Greek Turkey Meatballs

Last Monday, my school had our Winter Social Potluck. Each grade level team was assigned to bring something - salads, desserts, chips, etc... The Kindergarten team decided to bring meatballs! Each of the 5 kindergarten rooms brought 1 type of meatball. We had Nantucket Meatballs (with a bbq cranberry sauce), Cranberry Chili meatballs, and Italian meatballs. I wanted to make something a little bit different, so I made Greek Turkey Meatballs.

Traditionally, meatballs have some sort of meat, seasonings, breadcrumbs, and egg. Breadcrumbs, of course, are not Paleo, so I set out to experiment and here's what I came up with:

Paleo Greek Turkey Meatballs

* 3 lbs ground turkey

* 1 cup feta (optional)

* 1 head of garlic

* 1 package of frozen chopped spinach

* 1/2 cup shredded dried coconut

* 2 tbs dried oregano

* 3 eggs

This was a pretty easy recipe  To get everything ready, I minced all of the garlic.  I use organic garlic, so the cloves are sometimes smaller than conventional, so I minced the whole head of it.  I also thawed out and then drained the chopped spinach. Then, you just put all of the ingredients in a large metal or glass mixing bowl and start mixing with your hands.  You could use a spoon, I suppose, but it's not as fun as using your hands to really make sure everything is well mixed. 

You may be asking about the coconut. Who the heck puts coconut in meatballs? Well, I have a confession. I didn't mean to put coconut in it. I had originally mixed all of the ingredients (minus the coconut). However, when everything was mixed, the mixture was a little sticky and wet. Typically, you add breadcrumbs to meatballs to keep them moist when cooking, but it also helps to dry out the meat mixture so it's easier to roll. I know that I'm trying not to eat grains, but I figured that these meatballs were going to be eaten by other teachers who don't know about paleo and don't care about eating grains. Soooo, I threw in a handful of what I thought were panko bread crumbs.

I have these pretty glass storage containers on my counter and I thought one of them was filled with panko bread crumbs. I had given away most of my grains (brown rice, bread crumbs, etc...) but I figured that I had forgotten about the panko. Well, as it turns out, I had put in shredded coconut! I didn't figure that out until I tasted one after they were cooked! I could tell the texture was a bit different, then realized that I hadn't put in panko at all, I had put in coconut. It was a pleasant and paleo surprise! :)

Anyway, back to the cooking process... once everything was mixed well, I spread a little bit of olive oil on a baking sheet.  You want to use one with a lip because as these cook, the meatballs will give up some liquid.  You want to bake them on something that will catch the liquid so it doesn't spill all over the oven and make a big old mess.  

I rolled the meatballs into small, bite sized pieces, perfect for nibbling. You could form this into a meatloaf, or giant meatballs if you wanted, or even into little hamburger patties!  Since these were for sharing, I thought smaller was better. I then placed them on the baking sheet and popped them in the oven at 350 for 20 minutes. 

You could also cook these in a pan with a little bit of olive oil, but when making this crazy amount of meatballs, that would have taken forever, so I decided to bake them.

Sinc they were smaller, they didn't take long to cook.  After 10 minutes, I opened the oven door and stirred the little meatballs a bit so that they would cook evenly on all sides.  

Since these were for a potluck, I didn't cook them too long because I was going to threw them in the crockpot for a few hours to stay warm throughout the day and didn't want them to dry out. 

So here we have Paleo Greek Turkey Meatballs. If you want to make it true paleo, just take the feta out.  There are still plenty of Greek spices in them.  I just happen to love the taste of feta, so I wanted to keep it in. 

These meatballs got rave reviews!  I was asked for the recipe by several different people, which, to me, proves that eating paleo is not only healthy, but yummy!

  You can serve these plain, or you can heat them in a nice marinara sauce.  You could serve them over some baked spaghetti squash or even in a bowl with a bunch of roasted veggies like mushrooms and carrots and zucchini!

Enjoy!

