Nick Rabar teams up with former New England Patriot, Kelly Taylor to make a dish for his crew that’s big and healthy, perfect for a post-workout meal – American Chop Suey
Nick Rabar (00:35) Kerry Taylor is a former New England Patriot, owner of 212 Health and Performance a personal trainer, author, and above all, my good friend. Now if I know his crew, they’re gonna want to eat something big and healthy after a workout. So I think my American Chop Suey is just a recipe to get the job done.
NR (00:55) American Chop Suey is a quick one-pot dish that I can load up with lean protein, lots of veggies, and pasta. It’s the perfect fuel to keep Kerry’s crew moving, but we’re on the clock so let’s get cooking.
Ground Turkey
NR So we’re going to start today by sautéing our protein we’re using turkey which is a fabulous lean alternative to ground beef, which is very common, and American chop suey. Alright, so let’s get this burner on a nice medium-high heat. We’re gonna go in with some extra virgin olive oil. And I’m going to go with this nice ground turkey. We’re gonna break that up. You don’t want it to cook in a big mash. You don’t want it to look like turkey meatloaf course you know, we have to season. So we’re going to go in with a little bit of salt and some fresh crack pepper. This Turkey takes about six to eight minutes and one critical step. And this is why we did the turkey first. As you can see, it’s very normal for liquids to sort of come out of turkey or ground chicken or even ground beef sometimes we want to make sure that we remove this from the pan and discard some of that liquid. We want to be in control of how much liquid is in our sauce, not the turkey.
Veggies
NR (02:14) So now that that’s done, we’re gonna go on some of these veggies. We have this pan that has all of that fabulous Turkey flavor in it. I’m gonna go back in with a little bit of olive oil. Some onions very common in American Chop Suey to have onions. Very common in American Chop Suey to have peppers, red pepper, and a little bit of yellow pepper. Now we are sautéing. Alright, so we have our peppers in our onions hills and caramelized very handsomely and we’re going to go in with some carrots. And we’re going to go with some celery. Now we’re going to put in some fresh chopped garlic. Sometimes the temptation is to go in early with the garlic, but it’s very small and it can burn. Now let’s get our sauce going.
Sauce
NR (3:02) I’m going to dust these lightly with a little bit of all-purpose flour. That’s going to just be enough to coat them and thicken the sauce. Blend it in well with those vegetables, forming a little bit of a paste. Let’s get this sauce going. We’re on a bit of a time crunch we got to go. The key ingredient in American Chop Suey is tomato paste. You have to have tomato paste. But what you want to do is cook that down just a second, it’s gonna add a little bit of caramelization to the tomato paste. Now that that is in, we’re gonna go with some unique flavors. The first one is Worchester sauce, Worchester sauce adds some spectacular mommy punch to this recipe and you could smell that already. We’re going to go on with some apple cider vinegar. Apple cider vinegar adds some fabulous tang and acidity to this dish. How do you balance tang and acidity? With a little bit of sugar. Sugar is a common ingredient when you’re making American Chop Suey brown sugar as that nice little molasses, so it has a bit more of a distinct flavor than just a standard granulated sugar. These are the little things that separate American Chop Suey from just your basic pasta with meat sauce. Alright, let’s go in with some tomato now. So we have that great sauce, which is the base. And now to stretch it. This is when we go on with your common canned tomato. Now I just want to add a little bit of broth to this. So it’s kind of has a mind of its own. Sometimes it can be too thick or too thin. So keeping a little broth on hand will help with that as it cooks down, it thickens, and when you go in with the pasta its going to thicken too, so just having a little bit of chicken broth on hand to help adjust goes a long way. Alright, sauce looks incredible, but we got to move it here.
Pasta
NR (5:11) I’m going to go with some cavatelli pasta, very common pasta with American Chop Suey and look at that sauce, how it’s all coming together like a glaze. Alright, let’s hit it up with the turkey. Gonna go back in remember, we saved a little bit of that juice. We cooked that turkey. It’s fully cooked. We’re gonna just go back into this pot. This pot is filling up, which is great because we got a hungry crew we got to feed but it is a little one color for me. So let’s give it a pop. So how about we go in with some herbs. This is chopped parsley, and we’re going to go in with some chopped arugula. Now sometimes you’d want to finish this with a little bit of butter. But we’re cooking for my buddies down at the gym. So we’re going to go in with olive oil instead. That’s going to be our fat. Look at how good this came out. And that is our American chop suey.
Wine Pairing
Krasi Lafore (06:43) What a delicious recipe. I can’t wait to try for myself. Hello, I’m Krasi Lafore the fine wine manager here at Wines and More in Cranston, Rhode Island. And I’m here to present the perfect wine pairing for Chef Nick’s American Chop Suey. This time the wine comes from a local winery Anchor Hope located in Rumford. Their limited release Art Series Grenache is bursting with flavors of red cherries and wild berries. There is some smoke in herbal notes that will also complement the spices in the earthiness of dish. It is delicious. stop by to see us and pick a bottle to try for yourself. Cheers and we hope to see you soon here at Wines & More in Cranston, Rhode Island.
