Smoked Turkey Efo Riro

Smoked Turkey Efo Riro is a play on your typical efo riro.  Efo Riro, otherwise known as Vegetable Soup in Nigerian Food lingo, is soup cooked with green, leafy vegetables like spinach. Usually, Efo Riro is cooked with a variety of meats ranging from beef, goat meat, shaki/tripe, cow’s foot, to chicken and seafood. As you can tell, it’s a soup rich in meat!

Of course, you don’t have to use all the aforementioned, either or, will work just fine. I’m not a huge fan of smoked turkey, sometimes I can eat it, other times, I just can’t get with it; no particular reason really! This time, however, I was kinda digging it, so I thought why not feature it in a recipe. To be honest, the first time I cooked smoked turkey, lawd have mercy, it was a mess, because I cooked it like you would other meats, lol. The best part about this, is that it doesn’t take as long to cook the entire dish

To make Smoked Turkey Efo Riro, here’s what you’ll need:

   

    10-15 m pieces smoked turkey drums

    1 m red bell pepper/tatashe

    4 scotch bonnet pepper/rodo/habanero

    4 fresh garlic cloves

    Ginger (size of garlic cloves)

    1 m tomato

    1 s red onion

    1 bag fresh spinach OR 2 chopped frozen packs spinach

    1/2 cup palm oil

    1/2 cup vegetable oil

    1 knorr cube OR 2 maggi cubes

    1 tbsp curry powder

1. Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees

2. Lightly rinse smoked turkey drums, drain and set asideSmoked Turkey Drums, Efo Riro

3. Layer a baking pan with foil & wax paper, spray wax paper with cooking oil spray; add smoked turkeySmoked Turkey Efo Riro

4. Put baking pan with smoked turkey into the oven, let bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes

5. While that’s baking, cut up peppers, add to blender with 1/2 cup waterSmoked Turkey Efo Riro

6. Add palm oil & vegetable oil to a pot, let heat up over medium heat; blend peppers

7. Once blended, add peppers to hot oilSmoked Turkey Efo Riro

8. Add seasonings (curry &  knorr or maggi cubes); let boil 30 minutes over medium heatSmoked Turkey Efo Riro

9. Rinse and chop up spinachSmoked Turkey Efo Riro

10. Squeeze and drain excess liquid from spinach (if yours is frozen), set asideSmoked Turkey Efo Riro

11. Check on smoked turkey in oven, if done, turn off heat & wait for peppers to boil; if not, leave a few minutes longerSmoked Turkey Efo Riro

12. If pepper tastes done (see notes for how to know), reduce heat to low, add baked turkey drumsSmoked Turkey Efo Riro

13. Stir turkey into pepper, still over low heatSmoked Turkey Efo Riro

14. Add chopped spinach over turkeySmoked Turkey Efo Riro

15. Mix chopped spinach into turkey stew thoroughly for even distributionSmoked Turkey Efo Riro

16. Let simmer over low-medium heat for about 5 minutesSmoked Turkey Efo Riro

17. And, yes, you’re all done!

18. Let sit for another 5 minutes  before servingSmoked Turkey Efo Riro

Smoked Turkey Efo Riro

Notes:

Here’s the deal with smoked turkey: it’s smoked, meaning it’s already been partially cooked AND salted. Since it’s already been salted you don’t want to go overboard with the salt, hence my using 1 knorr cube.

Also, because smoked turkey has already been partially cooked, it doesn’t require all the ‘feferity’ (lol) or extraneous stuff that comes with boiling meat or even fresh turkey. By extraneous stuff I mean, like allowing the meat sweat, adding seasonings and water and leaving it to boil.

The best way I’ve found to further cook smoked turkey is to bake it for a good 30-45 minutes. For 30 minutes, you could increase the temperature of your oven to 400 degrees and 350 degrees for 45 minutes.

Smoked turkey has an obviously smoky taste to it, but not so much that it overwhelms the rest of the dish. It’s not a burnt kind of smoky either.

    You don’t have to use wax paper if you don’t have it. I bought it last year with the idea that I was going to use it to bake cookies, but that never happened (almost a whole year later!) so I had to find other uses for it, right? Foil paper alone will work just fine, be sure to spray it down with cooking oil spray though, so the turkey doesn’t stick so much to the foil.

    The spinach was an extra bag of fresh spinach I had and stuffed in the freezer, hence me having to chop it up. If yours is already chopped, totally skip step 9, but still squeeze and drain as in step 10.

    You don’t have to use four rodo/habanero peppers if you don’t like so much heat. 1 or 2 should do.

    If you like you can stop at step 13 and forgo the spinach, totally up to you!

    You can find smoked turkey in most African grocery stores, some Mexican/Caribbean specialty grocers might also carry it. If you’re in Nigeria, I’m not quite sure where you can find it to be honest as I didn’t come across smoked turkey till I left home. I do imagine though, that if you ask your meat man/baba eleran/butcher, he might have an idea!

    To know when blended peppers are cooked, here’s how I know: typically, right after blending, if you try tasting the pepper, it has an almost raw, unfinished taste to it and once you’ve boiled it for at least 30 minutes, that raw taste goes away…once you taste it, you’ll know.

    If your pepper starts to burn a bit while boiling, just add a tiny bit of water; say half a cup, use spoonfuls when in doubt.

    Don’t want to use palm oil? Try Annatto Oil or skip it totally and make it ALL the way healthy. (It is a pretty healthy recipe).

    Canola or Corn Oil can also substitute for Vegetable Oil.

    If you’re usually pressed for time and don’t always have the time to boil goat meat etc, I’d recommend trying smoked turkey. It cuts out a good hour! That, of course, is if you like turkey.

Serving Suggestions:

    With white and fried plantains…(yeah the plantains are a bit burnt..what? you never burned plantains before? pshhh ;)Smoked Turkey Efo Riro, White Rice, Fried Plantains

    You can eat Smoked Turkey Efo Riro with anything really. For instance, boiled yams, eba, iyan (pounded yam), amala, wheat flour or even just plantains.

    Or, just grab you some soft unsliced bread, dig out the center and get to wacking with the efo riro! Have some cold coke with it too!

Source: www.avartsycooking.com