This turkey taco skillet is a fast, easy, and healthy weeknight dinner meal. It’s loaded with vegetables and a mixture of brown rice and cauliflower rice to save on carbs without sacrificing flavor. And it comes together is less than 20 minutes for a delicious and kid-approved meal even on the busiest nights.

Fast, Easy & Healthy Weeknight Meal

Have you ever had one of those days that you’re planning to cook an amazing dinner, then realize you’re missing a crucial ingredient? This is a meal I threw together on one of those days.

I had planned to make a healthier stroganoff recipe I’d been drooling over on Pinterest for a while. And because I had a day off work, I knew I’d have plenty of time to make it. Well, around 5:00 I starting pulling ingredients out to get started cooking. And that’s when I realized I was all out of Worcestershire sauce.

Oh no…  I could run to the grocery store to get it, but then dinner wouldn’t be ready on time. The kids (and George) would start to get a little hangry, and we’d be way behind our evening dinner/bath/bedtime routine.

Nope. Not going to the grocery store.

Last Minute Dinner Idea

Onto plan B. Wait, I didn’t have a plan B. Take out?

Not the healthiest option and I’m not necessarily against take out. But if we’re going to order take out, I at least like to PLAN to have it for dinner so I can look forward to it as a “special” or “fun” meal. Certainly not as a last resort because I failed to plan a healthy dinner.

So there I was. Staring at my pantry. Opening my refrigerator and freezer doors. Then back to the pantry. It’s now 5:17 and George would be home any minute with the kids.

A Semi-Homemade Meal

Then I decided to just throw the ground turkey and few canned and frozen things together and hope for the best. Some black beans, green chiles, Rotel, some frozen steamable brown rice and frozen steamable cauliflower rice, the last bit of frozen bell pepper strips and chopped onions, and half a zucchini that was sitting in the fridge.

I always remember some cookbooks by Sandra Lee called Semi-Homemade Cooking. Basically, meals made at home but she always used a few pre-packaged items. I love this strategy to cut down on the scratch cooking time without sacrificing the health and nutrient quality of a home cooked meal.

I like the rice mixed into this skillet meal to bulk it up a little with complex carbohydrates. But I don’t love using a huge serving of brown rice that throws off the macronutrient balance. So to keep the bulk of the rice without unnecessary carbs, I split the rice with cauliflower rice. 1 cup of brown rice and 1 cup of cauliflower rice is perfect to lower the carbs to an appropriate serving and add in some more veggies!

Turkey Taco Skillet: a fast, easy and healthy weeknight meal

Well, what I ended up with was this delicious ground turkey taco skillet meal and then topped it with a little cheese to appeal to my husband and kids, and voila! Dinner that the entire family loved! As soon as George walked in the door, he exclaimed, “that smells really good!”

I was almost nervous to tell him it was ground turkey (he’s way more of a beef and potatoes kind of guy). And I certainly didn’t want him or the kids to know the rice was a 50/50 mix of brown rice and cauliflower rice. So I didn’t tell them. I let him taste it and waited to see his reaction… and he liked it! Yep, definitely adding this super easy, fast, and healthy turkey taco skillet meal to our weeknight dinner rotation.