We were at the beach one day last week and one of the kids showed me a big ball of sand and called it a meatball. I immediately had a craving for meatballs and haven't been able to get it out of my head since. So I pulled out some ground turkey and went searching for my meatball recipe.
The problem with having a recipe binder like mine, stuffed with magazine pages and recipes written on scrap paper, is that it's really hard to find specific recipes. For the life of me, I could not find that meatball recipe. Off to the internet I went and, as luck would have it, came back with a better one.
It's here: Turkey Meatballs on food.com
Lots of good flavor makers in there. Garlic, onion, oregano. I used fresh oregano and dried basil (instead of parsley, as the recipe suggested) because that's what I had on hand. And I used ground oats (rolled oats thrown in the food processor) instead of bread crumbs, just because that's what I always do. Feels healthier.
I was amazed that the turkey held together with just one egg, but it really did.
As suggested in the comments on the recipe, I baked mine at 350° for 30 minutes instead of pan frying them. Worked beautifully. I ended up with 35 1-1.5 inch meatballs, and they fit just perfectly in a 9x13 dish.
I had picked up some fresh, local green beans earlier in the day, so I made those to go along with the meatballs. For fun, I tossed in some garlic scapes/bulbils that I neglected to cut the first time around. I harvested my little garlic patch yesterday. It was pitiful. I tried it in a new location this year, but it failed big time. All my bulbs were teeny tiny.
We made meatball subs with the fresh meatballs and they were awesome. I forgot to buy mozzarella for them, which was fine by me, but Hubs and the kids wanted cheese, so I “stringed” some string cheese and popped the whole sandwich under the broiler. That's the verb my kids use for what they do to their string cheese. It cracks me up.
We used the leftover meatballs for spaghetti and that was a big hit, too. A few of the commenters on the recipe page suggested using the same recipe for turkey burgers. We'll have to try that next time. Yum. This recipe is a keeper.
