Recipe of the week for 1/19 - Stuffed Onions

This recipe comes from one of the regular guest bloggers on The Pioneer Woman Cooks!, Kay from the Netherlands. Having gotten over my childhood hatred of peppers, I've been wanting to make stuffed peppers. However, Alec doesn't like peppers. So, when I saw this recipe, I thought it might be a good compromise.

I changed the recipe a bit from the original, mainly because it calls for ground beef, and since I don't eat beef, I used ground turkey. I've listed the recipe as I made it, the original recipe can be found here: Stuffed Onions, by Kay.

Stuffed Onions
adapted from The Pioneer Woman Cooks, guest blogger Kay

Ingredients
2 onions
1 clove garlic
1/2 pound ground turkey (half a package)
stale bread
1 Tbsp sweet chili sauce
1/3 c. grated cheese (we used an apple smoked cheddar. Kay also suggests Gouda.)
4 c. chicken broth
1 tsp. salt
pepper
nutmeg

Directions
Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Season the turkey with salt, pepper, nutmeg and sweet chili sauce. Knead well.

Cut off the tops of the onions, peel them and cut a small slice off the bottoms so they won't fall over. Use a spoon to loosen the layers of the onion and scoop them out. Make sure you leave at least 1/3 inch of onion layer.

Roughly chop the onion you removed. Mince the garlic. Crumble up the stale bread.

Brown the turkey. Remove from the heat and drain it. Add some olive oil to the pan and cook the chopped onion for about 4 minutes, then add the garlic. Put the meat back in. Add the breadcrumbs. Stir to combine. Turn off the heat and add the grated cheese.

Set the onions in a baking dish and fill to the top with the meat mixture. Pour in the chicken broth until the onions are 1/3 to 1/2 covered in liquid. Loosely cover the dish with aluminum foil.

Bake onions for about 1 hour. Lower the oven temperature to 350 degrees. Take out the onions and spoon some of the broth over them. Put them back in the oven, uncovered for 20-30 more minutes, until the onions and topping are golden brown.

The Photo
Here's a photo of the dish. It looks a little lonely on the plate. I think we had rice with it, but I don't really remember. The Verdict
First of all, the chili sauce was a bit difficult to find, even in our fairly well stocked grocery store. We asked the lady who makes the sushi there (yes, our grocery store has a sushi bar, and yes, it's good!) and she directed us to an Asian market (who knew we had one!). A very nice lady at the Asian market recommended her favorite brand of chili sauce (Caravelle) and we bought a huge bottle, for about $3. She says it's good just to pour over chicken and as a dipping sauce. So, I'll be experimenting with other uses.

And, hopefully I'll find some good ones, because we didn't love this dish. Apparently, Alec doesn't really like onions, either (he might have mentioned that when I suggested stuffed onions as a dish). I do like onions, but this was a little much for me. I did really enjoy the filling and so I might try doing something else with that, maybe as a turkey burger.