Garlic Turkey Meatballs

It's been a long time since I posted a new meatball recipe.  This is one that I created myself.  I guess I had made enough different meatball recipes to come up with one on my own.  I don't remember what inspired this particular creation, but it was definitely inspired!  These meatballs are made with ground turkey, and lots of garlic, as the name implies.  These are for all of you garlic lovers out there.

Garlic Turkey Meatballs

Ingredients:

1 lb. ground turkey

¼ cup dry breadcrumbs

1 egg

1 tsp salt

4 cloves garlic, grated

Directions:

Preheat oven to 400°.

Combine turkey, breadcrumbs, egg, salt, and garlic.  Mix until combined.  Form into 24 tablespoon-sized meatballs.  Place on baking sheet.  Bake for 20 minutes.

Makes 4 servings, 6 meatballs each.

These meatballs are so tasty!  They do have a strong garlic flavor, but it's not bitey like raw garlic.  More of a mild cooked garlic flavor.  I like the consistency of them too.  They are compact and smooth, but not dense.  Just right.

The beauty of these babies is that they will go with pretty much any side you want to serve them with.  Mashed potatoes? Yep.  Spaghetti?  Yep.  Asian noodles?  Yep.  Your favorite risotto?  Yep.  Extremely versatile.

This is a great meatball recipe to have on hand since it uses basic ingredients that most likely always have in your pantry.  

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Apple Turkey Meatball Kebabs

Today I am guest posting over at Frugal Antics of A Harried Homemaker.  Kristen is the hostess of the Improv Challenge that I participate in every month and she has started a series called "Introducing the Improv-ers". I am posting the recipe here, just so that it will be in my archives, but I hope that you will go check it out on Kristen's site to hear all the details and spend some time exploring her recipes while you are there. She's got some really great stuff that I am sure you will love.

Apple Turkey Meatball Kebabs


Ingredients:
1 cup soft bread crumbs
1 egg, lightly beaten
1 medium apple, peeled, cored, and coarsely shredded
1 tbsp Dijon mustard
½ tsp salt
1 lb. ground turkey
½ cup apple jelly
1 tbsp soy sauce


Directions:
Preheat oven to 400°.  Line a baking sheet with foil and coat with nonstick spray. 


In a large bowl combine bread crumbs, egg, apple, mustard, and salt. Mix well. Add turkey and mix to just combine. Shape into 24 1¼” meatballs .  Place on prepared baking sheet.  Bake about 20 minutes or until meatballs are cooked through.


Meanwhile, prepare glaze. In a small saucepan combine apple jelly and soy sauce.  Cook over medium heat until jelly is softened and mixture is smooth. 


Combine meatballs and glaze. Thread on skewers to serve. 


Makes 4 servings.



 

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Honey Garlic Meatballs

I used to avoid making meatballs.  I didn't like it.  I guess I thought it was too much of a pain to roll each one out; the same reason I don't like making cookies.  But over the last year or so, I seem to have gotten over that.  Now, every time I try a meatball recipe, we love them so much that it doesn't seem like such a pain to make them anymore.  First there were Apple Cheddar Turkey Meatballs, then Asian Turkey Meatballs with Sweet Peanut Sauce.  Now these Honey Garlic Meatballs.  I made these with beef, but they can be made with turkey or chicken if you prefer.  This recipe is an adaptation of one I saw at Meg's Everyday Indulgence, who got it from a Taste of Home cookbook, The New Appetizer.

Honey Garlic Meatballs

Ingredients:

2 eggs

¾ cup milk

1 cup dry bread crumbs

1 tsp onion powder

2 tsp salt

2 lbs. ground beef, turkey, or chicken

4 garlic cloves, grated

1 tbsp butter

¾ cup ketchup

½ cup honey

3 tbsp soy sauce

Directions:

Preheat oven to 400°.

In a large bowl, combine eggs and milk. Add the bread crumbs, onion powder, and salt. Crumble beef over mixture and mix well.  Roll into 2 tbsp balls.  Place on two greased 15” baking pans. 

Bake for 15-20 minutes or until meat is no longer pink.

