Larb (ish) Salad

This started with an attempt to make the standard weightlifters meal prep of chicken/brown rice/broccoli less boring, ran into my craving for this awesome meat salad from the thai place up the block, and somehow ended up here.  6 servings at 430 cals, 29g carb/17g fat/41g protein.  6g of fiber. nice chunk of potassium.  (Maybe a bit much sodium but, thankfully my blood pressure is low normal so....) More than a days worth of vit A and C, and 25ish% of both calcium and iron.  Not bad. Also, it tastes really freaking good. 

This recipe is 80% cutting things up, sorry not sorry, if you don't feel like chopping everything then don't make this this week.

Meat Component:

2 lbs ground turkey - could use chicken, but the salad this is based on uses pork and turkey gets closer to that, flavor wise.  I used 1 pkg 99% lean and 1 pkg 93% lean bc I was shopping in a post work fuge state.

1 pkg frozen steam in bag brown rice (thawed), or 2 servings leftover cooked brown rice

1 bag riced cauliflower - I used some that had broccoli and carrots in it also for variety

1 pkg white mushrooms - about 10 of them

1 long hot pepper, diced (seeded or not as you please)

1 handful basil leaves, chopped

 2 tbl coriander seeds

2-3 tbl chopped mint

2-3 green onions, yes also chopped

2 tbl sesame oil

3-4 tbl fish sauce 

Lemongrass - I used 1 tbl paste from a tube, if you have fresh avail use that

Juice of 1 lime

4 tbl peanutbutter (use the natural stuff that is just peanuts and salt) or a palmful or two of chopped peanuts

Put 1 tbl of the sesame oil in a wide bottomed pan over medium head and add the rice.  Stir infrequently and let the rice toast while  you start chopping up half the kitchen.  When you can really smell the rice/sesame oil then add the cali-rice and stir a bit more to incorporate it, then take that out of the pan and set it aside.  

Add 2nd tbl of sesame oil, the white mushrooms and hot pepper, and your fish sauce.  Saute until mushrooms start to reduce a bit then add your meat.  Put lemongrass, coriander seeds, and peanutbutter/peanuts in at this point.  When meat is cooked through, turn off head and add back in rice mixture.  Also add the green onion, mint, basil, and lime juice at this point and stir well to incorporate them while everything is still warm.  

Salad Component:

1 head napa cabbage, shredded

1 large english cucumber, quartered and chopped

1 bunch cilantro, chopped

1 bunch mint, chopped (minus the bit you put in the meat)

1-2 handfuls of basil, chopped

1 jalapeno - seeded or not as you wish

red pepper flakes to taste

juice of 3 limes

salt - you are sort of making quick pickles so you want some salt here, but use more or less to your taste/sodium requirements 

Just mix everything, you did enough work w all the chopping up.

Serve the meat on top of the salad, maybe don't mix them already in your meal prep containers.   You've got lunches for the whole week + one serving to taste test right now.  The salad component will get more pickle-ish as the week goes on.