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parmesan

Meal-Prep Parmesan Turkey Meatballs

November 13, 2017 By Caroline 5 Comments

It’s a cold, dark November evening, you’ve come home after a long day at work, and your hunger is quickly turning you hangry. With some simple advance meal prep techniques, you could be coming home to spaghetti noodles, deep red tomato sauce and juicy, homemade meatballs less than 30 minutes from the time you walked in the door. Read on to find out how and get the full recipe.

Parmesan turkey meatballs ooze into bubbling tomato sauce

Meatballs offer a great intro to the world of advance meal prep. Spend about an hour in the kitchen one weekend afternoon, and you can make enough meatballs to keep your freezer stocked for six weeks or more. Making your own meatballs means you know exactly what went into them—allowing you to avoid unwanted sugar, salt, and fat that are most often found in store-bought varieties. These meatballs also provide an easy way add turkey into your regular meal rotation as an alternate to beef, chicken and pork.

Fresh ground turkey

This meatball recipe originated from Martha Stewart, here. In the Martha recipe, spaghetti squash replaces the pasta which can be a nice healthy option to add more vegetables, but roasting the squash does require closer to an hour. I also find it’s hard to avoid a liquid watery-ness on the plate with the squash noodles, so for my version, I’ve stuck with regular spaghetti pasta instead.

Breadcrumbs, garlic, parsley and Parmesan cheese are blended with the ground turkey to build texture and enhance the flavour. Egg and milk help the mixture hold together. While the Martha recipe advises to mix the liquid ingredients into the breadcrumb mix before adding to the turkey, I find it important to mix all the dry ingredients into the turkey before adding the eggs and milk, otherwise it can make the breadcrumbs soggy and the whole texture of the cooked meatballs goes from meaty and firm to mushy and blah. I like to season the mix with coarse salt and A LOT of freshly ground pepper, too.

Garlic, Parsley, Breadcrumbs and Parmesan flavour the meatballs

Once you’ve combined everything together into a consistent mixture, you’re ready to go into meal-prep assembly line mode! Figure out how many meatballs you want to cook up at a time. I go with seven meatballs per pack—which for us works out to enough for two dinners and leftovers for one lunch. Depending on the size of your family and how much you want for leftovers the next day, select the right number for you (or if you need a lot more than will fit onto a piece of plastic wrap, plan to grab two packs per meal and space them out accordingly). Next, spread out sheets of plastic wrap directly onto your counter. I usually put out 7–8 sheets, with each sheet approximately 16 – 18″ long. Now, start shaping your meatballs. Each one should be a ball about 1.5″ in width. Place each meatball directly onto a prepared sheet of plastic wrap, in a line, with a space of about 3/4″ between each ball.

Assembly line of turkey meatballs ready to be wrapped and frozen as meal prep

Once you’ve shaped all your meatballs, it’s time to wrap them up. Grab the long end of the plastic wrap and fold it over the meatballs, pressing down to stick it onto the other side the sheet so that the meatballs are covered. Starting at one end, gently hold a meatball with the plastic around it and push it towards the nearest meatball, allowing the excess plastic to bunch up between them so the actual meatballs don’t touch and are separated by plastic. Continue bunching and pressing the meatballs together until they are bunched closely together and form a log. Grab a second piece of plastic wrap and use it to wrap the bundle together, folding the ends in first and then rolling for a firm, secure plastic wrap sleeve.

Meatballs getting wrapped for the freezer as part of meal prep

Once all your logs/sleeves of meatballs are ready, you can pop them into the freezer. Pause to admire your handiwork—each bundle represents a evening where you can come home to a nice, easy meal that’s homemade and good for you, too 🙂

Meatballs are wrapped into logs ready for the freezer

To cook up a batch, grab a jar of your favourite spaghetti sauce and heat it to a gentle simmer. Grab a sleeve of meatballs from the freezer and throw into the microwave to defrost on very low power for about 30 seconds, just enough so that you can pull them apart. Unwrap them and drop the frozen meatballs straight into the bubbling sauce. Cover and simmer on medium-low for 25 – 30 minutes, until the meatballs are cooked through. (Stir the meatballs a few times while cooking and watch that the sauce bubbles don’t get too explosive, as tomato sauce likes to blow the lid!) Most recipes tell you to brown the meatballs before cooking in the sauce, but I honestly prefer the way they cook without that step. I find the meatballs are more tender and I love how the Parmesan starts to ooze into the tomato sauce as they simmer.

Cooking meatballs in bubbling tomato sauce

While the meatballs are cooking, boil up a large pot of salted water for the spaghetti noodles. At the 20 minute mark from when you dropped the meatballs into the sauce, add pasta to your boiling water and cook for 10 minutes or until al dente. Drain the noodles, plate, and top with meatballs and sauce. Top with a little (or a lot!) of additional grated Parmesan and a good dose of freshly ground pepper. Homemade comfort, yours in 30 minutes—enjoy!

