Since I’ve been promoting quinoa on Twitter and such so much lately, people have been asking me for recipes using it… here’s a good one… turkey meatballs that have quinoa and veges in them, making them pretty much a complete meal all on their own.
This is tweeked from a recipe I got from someone in one of my support groups. And by the way, I fully admit they tasted a heck of a lot better than this picture looks. Trust me.
1 pound ground turkey (or beef if you really want)
3/4 cup cooked quinoa
1/4 cup finely chopped onions
1/4 cup grated carrots
1/4 cup grated zucchini (I actually used chayote squash)
2 tablespoons tomato sauce
1 tablespoons chopped garlic
1 tablespoon worcestershire sauce
1/2 teaspoon fresh ground pepper
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon dried oregano
1/4 teaspoon dried thyme
1 egg
Preheat your oven to 500F, line a large baking sheet with foil then great with cooking spray; set aside. You could also use a broiler pan or some sort of rack that lets the meatballs cook while letting any fat drip away.
In a large bowl, mix together meat, quinoa, onions, carrots, zucchini/chayote, tomato sauce, garlic, worcestershire, seasonings and egg until well combined. If you have them (and you really should!), wear a pair of latex gloves. Keeps your hands from getting all goopy. And yes, that is a technical term. And no, it’s not really about keeping your hands clean, it’s really about keeping the food safe, even if you’ve washed your hands you should use protection!
Shape in to 12 meatballs and transfer to prepared baking sheet. Roast until cooked through and golden brown, about 20 minutes, turn over once about 15 minutes in so they brown evenly. These will be about raquet ball sized. You could do smaller ones and cut the cooking time down by about 5 minutes.
Oh yea, make sure your meat is cold before mixing this up or the meat gets hard to deal with. If it does get too bad, toss it in the fridge for 10-20 minutes before trying to portion out the meatballs.
Serving is 3 meatballs, you’ll get about 20g of protein, 10g carbs.
I had mine with a bit of doctored up tomato sauce. You can open a small can (8oz) of tomato sauce, use a couple tablespoons in the meatballs and then mix the rest with about a couple teaspoons each of dried parsley, oregano and garlic powder, and maybe a teaspoon of the dried thyme. Add in maybe a teaspoon of Splenda to cut some of the bitterness. Mix this up in a glass dish like a 1-cup measuring cup and microwave for about a minute to make a pretty decent sauce. I use this sauce when making my own pizzas too by the way.
They look fantastic!
I’m a little late on this comment but I tried this recipe a couple weeks ago with some spaghetti squash—FANTASTIC healthy dish! I threw in some broccoli too and didnt really measure out the veggies. I figured they’re healthy so it doesn’t matter how many I use and if the meatballs look like meaty vegetable balls then oh well haha! I’m making more today! But anyway…Thanks for posting it, try the spaghetti squash if you haven’t yet! (I saw it on Dr. Oz, I never knew there was an actual thing as a spaghetti squash)
I’ve had spaghetti squash before, it’s been a long time though. I’m bout due to have it again one of these days…
Glad you like it… I actually made a double batch of these over the weekend, turkey was on sale.. so did a video of this for BTV that should be showing up in the coming weeks.
Just made these with ground chicken and they were AH-mazing!!!!!