Meatballs

Becca and Nick

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Meatballs

Phil and Sarah

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NEWS ALERT: Phil is no longer on an elimination diet!!!! Woooooo!!! So now we get to eat food again! We are catching up – not quite there yet, but making good progress.  It’s been really fun to go back a read the meals all of you have done!

So, meatballs.  Albondigas.  I love meatballs.  I know it’s not stretching my comfort bubble, but I just love this recipe so much I had to do it. I’ve used it many times and will many times again.

Amazing Book

Albondigas!

I only follow the recipe for the meatballs part.  I still do a tomato sauce for them, but I just make up my own sauce.  I like to use fresh tomatoes instead of canned tomatoes, and well, I just like to do it my way.  Also, this time we used Turkey meat for the meatballs instead of pork and veal, because turkey is much less fatty, and as it turns out fat does not agree with Phil’s digestive track.

 

 

But really, meatballs starts much early with making bread crumbs:

Bread for breadcrumbs from Sarah’s old homemade sourdough baguettes

Processing the Bread Crumbs

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And then to make a good sauce you need to simmer for at least an hour or more. Yes, I did get some of this at the sunset super… 🙂

Sauce ingredients

Fresh Tomato Sauce ready to cook!

 

 

 

 

 

 

But also the meat has to be prepared in advance of course:

Meatball Ingredients (NOT from the Sunset Super)

I do LOVE my food processor

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And then about an hour later:

Phil… Raw meat is bad for you!

Raw Meatballs

Frying Meatballs

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Resulting in:

Albondigas!

En Salsa!

I Love Meatballs.  The turkey meat did make them a little less moist, but hey we all knew fat was delicious.

Galen and Chloe

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Yeeee! (for those of you who do not receive texts from me ever, it is my main go to form of excitement or approval). I think this one may have been my favorite yet. I know, so cliche for someone who likes sports and meat as much as I do (just put them together meat and balls), but there you have it.

I went largely with Italian style meatballs and decided they would do nicely laying on a bed of garlic mashed potatoes with some delectable gravy on top. What is the only way to improve upon meat and balls? Add potatoes and gravy (clearly!).

I felt quite good about myself using my homemade bread (yet another celebrity appearance) for the breadcrumbs. This is gonna be a multiple sender, a few too many photos. So for the first round just some bread shots and my loverly intro.

The general process I imagine most of you are relatively familiar with, haveing done it yourselves, so I will glaze over that portion of the meal prep. Saute up some onions and garlic, grate some Parmesan cheese, cook down your mushrooms with a little madiera wine, toss in a little red wine to the generally assembly as well, some fresh parsley, a pound of ground beef and italian sausage, salt, pepper, oregano, those breadcrumbs, a beaten egg and mix, mix, mix. And on to the finale…..

Now we take the mixture shape it into balls, dredge it in flour, and fry it in some olive oil to brown, before tossing it in the oven to cook thru. Meanwhile we finish our garlic and rosemary mashed potatoes (with hella butter) and mix together a mushroom/madiera/meatball/butter gravy. We (the proper pronoun for Galen) then assemble a bed of mashed potatoes, topped with our delightfully crisp and hot meatballs, as well as some set aside mushrooms, and smother it in sweet, fatty, creamy gravy! My adams apple says it all, pure heaven, ladies and gentlemen why we left the garden of Eden….

Just really flavorful, was so pleased with how it all complimented each aspect. Hot and rich (I wish I was describing a future wife, but I’ll settle for meatballs). And as they settled down into my stomach a homey satisfied feeling 🙂

Albin and Jocie

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Sriracha Meatballs!

This was a new one for me. Albin tried them at a potluck while staying in Ashland, Oregon on his recent ski trip. When it came time to make meatballs, he knew exactly which kind he wanted to make.

Shall we begin?

We started with this recipe: Sriracha Honey Slow Cooker Meatballs and a couple key ingredients…

Sriracha and honey, of course, and lime.

Ground Beef, GF Panko breadcrumbs, and spices.

We mixed the Sriracha, honey, and lime in the crock pot and turned it on High. While the slow cooker was heating up the marinade sauce, we mixed the meat, breadcrumbs, and spices together with milk and egg. Then portioned the mixture onto wax paper and rolled them into balls.

Perfect PC

What is the proper rolling technique here?

One by one, we placed them into the crockpot (we only made a half batch) and spooned some of the marinade sauce over them.

Before

After four hours on low, we had meatballs!

After

I have been craving a meatball sub lately. You know the kind with the really soft, warm hoagie roll, the juicy tomato sauce thats hard to control when you take a bite, and the melty cheese. Well, where were we going to find a hoagie of that quality which is also gluten free? I was ready to settle for these frozen french baguettes sold at City Market. When went to find them, however, the frozen aisle was completely empty because the store was getting new freezers. 😦 Hope was dashed for the meatball sub night. Then, we thought of Cheese Traders! They sell these vacuum packed gluten free rolls. They were better than the frozen baguette ever would have been!

Not local or fresh, but hey, they worked!

And so, I got to eat my meatball sub after all. Ok, it wasn’t a sub, but it had all the same delicious qualities!

Gotta melt that cheese in the oven!

Yup, meatball sub. (sigh)

 

PORTFOLIO PAGE PHOTO CREDIT/LICENSE: Contents and Photographs by Ang Sarap is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.