Parmesan Turkey Meatballs piled high onto spaghetti noodles with tomato sauce

Parmesan Turkey Meatballs cut open on a bed of spaghetti noodles and tomato sauce

Meal Prep Parmesan Turkey Meatballs
Parmesan Turkey Meatballs piled high onto spaghetti noodles with tomato sauce
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Meal-prep Parmesan Turkey Meatballs

Whip up a batch of these savoury, healthy meatballs on the weekend and enjoy comforting homemade dinners for weeks to come!

Course Main Course
Cuisine Italian
Prep Time 1 hour
Cook Time 30 minutes
Total Time 1 hour 30 minutes
Servings 45 meatballs

Ingredients

  • 950 g ground turkey (approx 2 lb)
  • 1 1/2 tsp coarse salt
  • lots freshly ground pepper
  • 1 cup breadcrumbs
  • 1 cup grated Parmesan cheese
  • 1/2 cup fresh parsley, chopped
  • 3 cloves fresh garlic, finely chopped
  • 2 eggs
  • 1/2 cup milk

Instructions

  1. Lay out plastic wrap sheets onto a table or counter, approximately 7 sheets, each about 18" long. 

  2. In a large bowl, add the ground turkey. Add salt, pepper, breadcrumbs, Parmesan, parsley and garlic; combine with a fork until loosely combined. Add milk and eggs and lightly incorporate with a fork. Using your hands, mix until it is fully combined and comes together into even consistency. 

  3. Shape into 1.5" balls, placing onto the prepared plastic sheet. Decide how many meatballs you want to cook up at one time and place that number of meatballs onto each sheet, spacing about 3/4" apart.

  4. Gathering plastic between each meatball, scrunch them together so there is no more empty space between them, shaping into a log. Wrap another sheet of plastic around each packet to form a sleeve to be placed into the freezer. Continue until all the meatballs are completed, and place everything into the freezer.

  5. When you are ready to cook some, remove a sleeve from the freezer and defrost slightly in the microwave if needed to be able to pull them apart (but they should still be frozen solid). Add a jar of spaghetti sauce to a pot and bring to a gentle simmer. Drop the frozen meatballs into the sauce and cook over medium low heat for 25 – 30 minutes, until cooked through. (Stirring a few times while they cook)

  6. Meanwhile, boil a large pot of salted water over high heat. When the meatballs have 10 minutes left to cook, add the spaghetti noodles and cook 10 minutes, until al dente. Drain pasta, plate and top with meatballs and sauce. Top with additional freshly ground pepper and Parmesan if desired. 

Filed Under: Main, Recipe Tagged With: freezer friendly, Italian, meal planning, meatballs, parmesan, pasta, spaghetti, Turkey

Pistachio Parsley Mint Pesto (with Flank Steak)

August 1, 2017 By Caroline 1 Comment

My favourite pesto ever, spooned onto lovely grilled flank steak.

It all started with the parsley. I came back from vacation and my herb pots were practically exploding with the most perfect, ready to eat parsley. But what to do with it all? I searched out a few options and decided to make a pesto. I whipped up this recipe from Serious Eats, and I have to say, the pesto is so beyond spectacular that I renamed the recipe to put the pesto first. Don’t get me wrong, it goes great with the flank steak, but it would be amazing with pasta, vegetables, on bread, and just straight up with a spoon!

You start with the amazing ingredients above. I used raw, unsalted pistachios, and toasted them for 10 minutes at 350° to bring out their full aroma and flavour. This is an important step not noted in the original recipe, although it did call for roasted nuts. Personally I think roasting them just before blending makes for deeper flavours.

Close up of the finished pesto. The parsley and mint get a nice lift from the lemon juice, and then the Parmesan just takes it all up a notch adding a nuanced nutty flavour that compliments the toasted pistachios so well.

bowl with marinade on a textured black background

Next, on to prepping the marinade for the steak (actually do this first, as you want to marinate the flank steak at least 4 hours before grilling). It’s pretty quick to chop everything up to prep this. I ran out of large ziplock bags, so I spread the steak out on a plate, and spread the marinade all over it, before folding it into a glass baking dish and popping it into the fridge. Another note: I like to score my flank steaks lightly on the diagonal, to help the marinade soak in. It also makes for nice looking lines after it has been grilled as the lines will show nice and golden. Do this just before you coat the steak with the marinade.

Steak folded into a glass dish to marinate

Close up of grilled steak showing score lines in all their glory

The way the juices gather in the score lines—drool inducing!

Juicy steak with pesto, plated with asparagus and baby potatoes

The final product—remember to slice the meat against the grain. You will want to dip everything on your plate into that pesto (and lick the plate). Get the recipe here.

Filed Under: Main, Recipe, Side Tagged With: bbq, flank steak, Grill, mint, parmesan, parsley, pesto, pistachio, steak, summer

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Welcome to my kitchen journal, a place where I will share my favourite heritage recipes honed over the years, as well as document new evolutions and experiments along the way. Great feasts become vehicles for fond memories—the best meals are the ones someone made with love, for you. Follow me to explore traditions, document stories and experience the joy of the feast. Read More…

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