I was in the mood for Italian, so I decided to make turkey meatballs with marinara served over vermicelli noodles. It was real good. Here is what I did!
Cast of Characters: 2 Cans diced tomatoes, 1lb ground turkey, bread crumbs, Parmesan cheese, egg, minced garlic, red onion & scallions
Chast of Seasonings: garlic powder, crushed red pepper, oregano, parsley, cracked black pepper & kosher salt
I use un-seasoned breadcrumbs and then season then according to what I am making
I added to taste all of the above seasonings to the breadcrumbs
I added my thawed ground meat, 1 egg and the seasoned breadcrumbs to a large bowl and combined. Once the meat mixture was combined I put in the fridge for it to combine & harden a bit.
I sliced some red onions and the green parts of a few scallions to use in the sauce. I added the white parts to the meat mixture.
In a large heavy bottom skillet I added some olive oil, and added the onions, garlic & some kosher salt to draw the liquid out of the onions
In a separate bowl I added 1 can of diced tomatoes and used my hand held emulsion blender to puree them, so that my sauce would be thicker. If you wanted to leave them whole you could just add some tomato paste to thicken the sauce.
Here is what it looked like pureed. You could also use a food processor to do this.
Once the onions & garlic were sauteed I added the tomato puree mixture, as well as the other can of diced tomatoes & seasonings to taste and brought to a boil. Once it was combined I lowered to simmer and let the flavors come together.
While the sauce was simmering I rolled the meat mixture into medium sized balls and put them on a foil lined baking sheet. I poured some chicken stock on to the bottom of the pan to help steam them, but only because I had some. If you spray the foil with cooking spray, they shouldn't stick. They went into a pre-heated 450 degree oven
Bake for about 20-25 minutes. I like mine more crunchy. Here are the yummy, crunchy meatballs fully cooked.
I then added them to the marinara sauce, while I boiled the noodles. The meatballs were very filling and the sauce was delicious, so you wouldn't even need the pasta if you were trying to limit your carbs. Would be excellent with a side salad.Hope you enjoyed these delicious & lower in fat turkey meatballs!
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