I seriously never get tired of super easy stir-fry dinners! I mean, what’s not to love? With only a few ingredients, you can work in a TON of vegetables, and they’re super fast! Using ground meat makes them even easier because there’s no cutting or slicing raw meat (not a fan of this task). This Ground Turkey Stir Fry is especially great because it’s so versatile. Use whatever vegetables you have on hand, make it spicy or mild, and serve it with rice, noodles, or with shredded cabbage for a low-carb option. Scroll down for more deets on those options!
This Ground Turkey Stir Fry is another meal inspired by those “macro-friendly” meal delivery services that deliver individual, ready-to-reheat meals to your door. While those services are super convenient, they’re also super expensive and I know I can make similar meals at home for a fraction of the price. :) You can easily adjust the macros in this meal by increasing, decreasing, or eliminating any of these elements: turkey, vegetables, rice, or nuts. Unfortunately, I don’t have the specific macronutrient information for this meal, and you can read why in my FAQs.
Customize your Ground Turkey Stir Fry
- Reduce the recipe cost by increasing the vegetables and decreasing the amount of ground turkey
- Use ground beef, pork, chicken, or crumbled tofu or tempeh in place of the ground turkey
- Other vegetable options: mushrooms, broccoli, carrots, bean sprouts, snap peas, green beans, water chestnuts
- Top with cashews or sesame seeds in place of the peanuts
- Make it spicy by stirring a tablespoon (or TWO 🔥) of sriracha or chili garlic sauce into the stir-fry sauce
- Add fresh some freshly grated ginger to the stir-fry sauce for extra zing
- Add cooked noodles to the stir fry at the end instead of serving over rice
- Add a bag of coleslaw mix to the stir fry to bulk it up without adding carbs, similar to my Beef and Cabbage Stir Fry, instead of serving it with rice or noodles.
How to Store Ground Turkey Stir Fry
This recipe works great for meal prep, but I suggest only storing in the refrigerator rather than the freezer. Freezing will cause the vegetables to soften further and seep more water. This dish will stay good in the refrigerator for about four days.
Ground Turkey Stir Fry
Servings 5 (about 1 cup stir fry, 1/2 cup rice)Ingredients
Stir Fry Sauce
- 1/4 cup soy sauce ($0.24)
- 1/2 Tbsp toasted sesame oil ($0.16)
- 1/2 Tbsp brown sugar ($0.02)
- 1 pinch red pepper flakes (optional) ($0.02)
- 1 Tbsp water ($0.00)
Stir Fry
- 2 bell peppers ($2.00)
- 4 green onions ($0.22)
- 2 oz. spinach (two large handfuls, or 1/4 of an 8oz. bag) ($0.30)
- 2 Tbsp cooking oil of choice ($0.08)
- 2 cloves garlic, minced ($0.16)
- 19 oz. ground turkey* ($3.49)
For Serving
- 1/4 cup chopped peanuts ($0.12)
- 2.5 cups cooked brown rice ($0.60)
Instructions
- Make the stir fry sauce by stirring together the soy sauce, toasted sesame oil, brown sugar, red pepper, and water until the sugar is dissolved. Set the sauce aside.
- Dice the bell peppers and slice the green onions.
- Heat the cooking oil in a very large skillet over medium heat. Once hot, add the ground turkey and minced garlic. Stir and cook until the turkey is cooked through and no water is left pooling on the bottom of the skillet (8-10 minutes).
- Once the turkey is cooked and the moisture has evaporated, add the bell pepper and green onions to the skillet. Stir and cook for about 2 minutes more, then add the spinach and continue to cook just until it is about half wilted (1-2 minutes).
- Pour the stir fry sauce into the skillet. Continue to stir and cook the turkey and vegetables until everything is coated in sauce and the spinach is fully wilted (about 2 minutes more).
- Serve about 1 cup of the stir fry mixture with 1/2 cup rice and a sprinkle of chopped peanuts over top.
See how we calculate recipe costs here.
Notes
Nutrition
Have you tried this recipe?Mention @budgetbytes or tag #budgetbytes on Instagram!Video
Scroll down for the step by step photos!
How to Make Ground Turkey Stir Fry – Step by Step Photos
First, make the stir-fry sauce so it’s ready to go. Stir together 1/4 cup soy sauce, 1/2 Tbsp toasted sesame oil, 1/2 Tbsp brown sugar, a pinch of red pepper flakes, and 1 Tbsp water. Stir until the brown sugar is dissolved. BTW, I’ve really grown to love Whole Foods’ 365 brand Shoyu soy sauce. It’s very affordable and has great *flavor*, rather than just being salty.
Next prepare the vegetables. Dice two bell peppers (I used red and yellow for more color), and slice four green onions. I am also using about 2 oz. fresh spinach (2 large handfuls or about 1/4 of an 8oz. bag). No preparation is needed for the spinach.
