Ground Turkey Pasta
Published 2/19/2024 โข Updated 10/22/2024
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If this doesn’t scream dinner, I don’t know what does. We’ve been all about the easy ground turkey recipes lately (hello high protein and low fat!) and this one tops our list — and my toddler’s 🤓. He loves a big bowl of this ground turkey pasta with parmesan on top.
Sometimes I’ll make a double batch of this because it stores in the fridge really well and the leftovers are 10/10.
Featured Comment
“Delicious! This recipe was super easy to make but felt kind of fancy. I was skeptical about the anchovy paste but used it anyway, and I’m glad I did. This recipe has great flavor!” – Nicole
Trying to figure out what to make with ground turkey? This ground turkey recipe is so filling, savory, and crowd-pleasing. It has 42g protein/serving and was inspired by a meal my mom made us as kids at least once a week. It’s made with macaroni shells and the most delicious ground turkey red sauce that has a bit of cream added right at the end. It’s served with parmesan cheese and fresh parsley.
PS: if you love this recipe, try our Ground Chicken Bolognese, but swap the chicken for lean ground turkey! And, if you love ground beef recipes, try our famous beef chili!
What You Need for Ground Turkey Pasta
- Noodles: It wouldn’t be ground turkey shells without the shells! But, you’re more than welcome to use your favorite noodle. Some favorite include spaghetti, rigatoni, pappardelle, and elbows.
- Onion and garlic: onion and garlic are our holy grail when making a red pasta sauce. Feel free to use more or less of each.
- Ground turkey: you’ll need 1-lb. of ground turkey for this recipe. We suggest buying your meat directly from the butcher, but if you can’t, any kind will work.
- Italian seasoning: we were feeling a little extra and used our homemade Italian seasoning for this recipe. It a mixture of all the right spices that will make this pasta taste delicious.
- Tomato products: since this is a red sauce, you’re going to need tomato sauce and tomato paste.
- Anchovy paste: hear us out. Anchovy paste adds such a wonderful flavor. If it’s not your jam or you can’t find it, feel free to omit it. Plus, if you read the comments, our readers are saying not to skip it!
- Heavy cream: a little bit of cream really brightens up the ground turkey pasta recipe!
- Parmesan cheese: it wouldn’t be pasta without the parm!
What % fat ground turkey should I use?
We used a 97% lean/3% fat ground turkey and it was perfect. Feel free to use whatever you have on hand.
Homemade
Italian Seasonong
Make your own Homemade Italian Seasoning with just 10 ingredients you likely already have in your spice cupboard, and you’ll be on your way to the most flavorful recipes in no time.
More about Ground Turkey
This recipe is all about the meaty red sauce and today we’re using ground turkey! Ground turkey is a high-protein, lower in fat meat in comparison to ground pork and beef.
What is ground turkey made from? Ground turkey is made from leftover dark and light turkey meat, including the skin. Because it’s made with light and dark meat, it’s a pretty affordable meat product.
Ground turkey calories: per 4-oz. serving ground turkey has 170 calories, 8g fat, 21g protein, 0g carbs, 0g sugar, and 0g fiber.
More Variations for this Pasta
- Use a different noodle: not feeling shells? Try spaghetti or rigatoni.
- Add pureed veggies: steam sweet potato and spinach and then blend it. Add it to the sauce for more veggies!
- Add roasted veggies: add roasted veggies such as cauliflower, broccoli, and onion.
- Swap the meat: easily swap out the ground turkey for any other ground meat.
FAQs
Ground turkey is a lower in fat, high protein meat that is a great option for a healthy diet.
While ground turkey has far less fat than ground beef, it is a great substitute for ground beef.
Ground turkey tastes similar to hamburger, but it has less fat making it less rich.
Our favorite ground turkey is organic ground turkey that you can buy directly from your local butcher.
The best way to tell if ground turkey is all the way cooked is by using a meat thermometer. It should read 165ºF per the USDA.
How long does pasta with ground turkey last in the fridge?
Transfer cooled pasta into an airtight container and store in the fridge for up to 3-5 days.
To reheat: transfer pasta back into a skillet and add a little water or broth. Reheat over medium heat until hot.
Freeze the Sauce!
While we don’t recommend freezing the pasta (no one likes soggy noodles), you can absolutely freeze the ground turkey meat sauce!
- Make the sauce as directed.
- Let it cool completely.
- Transfer it into a freezer-safe gallon-size bag and remove as much air as possible. Seal.
- Freeze for up to 3 months.
When you’re ready to use it, thaw it in the fridge overnight and bring it to a simmer in a frying pan. You’ll likely need to add some water or broth to thin things out.
