"That's a spicy meatball!"

I had a hankering for meatballs the other day.

Does anyone say 'hankering' anymore?

Anyway, I was watching Ina Garten on the television, and she made turkey meatballs.  She was very practical about her meal.  She made the meatballs from scratch, so she justified the use of sauce from a jar.  I could do that too!

Except, I had ground beef, and turkey patties, and I'm not too fond of red pepper flakes. And, I wanted to use some fresh herbs and spinach from my garden.

So, off to Google I go, to explore recipe ideas, trying to keep in mind my macros.

I couldn't find a single recipe that fit every want, so I took the basics and made it my own.  The basics included: meat, egg, bread crumbs, salt, pepper.  The add-ons: home grown spinach and basil, minced garlic, and Cholula hot sauce.

Stay with me.

I really should have taken a picture before I mixed them and rolled them, but here's what they looked like:

Because the food scale is my new best friend, each meatball was approx. 2.75 oz pre-cooked.  They went into a 400 degree oven for 25 minutes.

I boiled spaghetti, warmed the pasta sauce in a pot, then added my meatballs to the sauce, just to warm through. You might ask why they needed to be warmed up if they were just taken out of the oven.  Well, I cooked the meatballs about 2 hours before dinner.  I then channeled my inner Ina, put everything in a platter, just to be fancy.

Just add torn basil leaves.  It makes it look pretty.

This is what my individual serving looked like. The hot sauce gave it good flavor, without being too hot, and I was able to sneak some spinach and basil in them, and the kids ate them up with no objections.  Owen even asked for seconds.

Meatball Recipe

1.5 pounds of ground beef 90/10

2 turkey patties (8 oz. 93/7)

3 tsps. Cholula

1 tsp. minced garlic

5 large spinach leaves (cut)

10 basil leaves (cut, leave 2-3 for garnish)

1 large egg

1/3 cup of Italian seasoned bread crumbs

Salt/Pepper to taste (about 1 tsp. each)

Preheat oven to 400.

Throw all ingredients in a bowl, mix with your hands. 

I used an ice cream scooper and food scale to get approximately the same size meatballs.

Cook meatballs for 25 minutes.

Makes 13 meatballs.

2 meatballs is more than enough to fill you up.

Macros per meatball: 7g fat, 2g carbs, 15g protein

These were great the next day too.

Enjoy!