Meanwhile, in a large saucepan or skillet, saute garlic in butter until tender. Stir in the ketchup, honey, and soy sauce. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat, cover and simmer for 5 minutes. 

Remove meatballs from oven and, using tongs, transfer meatballs from baking sheet to saucepan.  Carefully stir to evenly coat. 

Makes 3 dozen meatballs.

Not only is the honey garlic sauce on these meatballs amazing, but the meatballs themselves are really good.  I tried one before saucing them, just to see how it tasted plain, and I was surprised at how good it was.  Probably the most soft, tender, pillowy meatball I've ever had.  If you are looking for a good basic meatball recipe, forget the sauce and use this one.  If you are making them as plain meatballs, you might want to add a little more seasoning to them, like some Italian seasoning, or something like that.  

The original recipe called for ½ cup diced onion instead of the onion powder, but I cook for a man who is quite picky about onions in things and I knew that 15-20 minutes in the oven wouldn't be enough to thoroughly cook the onion pieces.  The powder was a great substitute in this recipe.

The original recipe also called for making the balls smaller.  Meg said to shape them into 1" balls, but since we were having them for dinner, instead of a party appetizer, I made them bigger.  Use 1 tbsp instead of 2 if you are making them as appetizers, and then decrease the oven time to 12-15 minutes.  If you are making these for a party, bake and sauce them as directed, then throw them into a slow cooker set to "warm".

The honey garlic sauce is really tasty.  It's just the right amount of sweet and garlicky.  

My husband has only one complaint whenever I make meatballs: I don't make enough.  Normally I would have halved this recipe, but being the good wife that I am, I heeded his advice and made all 2 lbs.  It made a lot of meatballs, 3 dozen.  Finally he was satisfied!  We ate our fill at dinner, and there were enough leftover that we both had them for lunch the next day.  This is one of those instances where too much is better than not enough!

 Tray #1: 20 meatballs.  I have a 2 tbsp measuring spoon; comes in handy for things like this.

Tray #2: 17 normal-sized meatballs and one tiny one!

I served these with rice and steamed carrots.  They were a big hit.  I guess I am fully on board with meatballs now!

Don't forget; today is the last day to enter my Taste of Home magazine subscription giveaway.  It ends early tomorrow morning, so enter today!



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Asian Turkey Meatballs with Sweet Peanut Sauce

                              

This is a versatile recipe that is perfect for parties, but can also be made for dinner.  It's an adaptation of one I saw in EveryDay with Rachael Ray this month.  The meatballs are super flavorful on their own, but then they're coated in a sweet peanut sauce that will knock your socks off.

Asian Turkey Meatballs with Sweet Peanut Sauce

Ingredients:

1 lb. lean ground turkey 

½ cup fresh cilantro, chopped

¼ cup dried breadcrumbs 

1 shallot, minced

1 clove garlic, grated 

1 tsp salt 

¼ cup peanut butter 

2 tbsp soy sauce 

3 tbsp sugar 

½ tbsp sesame oil 

2½ tbsp olive oil

2 tbsp sesame seeds 

Directions:

Preheat oven to 400°.  Line a large baking sheet with foil and spray with nonstick cooking spray.

Combine turkey, cilantro, breadcrumbs, shallot, garlic, and salt; roll into 1 tbsp. balls.  Place balls on baking sheet and bake for 20-25 minutes or until cooked through.

Meanwhile, combine peanut butter, soy sauce, sugar, and oils in a microwave-safe bowl.  Warm in microwave about 30 seconds.  Toss meatballs with half of sauce and sprinkle with sesame seeds. 

Serve on toothpicks with remaining sauce for dipping.

Makes 24 meatballs.

I cannot even tell you how good these are.  I think I could eat these every day!  And they were relatively easy to make.  I kind of shy away from meatball recipes because it's kind of labor intensive to roll each one out and make sure they are roughly the same size, which I am never good at.  Then trying to cook them through in the skillet always gives me problems because they either fall apart when I try to turn them, or I don't turn them correctly and they end up being anything but round.  But these were easy.  I like how the directions said to make each ball 1 tbsp in size.  That made it easy for me to make sure they were uniform.  

