These Korean Ground Turkey bowls start with white rice and are piled high with sweet and spicy ground turkey and quick pickled veggies.
These spicy Korean Ground Turkey bowls are part of our Back-To-School Lifesavers — a series of recipes that are intended to have little (or no) veggie chopping, minimal prep time, around 10 ingredients or less (not including pantry staples), and use kid-friendly ingredients. Click here to see all the recipes in the series!
Korean Ground Turkey
Korean Ground Turkey is the perfect balance of sweet and savory with a big kick of spice and a cooling pickled veggie topping. We love this meal! And although it’s got a good amount of spice, you can certainly play around with the spice level to make sure this is a dish the whole family can enjoy. (More on this later!)
Quick Tip
A lot of Korean ground meat dinners (using ground turkey, chicken, or beef) call for a large amount of sugar, resulting in a sickly sweet dish. Instead of loads of white or brown sugar, we add a bit of honey to counteract the spice, but we keep that addition to a minimum. If you’d prefer an even less sweet meal, reduce the honey or add it in slowly.
Optional Topping: Quick Pickled Veggies
The Korean Ground Turkey is tasty on its own, but pickled veggies take the meal to the next level. While pickling veggies might sound time consuming and labor intensive, these pickled veggies are not. It takes only a minute to whip together and they quickly “pickle” as you prepare the rest of the meal. So, while optional, we highly recommend this addition!
To make quick pickled veggies, combine the carrots and cucumbers with rice vinegar (which is also in the ground turkey mixture), white sugar, and a touch of salt. Toss a few times before serving and that’s it — quick pickled veggies that add so much to this dish!
Let’s Chat Spice
Korean Ground Turkey is intentionally spicy, but it’s very simple to adjust spice levels to personal preference.
While there are some red pepper flakes in the actual ground turkey mix, the Gochujang is what is primarily responsible for the spice of this meal. To ensure these bowls could be made with less spice, we don’t add any Gochujang to the actual meat and instead, you spoon it over individual plates.
My kids enjoy the ground turkey with 1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes and no Gochujang on their plates. While still tasty (and tasty enough for little palates), I do find the flavor lacking without Gochujang or chili-garlic sauce, so if you’re overly sensitive to spice and leave it out entirely, you will be missing some key flavor in this recipe. If you are going to keep the Gochujang addition to a minimum, I recommend increasing the amount of garlic and ginger you add to this dish.
Quick Tip
Gochujang is a spicy paste used in Korean cooking, made from red chili peppers, fermented soybeans, rice, and salt.If you don’t have any Gochujang, use a chili-garlic sauce or even Sriracha.
Shortcuts
Korean Ground Turkey Shortcuts
- Matchstick carrots. Instead of cutting your own carrots into matchsticks, pick pre-shredded carrots in the produce section of the grocery store. They’re usually right by baby and/or full-sized carrots.
- Green onions: Most grocery stores sell chopped green onions in the produce section of the store that can be used to completely eliminate chopping from this recipe. This recipe calls for the green onions to be separated, so if you buy pre-chopped green onions just add them all in when sautéing the garlic and ginger.
- QUICK garlic and ginger. We love Dorot’s® cubes which have crushed garlic and ginger that you can keep handy in the freezer and pop into this (and other) recipes as needed. (Check if your local store carries them; they’re typically found with frozen veggies in the grocery store). Another option is to use refrigerated garlic paste and refrigerated minced garlic. By using the cubes or pastes, you’ll save a lot of chopping time while making this Korean Ground Turkey!
Optional Additions
Below are some of the optional additions we like with this Korean Ground Turkey:
- Toasted sesame seeds: These add a nice finishing touch and flavor to the meat.
- Rice vinegar and sugar: If you opt to quickly pickle the veggies, you’re going to need some more rice vinegar (we use it in the meat too!) and some sugar to toss with the veggies to pickle them.
- Boiled rice: If you haven’t boiled rice before, you are going to be thrilled with the ease and speed. All you’ll need to do is toss some rice in boiling water, boil it for 5-7 minutes, and voila — perfect rice!
Quick Tip
Want to save even more time (and dishes?) grab ready/microwaveable rice instead!