Add 2 Tbsp of your favorite cooking oil to a large skillet and heat over medium. Once hot, add 19oz. ground turkey and 2 minced cloves of garlic. Stir and cook until the turkey is cooked through and all of the moisture has evaporated out of the skillet. Soupy stir fry is not good. :)
Add the diced bell peppers and green onions to the skillet. Continue to stir and cook just until they begin to soften (about 2 minutes). Don’t let them cook too much because they will continue to cook over the next few minutes as more ingredients are added. Add the spinach to the skillet and cook for 1-2 minutes more, or until the spinach is about half wilted, like in the photo.
Finally, pour in the stir-fry sauce. If your brown sugar wasn’t completely dissolved and some remain on the bottom of the bowl, make sure to scrape that into the skillet. Stir and cook everything for 1-2 minutes more, or until everything is coated in sauce and heated through.
And that’s it! It’s literally that easy.
Serve about 1 cup of the ground turkey stir fry with 1/2 cup cooked rice and some chopped peanuts over top. Enjoy!
Loved the recipe, it was quick and easy for dinner
Making for the week! Have tried many of your recipes, and all are amazing! Hubs and I are addicted to your Honey Mustard dressing!!!
SO GOOD!! I have made this exactly as listed, and it was amazing. I also made it another time with the following variations: omitted brown sugar and substituted rice wine vinegar; I don’t like green onions, and didn’t have spinach on hand, but put in a bag of shredded coleslaw mix and it was GREAT. I love how versatile this recipe is that it can stand up to these changes and still be delicious!
This looks so delicious! I love ground turkey and am always looking for more ways to enjoy it. Such a great idea. I’ll be trying this soon!
thank you for the process!! I didn’t have a few of the ingredients so I subbed a couple. I guess I can’t really rate the recipe exactly as written since I couldn’t fully copy it. but your directions produced a colorful, flavorful, and easy dish. very quick too! thank you for saving lunch today! I was so tempted to order pizza but took a stab at this instead and it was so worth it. thank you.
This was so simple and delicious. I didn’t have sesame oil, but I threw in sesame seeds instead. I also added some celery which gave some good flavor. I’m adding the recipe to my short list! Amazing!!!
Amazing! The only change I made was adding 1/2 bag of steamed mixed veggies leftover from last night. I just didn’t want to waste them. I paired this with steamed broccoli & the sesame rice from this site for my meal prep for the rest of the week. This recipe is so very versatile with veggies! I make knock off lo Mein with ramen noodles a lot so next time I’ll pair it up with that. I’ve made 6 of your recipes in the last couple days for meal prep and here I am making a list of more. Thanks so much!!! Myself and my budget adore you 😁
DELICIOUS!!!!! ❤️ Loved it!!! Easy to make and very 😋 tasty!
Excellent recipe, my son who rarely puts a vegetable in his mouth cleaned his plate, veggies and all! I also added very thin carrot slices early in recipe as that is one vegetable he does eats.
My family loves this recipe. We have a little bit of a sweet tooth so I add more brown sugar. But it comes out perfect every time.
Oh my god this is SO good. I’ve prepared it with chicken instead of turkey, and replaced peanuts with walnuts. Delicious. I’m starting to like spinach, too. Thanks Beth for this amazing recipe!
This is such a great recipe. Beth never disappoints, I’ve been making her recipes for a long time. Some of my husband’s favorite meals are from Budgetbytes.
Thanks Lisa!
Nutrition?
We do get that request a lot, but unfortunately we don’t have a reliable source for the nutrition information. The calculators and databases that most bloggers and websites use to calculate the info can be extremely inaccurate, and for something that can so severely impact the health of people with health conditions, we just don’t feel comfortable publishing unreliable numbers. We prefer to leave it up to the reader to use the database or calculator they trust. I’m sorry and I wish accuracy were easier than shipping the food off to a lab for analysis! 😅
Easy, inexpensive and delicious, made this twice now.
Even husband likes it! Re-heats very well for lunches during the week. Used brown and wild rice with it and added a tad bit more teriyaki sauce as it didn’t seem to be enough.
Thanks Brenda! Happy to hear it!
Made this omitting sesame oil, as I didn’t have any, and brown sugar. I added half package of coleslaw mix.
Will definitely make this again. Delicious
Was secretly pleased that my family didn’t make it home for supper with me so I can take it for lunches this week.
Ha! That’s a win Patsy!
This recipe is fantastic! The whole family loves it! I was able to make my own tweaks with Bragg’s liquid and coconut aminos and other veggies. Despite using other recipes from your site I had yet to leave a comment until now! I’m just so excited about this one!
DELICIOUS—- Mine was a bit too salty but it’s probably because I use Maggi soy sauce. Next time I’ll put less. This is my new favorite blog, thank you and keep doing what you’re doing!
Thank you Becks!