The Cook & The Coach Blog

Parmesan Turkey Meatballs

9/19/2017

One of Laura's favorite things on the planet is a good meatball! One of my favorite things on the planet is some good pasta! Being gluten free now for almost 3 years I don't nearly get good pasta all that often. One item that didn't make the cut on things to bring in our RV was my pasta roller and cutter! So we have to stick to store bought GF pasta which isn't always the best. W'eve had pretty good luck lately with the Barilla GF pasta. It's a corn based pasta which obviously isn't health food but every once in a while we are all for having a good pasta meal.

I know you didn't come here to learn about GF pastas, so let's about this meatball!! One challenge with meatballs is they traditionally have breadcrumbs in them which unless they are made from GF bread is off limits in our house. Some things that I've used as that binder substitute in other recipes are sweet potatoes, quiona, ground up GF crackers. With this recipe I opted to skip the binder. It did make the meatballs a little stickier when rolling them into balls but is was manageable and still made a good meatball, texture-wise. If you want to alleviate that stick meat batter, go ahead and add a 1/2 cup of bread crumb or any other binder to the mixture.

We also like to find any opportunity to sneak greens into our food. Feel free to follow suit and add some like we did or leave them out. If it would have just been Laura and I eating these we would have likely added more. We were able to sneak these in and Eli still enjoyed the meatballs which is a big bonus.

We paired this meal up with our basic marinara sauce that you can find here, just leave out the ground beef since you are doing the meatball.

Ingredients

1 tbsp olive oil
1/2 onion, diced
2 handfuls of spinach
1 tbsp minced garlic
1 1/4 lb ground turkey
1 egg
1/2 c shredded parmesan
2 tsp dried oregano
1 tsp dried basil
Fresh parsley
Salt and pepper

Directions

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
Saute onions and garlic in a pan along with the olive oil. After a few minutes and the onions start to turn translucent, add your greens and continue to cook until those are thoroughly wilted and the onion is cooked through.
In a separate bowl add remaining ingredients, minus the fresh parsley and mix thoroughly. Add the sauteed veggies and mix those in too.
Once you have that mixed together, roll into 1 inch balls or maybe slightly larger. Place on a baking sheet.
Bake for 15 minutes. Enjoy on their own or with some delicious pasta and marinara sauce. Top with some fresh parsley and grated Parmesan for added boost of flavor!

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Gluten Free Turkey Meatloaf with Savory Mushroom Sauce

1/13/2017

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Meatloaf... it was a staple in our house growing up! My mom would always make it with beef and slather on the ketchup sauce on top. It was actually quite tasty, except for the onions. I despised onions when I was a kid. Not the flavor as much as the crunch that you would occasionally get from one that wasn't cooked enough.

Times have changed quite a bit! The breadcrumbs that you would normally add to meatloaf would now make me breakout in a rash. The high fructose corn syrup in the ketchup, yeah... we are just going to avoid that if we can. That's the backstory on how this recipe got created.

I suppose with mushroom sauce this maybe is closer to the salsibury steak that we would occasionally have in our tv dinners. No matter what you call it, I hope you call it delicious! We certainly enjoyed it!

Ingredients

Meatloaf

2 1/2 lbs of ground turkey
1 large yellow onion, diced
1 tbsp grassfed butter
1 cup of mashed sweet potato
3 eggs
2 tbsp smoked paprika
1 tbsp dried thyme
1 tbsp garlic powder
1 tbsp dried oregano
Salt and pepper to taste

Savory Mushroom Sauce

3 cups sliced bella mushrooms
2 tbsp grassfed butter
1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
2 tbsp tapioca starch
2 tbsp sherry wine
2 tbsp worcestershire sauce
1/2 -1 cup water or broth
1 tsp galic powder
2 tsp smoked paprika
1 tsp onion powder
1/2 tsp red chili flakes (optional)
Salt and pepper to taste

Directions

Meatloaf

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
In a skillet saute the onions in butter and season with salt and pepper. Cook until it they become slightly caramelized.
In a large bowl combine the other ingredients along with the cooked onion. Make sure to not throw your hot onions on top of raw eggs otherwise you end up with scrambled eggs. Either mix the eggs or onion into the meat first.
Once everything is thoroughly mixed transfer to a large baking dish or loaf pan. We used a 6" x 9" baking dish and it fit right up to the top!
Bake for one hour or until the inner temp gets to 170 in the center of the meatloaf. The ends cook faster.
Remove from the oven and let rest for 10 minutes.

Savory Mushroom Sauce

In the same skillet you cooked the onions, add butter, oil and mushrooms and cook over medium heat until the mushrooms have reduced in size and started giving off some liquid.
Add the sherry wine and cook for 2 minutes.
Add the tapioca starch and stir until the starch dissolves into the liquid in the pan. Add 1/2 cup of water or broth and stir until well incorporated. You should have a gravy-like texture at this point.
Add in the remaining seasonings and stir occasionally.
The sauce will take 15 minutes or so to make. You can start cooking it when your meatloaf has a few minutes left to cook. Feel free to add more water to the sauce if the texture starts getting too thick. The longer you cook it the thicker it will get.
Once your meatloaf has rested, cut and serve with a spoonful of the sauce over the top. We enjoyed it with some grilled asparagus and side salad! Hope you enjoy and let us know if you try it.

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Maple Bacon Turkey Meatballs

1/15/2015

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I'm not sure if there is anything better than the combination of maple and bacon. If you disagree, you are wrong!!! Laura spotted someone else post about making a meat ball with these flavors so when she wants food I feed her. I have to say these turned out pretty fantastic and even though they are loaded with bacon and maple syrup they are still a pretty healthy meatball. Hope you guys enjoy!

Ingredients

1 1/2 lbs of ground turkey
6 strips of bacon, chopped
1/2 a large onion
1 tbsp garlic, minced
3 cups spinach
1/4 cup real maple syrup
1/4 bread crumbs
1 egg
1/2 tsp red chili flake
Salt and Pepper to taste

Makes 20 2 oz meatballs

Directions

Preheat your oven to 425 degrees.
In a skillet, add chopped bacon and render out the fat and until the bacon is crispy.
Remove bacon from the pan, leaving the fat in the pan. Add the onion, garlic and red chili flake and cook over medium heat until onion is tender.
Add spinach and cook and cook through, it will shrink a lot so you can add in batches if your pan isn't large enough.
Transfer, bacon, turkey, onion, garlic, and spinach to a large mixing bowl. Add remaining ingredients. When you are adding the egg try not add it on top of the hot bacon or onions so you don't end up with scrambled eggs. Mix together using a metal spoon.
Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
One trick to keep the meat mixture from sticking to your hands is to get them wet with a little water. Its not perfect but it helps. Roll out your meatballs into whatever size you like. I did 2 oz balls and made 20 meatballs. Place on baking sheet.
Bake for 15-20 minutes or until their temp hits 180 degrees.
Pair with a pasta or maybe just a little BBQ sauce or you can do like I did and just hit them plain.

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Parmesan Turkey Meatballs

Ingredients

Directions

Gluten Free Turkey Meatloaf with Savory Mushroom Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Maple Bacon Turkey Meatballs

Ingredients

Directions