More ground turkey recipes
- Asian Ground Turkey with spicy mayo sauce
- Turkey Meatloaf with a simple glaze topping
- Ground Turkey Sweet Potato Skillet with black beans
- Ground Turkey Stir Fry with cabbage and carrots
- Turkey Chili with loads of veggies
Korean Ground Turkey
Ingredients
- 1 pound lean (93/7) ground turkey
- 2 tablespoons toasted sesame oil, separated
- 1 bunch green onions, separated
- 1 (up to 2) tablespoons each: minced garlic, ginger paste Note 1
- 3 tablespoons regular (not lite) soy sauce
- 2 tablespoons each: rice vinegar, honey
- 1/4 (up to 1/2) teaspoon red pepper flakes
- 1.5 cups matchstick carrots
- 1.5 cups thinly sliced English cucumbers
- Optional: rice vinegar and white sugar
- For serving: cooked rice (Note 2), sesame seeds (optional), Gochujang or chili-garlic sauce or Sriracha (Note 3)
Instructions
- OPTIONAL, BUT RECOMMENDED: quickly pickle the veggies -- so good and so easy! Add carrots and cucumber to a large bowl. Add 2 tablespoons rice vinegar (38g), 2 tablespoons white granulated sugar (28g), and 1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt. Toss and continue to toss occasionally until ready to eat.
- GROUND TURKEY: Thinly slice green onions from root to tip. Separate into 2 parts, about 1/2 cup of the base of the onions and 1/2 cup of the tops. Add 1 tablespoon (14g) sesame oil to a large skillet over medium-high heat. Once hot, add the ground turkey. Begin browning and crumbling. After 3 minutes, add in 1/2 of the base of the green onions. Continue to cook turkey until browned through. If needed, drain off any liquid. Add in garlic and ginger, cook for 30 more seconds. Add in soy sauce, honey, rice vinegar, and red pepper flakes (to taste preference). Stir and simmer until sauce is mostly absorbed into the ground turkey, 2-3 more minutes. Remove from heat and drizzle on the remaining 1 tablespoon sesame oil and remaining green onions. Add 1 teaspoon sesame seeds here too if using. Toss to coat.
- SERVE: Divide rice evenly among bowls. Top with even amounts of ground turkey and tons of those delish pickled veggies. Drizzle some sort of sauce on top -- the Gochujang or chili-garlic or even Sriracha sauce works here (add slowly -- these sauces are hot). Enjoy!
Video
Recipe Notes
- Fill a large pot with water and set it to boil.
- Once the water is at a rolling boil, salt the water and add in rice.
- Cook without reducing the heat, for 6 minutes (taste test to ensure it is tender) and then drain and fluff with a fork. Easy!
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
Hello! I’m planning to make this soon. Can you tell me the approximate serving size in ounces or grams? Thanks!
Hey! I don’t have the final serving size weighed out. If you make the entire recipe and weigh it and divide by 4, you’ll have exact oz/grams per serving size for the nutrition facts.
hi!!! ok im making today….as far as the rice.. i am horrible at rice i want to try your way. can
you please tell me the amounts of water , rice, do u rinse rice..and do we cover the pot while boiling?? thank you!!
Hey Barbara! You’ll want to do about 10 cups water to 1 cup rice. Once boiling season with salt (I add 2-1/2 tsp fine sea salt). Rinse rice in a fine mesh sieve until water runs clear then add to the boiling water. Boil for 6 minutes (or until tender; taste a grain). Do not cover the pot, just boil it like you would boil pasta. Once rice is tender, drain it off and it’s ready to go! This method works for BASMATI rice, not long-grain/regular rice.
This was great. Very easy and quick but with a lot of flavor. The gochujang adds a great heat at that end. Will make again for certain.
I am so happy to hear this! Thanks Amanda! 🙂
Hi! I noticed you mentioned regular soy sauce and not lite soy sauce. Why the distinction? I’m just curious because I have to eat low sodium and was planning on using coconut aminos.
Thanks!
More saltiness/flavor!
Great recipe. Easy to make. Great flavors. I will make this again.
I’m s thrilled to hear! Thanks! 🙂
I love this receipt it was delicious. I loved the pickled veggies and the flavor of the turkey was so tasty. This receptor was so easy. My favorite Korean turkey bowls receipt by far.
I am so thrilled to hear this! Thanks Cristy! 🙂
So easy to make and so delicious! I appreciated the quick pickle instructions as well.
I’m so happy to hear this! Thanks Nicole!
Your brother in law here! This Korean ground turkey is unbelievably delicious! I’ve started meal prepping this and honestly it’s been my favorite dish on my weekly prep! Thanks for an amazing recipe as always!
Thank you Bryan!!
Loved it! Rice turned out great, too—and my rice is usually a gluey mess. Added green bell peppers to the turkey because I had some to use up and wanted more veggies. Delicious!
So glad to hear you enjoyed this and the rice turned out well! 🙂 Thanks for the comment and review Alex!
It was delicious.
So glad to hear that! Thanks Sheila!
Thanks for posting this recipe! This meal is fantastic! So tasty and refreshing!! I did miss a tad of the sweet sticky so just added a small amount of brown sugar but I also only had lite soy sauce so maybe that was part of the reason I was craving to modify a bit. Who ever thought ground turkey could taste so flavorful!!
YAY! So happy to hear this! Thanks so much Lauren! 🙂