Food feels like a hobby to me. I love food, I love thinking about it, admiring it, making it, and especially eating it 🙂 I’m fairly simple when it comes to what I eat, I like healthy, fresh and flavourful, and when I’m cooking, I usually like simple ingredients and simple recipes (if I use a recipe, that is:).
Recipes…. For me, a recipe resembles more of a loose guide. I’m not sure why, but I’ve never really been into following recipes too closely. It feels like a hassle sometimes, like I should be more organized and prepared when I cook! Since I use the freestyle method (lol) almost all the time, I find that I can’t tell anyone exactly what I’ve made when I’m asked. So, in the spirit of being more helpful, this time I switched things up a bit and I measured everything!
I have a few staple food items that I make on the regular, and turkey meatballs are one of them. Why do I make them regularly? Well it’s simple, everyone in our house loves them so I never feel like I’m force feeding anyone. That feels good 🙂 I make different variations of this recipe but for the most part it’s the same mix of ingredients.
Usually I will serve them in a tomato sauce, along with rice, sometimes pasta or just veggies. This time I wanted to serve with roasted tomatoes and zucchini noodles which was quite a light dish. To make the meatballs a little more substantial and hardy, I added quinoa. This is a nice way to bind the meat mixture a little better, add in some complex carbs, and get my kids eating some quinoa without noticing 🙂
- The turkey quinoa meatballs took me about 15 minutes to make up the meatballs, and then another 30-35 minutes to bake.
- The roasted tomatoes took me about 5 minutes to slice and put on the baking sheet, and then about 45-60 to bake (depending on the thickness of the tomato slices). NOTE: I start baking the tomatoes first. While the tomatoes are roasting I then start making the meatballs.
- The zucchini noodles took about 5 minutes to spiralize, and then about 5-10 minutes to cook.
Turkey Quinoa Meatballs:
- 3 lbs Ground Turkey Thighs
- ½ c Sweet Onion, diced finely
- ¾ c Quinoa (cooked & cooled)
- ¼ c Nutritional Yeast
- 2 tbsp Flavor God Everything Spice
- 1 Egg
Directions:
- Pre-heat oven to 400 degrees.
- Place all ingredients in a large bowl and mix together. Roll into balls about the size of a golf ball (mine were slightly larger this time), place in 9x13inch baking dish or baking sheet (I lined with parchment paper).
- Place in oven and bake for 30 minutes. Remove from oven, if you are unsure if they are cooked all the way through, cut into a larger meatball in the middle of the pan to make sure the center is not pink. You may need to cook another 5 minutes or so.
Roasted Tomatoes:
- 5-7 medium size vine tomatoes (or as many as you can fit on a large baking sheet)
- Extra Virgin Olive Oil
- Himalayan Salt
Directions:
- Slice tomatoes to ¼ inch think or slightly thinner. Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper and brush the empty baking sheet with extra virgin olive oil.
- Place sliced tomatoes on baking sheet, squeeze as many sliced tomatoes onto pan as possible (they shrink down when they bake). Brush with olive oil again and sprinkle with salt.
- Place in the oven and bake for 45 mins, or until the tomatoes look a little wrinkled and slightly dry.
Zucchini Noodles
- 3 medium size zucchinis
- Spiralize the zucchini and toss into a frying pan over medium heat with a small amount of olive oil, sprinkle with salt.
- Once the noodles are heated (about 5-10 minutes), remove from heat and serve.
- **Do not overcook them or they get soggy and lose their structure.**
And this is how is looks. Voila!
*In case you’re interested, I have 2 spiralizers – both work great but the larger one works faster and seems quite a bit sharper. The larger one also had 3 different blades that can be switched out for different shapes and sizes of noodles.