Thirty Minute Thursdays: Grilled Honey Mustard Turkey

Apparently it’s been just about a month since I posted a recipe with meat in it.  For all of you meat lovers out there, I apologize. I am weaning myself off of meat to some extent – L is terrified that I’m on my way to becoming a bona fide vegetarian and he’ll never eat homecooked meat again in his life – but I really don’t have any plans to cross over into official veggie-dom. I don’t really like labeling myself by how I eat, particularly since I’ve struggled in the past with overly stringent “rules” about “good” versus “bad” foods. When I feel like eating meat, I eat meat. When I feel like I’ve maybe had enough meat for the time being, I stop for a little bit until I get a hankering again. It’s working for me so far.

My developing flexibility (I’m working on it!) is also making my family’s life a little easier. It was easy during college to cook my own food and eliminate meat as I see fit, but my family isn’t like that. If they have a meatless dinner meal, it pretty much is guaranteed to be lasagna or something like soup and a grilled cheese sandwich. They haven’t really, truly embraced beans and they certainly aren’t up to tofu yet, so my moving back home for my internship is definitely going to involve adjusting on everyone’s parts.

My compromise is that when I cook for them, the majority of the time it will involve meat in some way (not always! We’re going to stretch their comfort zones with food, just gently). One benefit of this is that most of the Rachael Ray meals left in her cookbook involve meat, so it helps to have other people around me to help go through those remaining meals. It’s a good thing too, because a lot of them wind up tasting hands-down delicious, and it’d be a shame if I missed out on them simply because I couldn’t muster up the enthusiasm to cook a big hunk of meat for little ole’ me.

This recipe today is not-so-loosely based on one of the meat-centric recipes in her book. Originally titled Honey Mustard BBQ Chicken, I’ve tweaked it to use turkey tenderloins and a few other more convenient ingredients in the context of what my kitchen was stocked with, and I think a more appropriate new title would be Grilled Honey Mustard Turkey. I know, I know, I just turned the world upside down with that change, right?

This is a solid recipe. It claims that it serves 4, but I’d argue that it largely depends on the type of eater you are. My mom and I split half of a tenderloin, so if you’re more like us, this recipe will serve 8; my dad and L on the other hand each had their own tenderloin half, so a family more like that would only get 4 servings out of it. But this meal, it’s not really about the meat. The sauce, which makes enough to very, very generously douse each and every piece – and I mean douse – is where all of the magic happens. The sweetness from the brown sugar comes through, but it’s cut and kept in check by the cider vinegar. It worked surprisingly well in the warmth of these Spring months, but because of the ingredients used I can see it fitting just as well into an autumn menu. 

I paired the turkey with a corn and tomato scramble (pictured above) from Epicurious, making that according to the original only substituting olive oil for the butter and dill for the scallions. It was flavorful and simple, a truly classy dish. I also made a side of roasted green beans, which were equally simple and a great “guideline” recipe that I found at Mother Rimmy’s Cooking Light Done Right – a good how-to to keep in your back pocket. Plus, the beans only roast for 5-8 minutes, so it doesn’t make your kitchen a furnace – a great compromise for all of you roasted veggie lovers who don’t want to absolutely melt in your kitchens this summer.