Chili Garlic Ground Turkey and Green Beans

If you’re a fan of one pan meals or eat a high protein diet, you will love this ground turkey and green beans stir fry. It combines trimmed green beans and lean turkey with a low calorie chili garlic sauce and chopped spinach. The end result is a perfect topping for healthy rice bowls.

The recipe takes about 30 minutes from start to finish and has 27 grams of protein, 6 grams of fiber, and 305 calories per serving. (Or 32 grams of protein and 255 calories with extra lean ground turkey!)

Ingredients and Substitutes

You only need three main components and a fourth optional component to make this stir fry.

1. ground turkey – ground chicken, beef, or your favorite type of mince will all work well
2. green beans and an optional bag of baby spinach – you can omit the spinach and use other veg like broccoli, brussels sprouts, or cauliflower instead of green beans
3. chili garlic sauce – see my firecracker or spicy honey sesame sauces for alternatives and slightly different flavor profiles

You also need pairings like rice and garnishes, but we’ll get to that.

Making the Ground Turkey and Green Beans Stir Fry

The recipe begins by blistering a pound of roughly chopped green beans in a pan over medium-high heat with a half tablespoon of olive oil.

You’re more than welcome to cut your green beans to the exact same size, but sometimes I can’t be bothered. Give them a couple passes with a knife and get them in the pan. Your time starts now.

You’re looking for the green beans to pick up a bit of color, both in blistering/charring in spots and turning a vibrant green color. It shouldn’t take longer than 5-6 minutes.

Once the haricots (that’s French for beans, because clearly we’re fine dining) are ready, get them out of the pan and into a bowl.

Into the same pan goes another half tablespoon of olive oil and one pound of ground turkey. Be sure to leave the turkey untouched for a few minutes to develop a golden brown crust on one side. Then you can break it apart and fully cook.

Once you have fully cooked the ground turkey, it’s time to add the sauce and give it a couple minutes to thicken.

All that’s left is to add the spinach and green beans to the pan and cook for a few minutes until the spinach wilts and everything melds together.

Easy enough, right? Once you start cooking, everything comes together quickly. Be sure to think about your rice or pairings on the front end before you begin.

Serving and Garnishing

Cauliflower rice, rice, or a combination of the two should be priority number one. I like to blend steamed jasmine or basmati rice with cauliflower rice to add volume without being sad about the cauliflower rice.

Toasted sesame seeds or a sesame seed crunch seasoning, the green parts of the sliced green onion from the sauce, and a little drizzle of chili crunch or chili flakes round out the must-have garnishes.

I first mentioned one of my new favorite garnishes, oil-free chili crisp, in my Korean chicken tacos recipe. It’s from a company called Real Naturals (I buy it on Amazon) and is a great way to get the crunchy, spicy texture of chili crisp without adding extra oil to your dishes.

In this case, it’s giving green bean casserole in the best way. You can also add crunch with things like the crispy onions in my ground chicken coconut curry.

I also had some Korean carrot salad from Costco on hand and thought it worked well alongside the green beans and ground turkey. You’d be hard pressed to find a dish I don’t think pickled carrots and/or cucumbers go nicely with. They’re so refreshing and add a lot of volume to keep you full!

Let me know if you have any other ideas for pairings or serving your ground turkey stir fry. I’m always looking for fresh inspiration, and it usually comes from readers like you.

I hope you enjoy this recipe. If you do, I always appreciate recipe reviews on the recipe card below, which you can print or save to your device before you head out. Until next time.