Justin & Meredith Winokur's Kitchen Cooking Notebook

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Sweet and Sour Meatballs with Zucchini Fritters -- back to top

The meatballs were very good and very tasty. The sauce may have cooked down a bit too much to the point that is was really just goop. But, it was still rather good.

I tried something slightly different with the zucchini. Before I grated them, I grated half an onion. Well, that made onion mush with LOTS OF WATER. I had to drain it as best I could and I still struggled to get all the water out. This may also be why I had so much trouble pressing the water out of the zucchini. Despite spending a day in the fridge with lots of weight on the pans, I had to put in new towels and stand on the pans to really get the water out. I may try my Dad's suggestion next time which is to use dried, minced onions. THey will absorb the water!

I made the meatballs based on the recipe below. The major changes I made was to use extra lean beef (and less, 2/3 lbs), egg beaters, no garlic and finally to bake the meatballs (375 for 25 min). For the sauce, the only change I made was less oil and I replaced half of the brown sugar with Splenda. That saved about 8 points plus. I realized as I was making this that the points would climb so I actually calculated them. The entire meal (half of what I made) was 17 points plus. I guess that isn't awful compared to what I would get if I ate out, but it was a bit more than I think I want (not that I have been budgeting).

Meatballs:

Beef...10.5

Bread crumbs ...2

Egg Beater...0.5

Brown Sugar (halved)...8

Ketchup...7

Fritters

Egg...1

Flour...6

So, the entire meal was 34 but I made dinner and lunch so 17

Sweet and Sour Meatballs (From Food.com)

Local Copy -- password is the name of my dog, all lower case

Original Wordpress ID and Date: 1973, 2012-05-16_070920

Chicken Meatball Omelet and [burned] brown rice -- back to top

I was going back a forth a lot on what to make for dinner while I was shopping, and this is what I came up with. First, the successful part: the omelet. I found chicken meatballs at Trader Joes (3.72 points plus for 4, though the package says you should get more). Anyway, I decided to make meatball omelets. I took 9 meatballs (half the package), cut them in half, and warmed them in a thing of spicy tomato sauce I had in the pantry. In the mean time, I cooked egg beaters on the non-stick pan and put it under the broiler to cook the top. I then topped half of it with half the meatballs, added some LF mexican cheese and put it back under the broiler. This came out very good. It was very easy and pretty low in points (though I didn't calculate it). I froze the rest of the meatballs so I could easily make this again!

I was also craving brown rice so I decided to do it in the pressure cooker (see this post) which calls for a 2:1 ratio and 18 minutes in the cooker with natural release. Well, I followed that except after about 5 minutes waiting for release, I did the water kind. Still, I opened it up and had a huge amount of BURNED rice. Ugh! I do not know if the pressure cooker heat was too high (mostly on 3, some time on 2) or if I had it too high getting it to pressure (10 on the way up) or if I needed more water. Either way, it failed pretty miserably! Next time, more water and lower heat for cooking and bringing it to pressure.

Original Wordpress ID and Date: 6589, 2013-09-09_103237

Turkey Curry Meatballs -- back to top

We made Coconut Curry Meatballs from Wholesomelicious (LOCAL). We used this as the base recipe but made a few changes because of what we had and general preference:

• used 2 lbs of turkey since we couldn't find Whole30 compatible sausage.
  • ~1.5 lbs of it was super lean (99%) and the other was still very lean at 93%
• Used coconut flour in place of almond
• Replaced the dry basil with chopped up basil leaf
• Added a serrano pepper, well chopped
• Used egg beaters (also taking away some fat)

Between the lean meat (and no sausage), the difference of coconut flour (maybe?), and the egg, the meatballs were dry!. The flavor was good but they desperately needed some moisture!

For the sauce, we basically followed the recipe except that last 1/4 cup of coconut milk was the light kind.

The sauce came out very good but desperately needed some heat/spice. We should have thrown a bunch of chiles in there! The flavors were good, but this was just lacking the spice we like with Thai food.

We still liked it though. It made a lot of food with 50 meatballs (we ate half). We also did it on cauliflower rice (which I adjusted down the temperatures on that recipe).

Next Time

We need to put more fat in the meatballs (higher fat content turkey, additional other, some kind of real turkey sausage). They were simply way too dry! Also, everything needed more spice. There was none in the sauce and barely any in the meatballs.

Also, we really should have been using Thai basil, not Italian basil.

Finally, we need to up the spice level.

Coconut Thai Meatballs -- back to top

We made the Coconut Curry Turkey Meatballs like we did on 2017-01-20. They were so dry last time that I:

• Used 93% lean turkey (instead of 99%)
• Used a real egg
• Added a scant 2 tbsp of olive oil.

This seemed to work pretty well. Between those changes and making them a bit bigger (only made 34 this time). Like last time, I finely chopped some basil for the dried basil and, since it needed spice last time, I added a finely chopped serrano pepper.

I made the meatballs on Sunday. Today, Meredith made the sauce using the recipe with the only change being the addition of two serranos.

We really wanted to use Thai basil and Thai chile peppers, but didn't feel like going all the way to the asian market.

The extra fat helped and the spice was good, though it could have used more still.

We served it on cauliflower rice.

Good and easy meal!