Turkey rice is one of the most traditional snack food in Taiwan. In order for me to talk about Turkey rice, we have to tell you a little bit about Taiwanese Stewed Pork Rice (ló͘-bah-pn̄g), or also called Lu-Rou-Fan.
Taiwanese Stewed Pork Rice is kinda like hash brown, in terms of role in its food culture and nutrient fact. Hash brown is potato fried in oil, Taiwanese Stewed Pork Rice is rice with seasoned pork grease with gravy. Both of them are oil on top of starch. Southern Taiwanese have Taiwanese Stewed pork as breakfast, along with beef soup. Turkey rice is the most successful spin off of the dish: by putting tender turkey breast meat on top of it and mixing the gravy with turkey grease.
Turkey rice was originated from a county in Taiwan called Chiayi (嘉義). There is a water fountain roundabout (圓環噴水池) that is called “the holy ground of democracy.” During election time, candidates from different parties will all come to this area to have their campaign rallies (造勢晚會). Unlike other regions in Taiwan, there are never conflicts and the crowd is friendly to each other. The atmosphere makes this area the most crowded place in Chiayi during election season, which is pretty much all the time! One guy spotted the opportunity and come up with turkey rice, which is the original Taiwanese Stewed Pork Rice with turkey grease and tender turkey breast meat on top. Because people like the turkey rice so much that they skipped the stew pork and just served turkey by itself. Soon, the fame of the turkey rice spread out like wildfire, and now you can see turkey rice (or some called it chicken rice if they substitute with regular chicken breast) at every corner of Taiwan.
This month’s Mike vs. Jeff challenge is on Asian Turkey dish, there is no better dish than turkey rice! I’m always a big fan of traditional dishes. Turkey rice is something that we are emotionally attached to, especially when you are a southern Taiwanese! It awakens your memory when you were once a child, running down the street, holding those coins tightly in your hands, going for one bowl of delicious turkey rice right around that familiar corner. It’s the flavor you will miss the most, or the flavor you will soon fall in love with!
Ingredients
- 1 side of turkey breast with bone
- ¼ cup of turkey grease
- 2 tbsp of soy sauce
- ¼ cup of fried shallot
- ½ tbsp of sugar
First, we need to prepare the turkey correctly.
Peel the skin first, and then chop it as fine as possible. If you have a food processor to grind it, it will be even better! There are two reasons behind this: First, once it’s grounded, you have a lot more surface area and it’s much easier to render out the turkey grease that way. Second, and the most important reason in my opinion, is to prevent the skin from popping too violently while cooking. For all the hard core scientists, you can test this by trying one piece of turkey skin without cutting it, just make sure that you cover the pan properly so you don’t get splattered with hot oil. We need this turkey grease for the unique flavor of the dish. You are more than welcome to extract more turkey grease from other part of turkey as you trim out the fat.
Like we mentioned before, turkey rice is built on top of an existing snack food – Taiwanese Stewed Pork Rice. Therefore, if you cannot collect enough chicken grease, don’t worry! Pork grease is a perfect substitute for that and it will work fine. In fact, using half pork grease and half turkey grease might be closer to what this dish taste like originally. Collect as much turkey grease as possible, we are ready to move on to the next part – cooking the perfect breast meat!
It’s very hard to have the perfect timing for cooking breast meat. It’s very easy to overcook the breast. The traditional way is to boil the turkey breast. My trick to a tender turkey breast is to cook for 15 min and let the residual heat cook for another 5 min. Let me share with you a wise word from my dad: “if it’s undercooked, you can cook it more, however, if it’s overcooked, it’s gone.” Please remember, when you are not sure how long you should cook it, always, always go with less time and cook more if you need to. Pro Tip: Once you remove from the pot, you can let the pot continue to simmer just in case you have to cook the turkey breast a bit more time. Use a fork to pull the turkey breast into strips, it’s super easy that way! Of course, if you have Sous Vide machine, you can always cook the perfect turkey breast! Like what we do with Hainan Chicken Rice, set the temperature to 150F for 1.5 hrs!
Here are two things that you want to add to the rice, the grease and the sauce.
For grease, it’s from the turkey grease you collected earlier. For a cup of rice, you want to add 1 tbsp of turkey grease. For sauce, take 1 cup of the turkey broth that we have from boiling the turkey and , add 2 tbsp of soy sauce, ¼ cup of fried shallot and ½ tbsp of sugar and bring to boil.. For a cup of rice, you’ll want to add 3 tbsp of sauce
When serving turkey rice, measure 1 cup of rice and put in a bowl first, top the rice with ½ cup of pulled turkey strips. Add 1 tbsp of turkey grease and 3 tbsp of sauce on top of it. This is one serving of turkey rice!
On top of your rice, add ½ cup of turkey strips. Here is your turkey rice! Enjoy!
- 1 side of turkey breast with bone
- ¼ cup of turkey grease
- 2 tbsp of soy sauce
- ¼ cup of fried shallot
- ½ tbsp of sugar
- Remove skin from turkey
- Remove breast meat from the bone
- Finely chop the skin (to prevent it from popping violently)
- Cook skin in a pan at medium heat until all turkey grease is out and skin residue are golden brown and crispy, about 5 min
- Store the turkey grease for later use
- (optional) If the oil volume is not enough, make up the volume with pork grease
- Place the turkey breast in a pot with water, boil for 15 min and turn off the heat for 5 min, make necessary adjustment depend on the size of the turkey breast
- Remove the turkey breast from water and let cool, do not throw away the broth
- Take a new pot, add 1 cup of turkey broth, add 2 tbsp of soy sauce, ¼ cup of fried shallot, and ½ tbsp of sugar, this is your sauce
- Wait until the turkey breast is cooled to the level you can handle by hand, use a fork to pull the turkey breast into strips
- For 1 cup of rice, you want to put ½ cup of turkey breast strips on top, add 1 tbsp of grease and 3 tbsp of sauce
- Enjoy!
Great post! I found your page while trying to figure out what to call the crunchy stuff (fried shallots) that is a huge MUST for topping off a good bowl of 火雞肉飯. I recommend either 三色蛋 (three colored eggs?) or 皮蛋豆腐 (thousand year duck egg with tofu). I’m a transplant to 嘉義 😀
Fried shallot is so versatile. I use it for a multitude of recipes just to add some crunch and flavor. Ideally, we should fry the shallots ourselves but nowadays, I just buy pre-fried ones from the Asian supermarkets to save time. ~Mike