  It was everything I could have imagined and more, and I have to say there is nothing more satisfying than doing something yourself and having it totally hit the spot. Here’s a breakdown of what I did.  This is enough for one person so expand as you see necessary.

Turkey Ragu with Gluten Free (or regular) Pasta

INGREDIENTS:

  • 5oz of ground turkey breast
  • 1.5 cups of arrabiata sauce (I LOVE Rao’s)
  • ½ of a small yellow onion
  • 1 clove of garlic
  • Salt to taste
  • Crushed red pepper to taste
  • 1 tablespoon of olive oil
  • 2 oz of pasta

PREPARATION:

Put the onion and garlic in the food processor and finely chop.  In the meantime, begin to heat your olive oil in a pan with the crushed red pepper.  Add the chopped onion and garlic and sauté until translucent (around 3 or 4 minutes).  Add the turkey and break up as you mix it in with the onion and garlic mixture.  Add a nice amount of salt and cook turkey through. Add arrabiata sauce and allow it to simmer for 10 minutes.   Cook pasta in a separate pot and add to the sauce when you are done for an additional minute.  Grab a plate and enjoy!

3 Responses to “Recipe of the Week: Turkey Ragu with Gluten Free (or Regular) Pasta”


  • Love this recipe so much. But how can I add gluten to it? Let me know. Your site rocks!

  • Hi, I was reading your article and I just wanted to thank you for putting out such excellent content. There’s so much nonsense on the internet these days its difficult to find anything worthwhile. I actually have cooked this recipe before, I got this book last month on recommendation from a friend http://ninjahq.com/go/cookingrecipes and it turned out quite nice! I’m very eager to try your variation of it though, it looks fantastic. I think you might enjoy those recipes, they’re very good. Thanks for the article and great ideas.

  • Rose, thank you SO much for the link to the recipes! Good recipes are such great little finds, like treasures found at an antique store.

    Please keep checking in for more recipes from Jessica, our food guest blogger. She ROCKS and is always looking for yummy, alternative recipes to traditional dishes.

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