Turkey Cutlets

Ever since reading an article about how many chemicals and artificial hormones and junk is fed to poultry and beef, I've been trying to buy organic meats. It's tough to shop organic... there isn't much of a selection and the prices are higher than non-organic meat... but it's our health we're talking about, so I figure it's worth the expense.  Sometimes, though, I can't always find organic, so I go for the "natural" brand... it's not classified as organic, but they are more stringent in their requirements that the farmers can't use certain artificial hormones or chemicals... and that's how we come to this posting. 

I was shopping at our friendly local grocery store and found some Nature's Promise turkey cutlets.  The package said 99% fat free... not too bad, huh?  I didn't really have much of an idea of what I would do with them, but I threw them in my cart.  I perused my fav food websites and decided that I would just make up a recipe (surprise, surprise).  I decided on Italian breaded turkey cutlets. 

I made this on a weeknight, when I didn't have much time to cook, so I cheated and used store bought pasta sauce... but hey, I decided it was worth it to go to the gym and use store bought sauce rather than skip the gym and make the sauce from scratch. So here you have: Turkey Cutlets!

 

The ingredients are pretty simple

* 1 lb whole grain angel hair pasta

* 3/4 cup whole grain bread crumbs (I make these myself, regular breadcrumbs would work just fine)

*1/3 cup freshly grated parmesan cheese

* 1 lb thinly sliced turkey cutlets

* 1 tbs dried oregano

*1 tbs dried basil

*2 tbs canola oil
*2 tsp garlic powder

* 1 jar of your fav pasta sauce

First, on a plate, you mix the breadcrumbs, parmesan cheese, basil, oregano, and garlic powder.  Over medium heat, add the canola oil to a saucepan and let heat.  While waiting for the oil to come to temperature, take each individual turkey cutlet and cover them in the breadcrumb mixture.

Breading the turkey cutlet

Typically, you want to have 1 "wet hand" and 1 "dry hand."  This means that you use one hand to touch the raw turkey and turn it over, and you want to use the other hand to cover the turkey with the breadcrumbs.  By using this method, your hands don't get as messy as they could if you used both hands to do both jobs.

Once the oil has heated thoroughly, gently place the breaded turkey cutlet in the pan. 

 

waiting to get nice and brown

You want to make sure the temperature isn't too high, or the outside breading will brown too quickly and the inside will stay raw.  You also want to make sure that you don't crowd the pan, if you add too much meat to the pan, it will lower the temperature of your oil, which will result in your food not turning a lovely brown color.  Luckily the first scenario isn't much of a problem, since the turkey cutlets are really thin, it doesn't take long for them to cook the whole way through.  When you notice the bottom start to brown up, flip them.  Don't flip them too many times though.  I'm not sure if this is an actual strategy... but I try to only flip the meat once, rather than flipping them over and over again.  Once both sides are nice and brown, remove the cutlet to a plate lined with a paper towels.  This allows the excess oil to drain from the turkey cutlet, allowing it to remain as crispy and crunchy as possible.

 

just draining the excess oil

While I was cooking the turkey cutlets in batches, I heated up the pasta water and cooked the angel hair (whole grain, of course).  I also heated the pasta sauce over the stove.  I added some random spices and herbs to the sauce to give it a bit of flair... I always add at least 1 extra ingredient to pasta sauce to make me feel like I helped make it taste better. :) 

Once the pasta was done, I piled it on a plate and topped it with a large amount of pasta sauce -Curt LOVES lots of sauce on his food, no matter what it is.  Then I added a few cutlets of turkey (they were small, so 3 worked pretty well).  Then, just for good measure, I grated just a bit more parmesan cheese to dust over the top of the dish.

 

nice, homecooked meal

Voila!  The food was great!  Curt loved it and had seconds... a sure sign he really liked the food.  He seemed to really enjoy it and I wrapped up the rest for lunches for the rest of the week. 

Overall, I think this was a great dish... it was relatively simple and it had a lot of flavor to it.  I'll definitely be adding this to my repertoire of recipes!

 

Delish!

Stay tuned... remember my last posting about trying random recipes from the Martha Stewart Cookbook?  Yesterday, I opened to a random page and had 3 recipes to choose from... I decided on Pastitsio... I'm not really sure what it is, but it involves ground lamb and elbow macaroni... I plan on making it on Wednesday night for date night with the hubs!