Low-cal Spaghetti Bolognese

I've been cutting back on calories lately, which has affected my cooking output. I've been making a lot of ultra low-cal food in fairly large batches, which means I don't get to try new things as often as I might like.

Part of eating low-cal, for me at least, has been finding ways to adapt my kitchen staples to my desire to eat healthier. This recipe is good example. It was actually born out of thrift rather than a need to cut calories. I was shopping for the stuff to make spaghetti sauce, since I was having my nephews over and I know spaghetti is something they'll eat (they're very picky). Ground beef has been getting so expensive lately, though, and on that day it was over $3.50 for the low-fat kind, for less than a pound of meat! Ridiculous. I noticed, though, that the ground turkey was $2.75 for a pound and a quarter, and I remembered those fabulous turkey meatballs I discovered a few months ago. Clearly the gods intended for me to use ground turkey instead of ground beef.

Thus this recipe, which combines some stuff I had laying around in my pantry and fridge with the turkey to produce a spaghetti sauce that would make my mother proud. It doesn't give up an ounce of taste to my usual spaghetti recipe, but it gives up about 300 calories. And that's enough for a guiltless cookie after dinner! Practical cooking at its best.

Low-cal Spaghetti Bolognese

1.25 lbs ground turkey
1/2 medium sweet onion (or 1/4 of a large one), diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 15 oz can stewed tomatoes
1 small can tomato paste
Chicken stock (or veggie, or even beef, whichever floats your boat)
7-8ish mushrooms, sliced
2 stalks fresh oregano, chopped
1 stalk fresh rosemary, chopped
Pepper

I do this whole recipe in an electric frying pan, and it turns out to be the only thing I have to wash. You could probably do it in a large saucepan over a stovetop just as easily though. Just make sure the saucepan has a lid or something to cover it, so that it doesn't lose too much moisture while it simmers.

Start by dumping the ground turkey into the frying pan, and turning it on to 300F. Let the turkey get a pretty decent start on cooking, and use a spatula to stir it around and break it up into bite-sized chunks as it cooks. You can dice your onion and mince your garlic while this is going on, just keep an eye on the turkey as you do to make sure it doesn't stick to the pan. When the turkey starts to render what little fat it contains, dump in your diced onions and garlic. Stir the onions and the meat around while the meat finishes cooking and the onion softens to translucent. It should smell really good.

When the meat is done all the way through and the onion is translucent, dump in the whole can of stewed tomatoes, juices and all. Use your spatula to chop the tomatoes up into smallish pieces (they come whole in the can, and you want them to be bite-sized). Don't trash the can that the tomatoes came in, instead fill it half up with whatever stock you're using and add that to the mix. Next dump in the can of tomato paste, and stir the whole thing around for a few minutes. The tomato paste should initially be very thick in an otherwise watery mixture, but as you stir, it should combine more thoroughly to form a still-slightly-watery mixture. Cover this, turn the pan down to a simmer, and let it sit for a minute while you wash and slice your mushrooms, and chop your spices. Just dump those into the pan as soon as you get them done, so the mushrooms can begin to soften and the spices can start to assimilate more harmoniously into the mix. Stir everything once more to make sure the spices are evenly distributed.

Taste the mixture when you've added everything, and season with pepper as appropriate. It shouldn't need salt (at least, I don't think it does), which keeps it fairly low-sodium as well. Re-cover your pan and let it simmer for between 30 and 45 minutes. Towards the end of the simmering period, dump some pasta into a pot of salted boiling water so you'll have something to put the sauce on. Ten minutes before you intend to eat it, check the sauce. It should have thickened up, but if it's still a little watery you can leave the lid off the pan for the last ten minutes of simmering, which should bring the texture up to par.

Serve hot on top of pasta. Whole wheat pasta goes especially well with this, since it continues the healthy theme and tastes better than refined-flour pasta anyway.

Servings: 6-8, or as many as 10 if you're me and don't eat much per serving.