Meatballs

I was on the prowl for a paleo-friendly meatball recipe recently and came across this one. I made a couple of slight changes and I’d say they turned out pretty good. They aren’t satisfying my nostalgic memory of meatballs from my youth but I honestly can’t tell you what it is I’m missing or craving. It may all be just in my head. These certainly satisfy the hunger craving just fine.

Ingredients

• 1 lb ground grass-fed beef
• 1 tsp cumin
• 1 tbsp paprika
• 1/2 tsp pepper
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp ginger
• 1 tbsp dried cilantro
• 1 tbsp dried parsley
• 1 egg
• 1 tbsp chili garlic paste
• 1 tbsp pork rinds (processed to dust with the Magic Bullet)
• 2 tbsp almond flour

Method

First I combined all ingredients in a bowl and mixed together.

I tried mixing with a fork but ended up giving in and using my hands. It’s messy but it just works better. You have to use your hands to make the meatballs anyway. So just get in there and get messy.

Now this is the part that I’m unsure about. I don’t know if my family fried or baked their meatballs before adding them to the sauce, or just cooked them in the sauce long and low all day. It seems many folks online have their preferences, one way over another. I wanted to eat fairly quickly so I opted for frying in a bit of olive oil and then finishing them off in the sauce for about an hour.

After frying the meatballs, I set them aside on paper towels to drain and then sautéed some onion in the same oil the meatballs just came out of. All those little meat bits and flavors in the pan are worth keeping!

Then I added the onions and the meatballs to the sauce.

This was my first batch of roasted red pepper and tomato sauce that I made a couple of weeks ago. It all came together beautifully.

I served it over spaghetti squash. It was so good I actually at a little too much. 🙂

Many organic practices simply make sense, regardless of what overall agricultural system is used. Far from being a quaint throwback to an earlier time, organic agriculture is proving to be a serious contender in modern farming and a more environmentally sustainable system over the long term.
~ David Suzuki