Meatballs

I made some pretty fantastic meatballs and spaghetti tonight and thought I would share my recipe.

First of all, for some reason, my belly is not liking carbs. Especially the processed type like bread and noodles. It’s not an every single time thing, but enough that I am trying to avoid gluteny things and even other carbs in large quantities (quinoa is as bad as the processed stuff). This carb-loving girl is hoping it’s just an unfortunate side effect of this pregnancy. Only a couple more months until I know. November cannot come fast enough for so many reasons.

Anyway, I have that going for me and I also knew I had no breadcrumbs, so I scoured Pinterest for a good meatball recipe using oatmeal (carbs:yes, but I have been able to do them in small quantities and I have been pretty good this week about keeping my carbs on the low side. ). I found this recipe that sounded pretty good: turkey and oat meatballs. I figured I would just sub my yummy, grass-fed ground beef for the turkey and see what happens. What happened was pure deliciousness.

I didn’t want to spend too much time touching raw meat (I have issue with that, although beef is way better than chicken…I HATE touching raw chicken. Just the thought…..*shivers*), and I wanted the oats ground up a little, so I put everything in the food processor. Well, I started with just the oats to make sure they got ground up like I wanted. Then, I just added the beef, spices and eggs and gave it a whirl for a couple minutes until everything was incorporated. Then, I spooned it out like cookie dough, rolled them up and browned them in a big pan. Once the outsides were nice and brown, I popped them in the oven at 300 and used the pan to brown up the onions and then make the rest of the sauce. Once the sauce was nice and mixed together, I put the meatballs in and let it all simmer quietly while the water for the noodles heated and we waited for my hubby to get home from work.

Meatballs (in case your lazy and don’t want to follow the link above….also, I doubled the recipe so these amounts are what I did):

2 pounds ground meat (I used beef, you can do beef, pork, turkey for a mixture of your choice)

1 cup oats

2 eggs

4 cloves garlic (minced before adding to processor…I didn’t do this, but will when I make this again)

2 TBSP dried Basil

2 TBSP dried Oregano

2 tsp Salt

Put the oats in a food processor and whirl until the oats are ground to your preference. Add the rest of ingredients and whirl until well blended. Spoon out and roll into desired ball size and brown in 2-4 TBSP oil of your choice (I used bacon grease….yum). Put in a oven safe dish and continue cooking in the oven at 300 degrees. Using the same pan, cook the sauce:...

Sauce:

1 medium onion, diced

1 canned petite diced tomatoes

1 can tomato paste

1 jar spaghetti sauce (I used Pregresso’s garlic and herb blend)

Salt, Pepper, Italian seasoning to taste (I would have added more garlic but used all I had in the meatballs)

Brown onion in the remaining oil in meatball pan. Once soft, add tomatoes. Cook for a few minutes and then add the tomato paste, sauce and spices. Cook until meatballs are cooked through and then add the meatballs to the sauce. Let simmer lightly while you cook up noodles. Enjoy.