The recipe did call for cooking them in the skillet, but I needed the skillet for my side dish, and because of the problems mentioned above, I decided to try baking them in the oven instead.  I see it done on tv all the time, so I thought I would give it a try.  That worked perfectly and was SO much more easy than doing them on the stove top.  The bottoms got a little flat where they were sitting, but overall they were quite round.  And none of them fell apart.

The original recipe also called for chicken, but I had turkey on hand so that's what I used.  The only other thing I changed about the meatballs themselves was that the shallot was supposed to be grated onion.  For some reason, I tend to use shallot instead of regular onion in Asian recipes.

I did change a couple of things with the peanut sauce and garnish.  The peanut sauce was supposed to have 3 tbsp of sesame oil and no olive oil, but as I mentioned the other day, I find the flavor of sesame oil to be really strong, and I didn't want it to overpower the sauce, so I scaled it way back.  The sesame seeds were supposed to be chopped peanuts, but we like sesame seeds a lot better and I think they look really cute that way.

Here are the raw meatballs getting ready to hit the oven.  I am surprised how uniform I got them!

                                           

 All cooked.  I let them go about 5 minutes longer than I needed to, I think.  But they were still good.  That's the nice thing about coating them in sauce; it covers up pretty much any mistake!

I served these with my Cilantro Noodles.  The pairing of the sweet meatballs and the salty noodles was amazing.  Plated this way, it looks like an Asian version of Spaghetti and Meatballs!

Jim said that I absolutely have to take these to the next party we are invited to.  And if we don't have any parties coming up, he would invent one just so we can eat these again soon!

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Slow Cooker Apple Cheddar Turkey Meatballs

This is a recipe I got from my favorite slow cooker food blog, A Year of Slow Cooking. These are hands-down the best meatballs I have ever made, possibly ever had. I never would have thought making meatballs in the slow cooker would work, but it does!

Slow Cooker Apple Cheddar Turkey Meatballs

Ingredients:

1 lb. extra-lean ground turkey

1 large egg

1 tsp salt

½ shallot or ¼ onion, finely minced

1 apple, peeled, cored, and grated

½ cup sharp cheddar cheese, shredded

Directions:

In a mixing bowl, combine all ingredients. Make slightly smaller than golf ball sized meatballs and place into the slow cooker. They will fit in one layer in a large 6 quart cooker, but if your cooker is smaller, you can stagger-stack them and they won’t stick together.

Cook on high for 4 to 6 hours. While they cook, juice will collect on the bottom of the crock and the meatlballs will get covered with white slimy stuff. Don’t be alarmed—they will continue to cook and will brown.

Makes 24 meatballs.

It may sound like a weird mix of flavors, but you don't actually taste the apple. It just kind of disintegrates and provides moisture to the meatballs. And even though you can't see the cheese (it doesn't ooze out or anything), they have a distinctive cheddar flavor running through them. So good.

The recipe calls for extra-lean ground turkey. I'm not exactly sure what that means. My turkey was 93% lean. Between the middle and end of cooking, I noticed the meatballs were sitting in a lot of liquid. I got out the turkey baster and removed it. It didn't look like grease; I think most of it was liquid that came out of the apple and the shallot. They weren't the slightest bit greasy when I took them out. You will need to remove any liquid like that if you want the meatballs to brown properly.

Here's what I changed from the original recipe. It called for 1½ lbs. of ground turkey, but I have all of mine split up into 1 lb. packages. And I usually figure that 1 lb. of ground meat is sufficient for 4 servings. It called for 1 tsp of black pepper, but that seemed like way too much and I don't really like it anyway so I just left it out. It called for 1 tsp of onion powder, but I had some shallots that needed to be used up, so I threw one of those in there. I really liked it that way. It also called for dried cranberries, but I thought that would be a little too much going on. And I didn't think that Lena would like them (she picks them out of my cranberry muffins).

I put in the recipe to cook on high. You can cook them on low, but I would guess that they wouldn't brown as nicely on low. I really liked how they got brown around the edges.

I served these with stuffing and green beans.

The raw meatballs getting all nestled in and cozy!

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