Turkey & Beef Meatballs

Turkey & Beef Meatballs
Originally uploaded by L.TON

So I had the most ridiculous craving for meatballs and pasta today. Highly usual as that is not a typical Lisa food to eat.

Perhaps it was Shena's talk of "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs" that sent me into a "I want to make meatballs and pasta" mode. Or maybe because during my Pharmacology lecture, instead of paying attention to the blah blah blahs of cholinergic or adrenic receptors and the Autonomic Nervous System, I was surfing the internet for recipes on making quinoa anything, pasta anything and shoes. (I justify by saying I read ahead for this lecture....)

Stumble upon a little Alton Brown and my favorite go-to recipe blogger, Elise, Simply Recipes 5 o'clock rolled around and class was done for the day and I was off to the grocery.

I fused both recipes together plus my own here, there's and maybes. I went with a mix of ground turkey and grass finished ground beef (90/10). I added chopped apples, which actually makes the meatballs super moist and adds the slightest hint of sweetness.

The recipe I am going to post makes a lot, so you might want to consider halving it. Even though I recognize I am only cooking for myself, I still haven't learned to portion for two and end up making enough food for the entire Dugger Family.

I didn't have time to make sauce from scratch and instead took 1 jar of regular pasta sauce and doctor-ed it up with some sauteed green bell peppers, onions, garlic and a can of stewed sliced tomatoes. You don't have to, but it gives me the false sense of gratification that I sort of "made my own sauce."

Since everything needs to be minced, if you have a handy chopper, that is a great tool to make this process go a bit more efficiently. The longest part of making these meatballs is the prep.

Turkey & Beef Meatballs

ingredients
1 lbs ground beef, 90% lean
1 lbs ground turkey
1 c minced cremini (baby bella) mushrooms (~1 package)
1 c. minced sweet yellow onion (~1/2 large onion)
1/2 c. minced carrot (~1 medium carrot)
1/2 c. minced apple

3 eggs

3 cloves minced garlic
2 tblspn chopped, fresh basil
1/2 c. grated parmesan cheese
1.25 c. bread crumbs (seasoned)
1 tsp chili flakes
1 tsp tarragon
2 tsp sea salt
2 tsp fresh, cracked pepper

2 tblspn olive oil

instructions

1. Preheat oven to 400F

2. Dump everything but the olive oil into a large bowl and start mixing it. I'm lazy, so I put everything into my stand mixer with the paddle attachment and mixed on low until everything is uniformly mixed, ~ 5 minutes

3. Form golf ball sized balls

4. Rub olive oil on each ball

5. Place on a cookie sheet

6. Bake for 25-30 min.

After you bake, they are technically done.... so you can proceed forward to the eating part but I did a little more...

7. To my doctored up sauce, I dumped in the meatballs and let them simmer in the pot for another 30 minutes.

8. Serve over your favorite pasta noodle!

yields ~40 golf ball sized meatballs