Turkey is one of those meats that I wish we ate more often than Thanksgiving. I'm a huge fan of Thanksgiving, and I'm glad that Jenny-O has started selling those turkey tenderloins that are pre-marinated so we can eat turkey more often. I never thought, however, to use turkey in a meatball. It almost seems blasphemous. But sometimes, blasphemy can be a good thing.
Tonight I made another "Everyday Tomato Sauce" from the "Everyday Sauces" chapter. The recipe was Turkey Meatballs in Tomato Sauce. At first, I felt a little gypped out of a new sauce recipe. After all, the tomato sauce is just marinara sauce so the only new part of the recipe was the meatballs which are not a sauce. But really, does it matter? I got to make something new and that's what really counts.
Luckily, I had the exact amount of marinara sauce needed frozen in the freezer for this recipe. I didn't have to take time to make it last night which, though I enjoy doing it, was a nice break. I had made my Mimi's recipe for meatballs this past summer so I had some idea of what I was doing, but of course those were traditional meatballs made with regular ground beef and boatloads of cheese (they're delicious, but I'm still working on perfecting them).
I started with some bread crumbs, parsley, an egg white, skim milk, Romano cheese, salt and pepper. Yes, the recipe did call for whole eggs and whole milk, but why spoil a perfectly healthy dish with unnecessary fat? I whisked this together with a fork until it was as evenly combined as possible. Next, I added the ground turkey and basically mushed it all together with my hands. That is the most fun part about making meatballs, it is literally hands on, and you get to play with food :)
As all this was going on, I had the toaster oven preheating at 400. I then formed the meat mixture into bite-sized meatballs and placed them on my tray sprayed with EVOO. They cooked for about 18 minutes. The recipe wanted me to fry them of course, but when have I ever fried anything? As they cooked, I warmed up the marinara sauce and added a little tomato paste to thicken it up.
Once the meatballs were done, it was time for the moment of truth. One of the pitfalls of baking is that you don't know if you were successful until the food is done cooking. The tension caused by this is heightened when the food that is cooking is poultry and simply cannot be rare. I broke open one of the bigger meatballs, and they were thankfully cooked all the way through. I tossed them in the marinara sauce and sprinkled some more Romano on top.
I was a little scared that the meatballs would be totally dry and just fall apart since I eliminated a lot of the fat. I even bought 93/7 ground turkey rather than using the dark meat suggested by Giada (not only do I not like dark meat, I also didn't see any at the grocery store). To my surprise, the meatballs had the perfect amount of moisture! The flavor wasn't quite as bold as a ground beef meatball, but I think the cheese and parsley complimented the subtle turkey taste.
Overall, definitely a good dish for when you're craving meatballs, but not craving the guilt of eating too many of the traditional kind. I was able to have seven of these babies :)
That's it for tonight, tomorrow will be something COMPLETELY new to me, so come visit then!
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