I've never had much luck with making meatballs in the past, but with the recipe that I used on the turkey meatballs for this fab soup, I figured I'd give it a go with red meat. I combined veal, pork and beef this time and browned them in the le creuset before finishing them on a baking sheet in the oven. I browned the first batch of meatballs and had 3 large ones left so I just browned the meat as if making a bolognese sauce. I really didn't have everything I needed to make a sauce from total scratch so I used the rest of the jarred Rao's from last week and it was total perfection. As a side note, you don't have to be all fancy and use 3 types of meat, you could surely just use ground beef.
I've decided that with these spiralized veggies they are really great if paired with hearty sauce - first because they actually hold up quite well and second because they are so low in calories that if they are eaten with a really light sauce (like last night's shrimp scampi) you're left wanting just a bit more.
So this version was totally perfect for a freezing, or actually well below freezing winter night. It was comforting and totally filling but you could feel pretty guilt free about consuming hardly any carbs (minus the breadcrumbs in the meatballs).
What you need:
1/3lb ground beef
1/3lb ground pork
1lb ground veal (the butcher didn't have ground veal so I had to buy a pre portioned package and ended up just using all of it)
1/4 cup bread crumbs
1 egg
1/4 cup grated Parmesan
3 garlic cloves
tomato sauce (jarred or homemade)
3 yellow squashes
Parsley (small palm full chopped)
In a large bowl beat 1 egg with a couple spoonfuls of water and add the breadcrumbs. Let that sit until its a paste (a couple minutes) then add the garlic, parsley, parmesan, and a bit of salt and pepper. Then add all the ground meat and give it a big mix. Form into meatballs - I ended up with 10 but only ended up using 7 as meatballs - the other became my meat sauce.
In a large pan brown them on each size with oil on high heat. Mine stuck a bit so I had a hard time keeping them in perfect shape but they mostly held up. After about 8-10 minutes browning I popped them in the oven on a baking sheet at 350 degrees for about 20 minutes.
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| Add the tomato sauce of choice to your browned ground meat |
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| Toss in your squash spaghetti |
While they were bakingI broke down the remaining three meatballs, browned them & added the Rao's sauce. I let it simmer lightly while the meatballs finished cooking in the oven and while my asparagus was roasting away in a foil package also in the oven. I boiled some water and dropped the spiralized squash in for about 2 minutes before transferring right into the pot of sauce.
It was super Dahlicious and hearty but I feel pretty good about almost no carbs in the meal. Also, my garlic suddenly just disappeared from my kitchen today so the meatballs went without - and actually they were still super tasty so if you aren't a garlic lover you would be just fine to omit it.
Enjoy!
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