Ground Turkey Pasta
Ingredients
- 8 oz. medium dried pasta shells
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 1 medium yellow onion, minced
- 1 teaspoon salt, separated
- 5 garlic cloves, peeled and minced
- 1 lb. ground turkey, (we used 93% lean, 7% fat)
- 3 tablespoons homemade Italian seasoning
- 15 oz. canned tomato sauce
- ½ cup starchy pasta water
- 3 tablespoons tomato paste
- 2 teaspoons anchovy paste, option to omit, but it's very yummy!
- ¼ cup heavy cream
- ½ cup grated parmesan cheese
- ¼ cup fresh chopped parsley
Instructions
- Cook the pasta. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Add the pasta. Cook the pasta until al dente. Before straining the pasta, set aside 1 cup of starchy pasta water. Strain the pasta. Rinse the pasta with cold water and set aside for later.
- Heat a large skillet over medium/high heat. Add olive oil. When the olive oil is fragrant, add the onion to the pan and sprinkle with ¼ teaspoon of salt. Sauté the onion for 2-3 minutes and then add the garlic to the pan. Toss with the onion and cook for an additional 1 minute.
- When the garlic is fragrant add the ground turkey to the pan and sprinkle with the Italian seasoning. Break the ground turkey up into small pieces and cook the turkey until it is almost cooked but has bits of pink still left.
- Add the tomato sauce and ½ cup of the starchy pasta water to the pan and stir to combine. Next, add the tomato paste and anchovy paste to the pan and whisk the two ingredients into the tomato sauce. Bring the mixture to a boil.
- Turn the heat to low and allow the tomato sauce to simmer and continue to cook the ground turkey (about 4-6 minutes). Taste the sauce and add ¼ teaspoon more of salt to the sauce. If you desire more salt, add ¼ teaspoon more at a time until you’re satisfied.
- While the sauce is still on a low simmer, slowly add in the heavy cream, while constantly stirring the tomato sauce until combined.
- Finally, fold the pasta into the tomato sauce. Let the noodles heat up in the sauce.
- Top with parmesan cheese and fresh parsley and enjoy.
Tips & Notes
- Check the ingredient list in your Italian seasoning: The homemade Italian seasoning we make and use in this recipe includes salt and garlic. If you are using a store-bought Italian seasoning, check to see if it has salt listen in the ingredients. You may need to add more salt and/or garlic to the sauce as many store-bought Italian seasonings are salt-free.
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- Whisk ingredients thoroughly: Be sure you thoroughly whisk the tomato paste and anchovy paste into the sauce and then bring the sauce to a simmer. This is important to really cook down the ingredients.
Watch It
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
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Photography: photos taken in this post are by Ashley McGlaughlin from The Edible Perspective.
This recipe is absolutely incredible. I think anchovy paste might be the secret ingredient that high end Italian restaurants use!!
The pasta is simple but fancy enough to serve company. Make sure you cook down the anchovy paste and tomato paste like the recipe says. And enjoy every darn bite!!!
Anchovy paste forever!
Absolutely delicious! I forgot to grab anchovy paste for this so subbed it for the same amount of Worcestershire sauce and it turned out amazing. Will definitely make this again, thank you for the recipe ๐
Yum!! I couldnโt find anchovy paste (and would probably be too afraid of it anyway!) but this was still delicious. Weโre trying to cut back on fat so I swapped the cream for some low fat mozzarella. Added spinach too- great way to hide some veggies since everything was so flavorful.
Great idea to add spinach!
I made this making my tomato sauce from scratch: blending tomatoes, chili peppers, garlic and onion and added the tomato paste. I opted out the anchovy paste since bf doesnโt like fishโฆ. It was sooooo good! Thank you for the recipe!!!
Yummmm!
I love the recipe for this dish, pasta is always a food that gives strength to face the day and more so for workers who have to take food home
A proper filling dish with astonishing flavor! I only had 99/1 turkey so I thought I would need more fat but decided to make it to recipe as much as I could and it was fab. I googled what to make for dinner tonight and just went for it with what we had.
I used large elbow macaroni instead of shells, and lightly dried parsley instead of fresh (I can only imagine it with fresh!) and used fish sauce instead of anchovy paste. I got the bright idea to add piri piri so it was on the boundary of delicious and too spicy where you keep eating but you start dabbing yourself with a napkin and ordering another drink.
I ate my portion of shredded pecorino romano before it was finished cooking so garnished with just parsley.
That looks so yummy!
Was delicious! Didnโt have cream to add at the end but was thumbs up from family! Paired it with side salad.
Delicious! This recipe was super easy to make but felt kind of fancy. I was skeptical about the anchovy paste but used it anyway, and I’m glad I did. This recipe has great flavor! I did use ground beef because that’s what I had on hand – I just cooked the onions and garlic first and took them out so that I could drain the ground beef really well. Beef still tasted great in this recipe too. I’ll definitely make this one again!
Wahoo! Love to hear you’re an anchovy paste convert too ๐
Hi. What’s a good Sub for the cream,?
I loved making this dish, now I can eat it for lunch tomorrow. โจ
Look at those beautiful ground turkey shells!