Meat Muffins

These were amazing, incredible, delicious….and so easy. They have a couple of my absolute favorite things: quinoa and sweet potatoes. I’ve made these before, but never with quinoa added and I loved the extra texture it gave…plus the sweetness of the sweet potato was pretty great!

When I prep food at the beginning of the week it makes everything just go more smoothly and I feel so much more prepared. I guess “fail to plan, plan to fail” is actually true.

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Getting ready to dig my hands into that mess. It's strangely therapeutic!

ingredients

1/4 c quinoa (or 1/2 c cooked quinoa)
1/2 c water
1 tsp olive oil
1 small onion, chopped
2-3 cloves of garlic
20 oz of ground turkey
1 carrot
1 pre cooked sweet potato, diced
2-3 stalks of kale, removed from stems and chopped into small pieces
1 tbsp tomato paste (didn’t have any so I just used a couple tbsp of ketchup)
1 tsp cayene pepper
2 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
1 egg
1 1/2 tsp Himalayan sea salt
1 tsp black pepper

directions

1) Bring the quinoa and water to a boil in a saucepan over high heat. Reduce heat to medium-low, cover, and simmer until the quinoa is tender, and the water has been absorbed, about 15 to 20 minutes. Set aside to cool.

2)Preheat an oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).

3) Heat the olive oil in a skillet over medium heat. Stir in the onion and carrots; cook and stir until the onion has softened and turned translucent, about 5 minutes. Add the garlic and cook for another minute; add the kale and cook for 1-2 minutes; remove from heat to cool.

4) In a big bowl, mix everything from step 3 with the Worcestershire, egg, salt, cayenne and black pepper in a large bowl until well combined…with your hands of course. The mixture will be very moist. Spray a muffin tin with non-stick spray and fill to overflowing (they will shrink down).

5) Bake in the preheated oven until no longer pink in the center, about 50 minutes. An instant-read thermometer inserted into the center should read at least 160 degrees F (70 degrees C). Let cool for 10 minutes before slicing and serving.

Makes about 12 muffins. I topped mine with Roasted Raspberry Chipotle Sauce from Costco…go easy on this as there is quite a bit of sugar but you don’t need much! Another option would be to make a glaze from brown sugar, Worcestershire and water and put on top prior to baking.