Thursday, November 19, 2009

Mushroom Meatballs

Ingredients:
1 lb Ground Turkey
1 lb Ground beef   (Or any combination)
1 Medium Sweet Onion
10-16 oz Mushrooms (I use portabella or cremmini including stems)
1 tbs olive oil
1 egg, lightly beaten
1/2 cup Sherry or wine (Tio Pepe makes a Great kosher Sherry)
1 handful Celery leaves or 1/2 tsp celery seed (replace with basil if you don't like celery)
1 1/2 tbs Italian seasoning blend
2 tsp mustard powder
fresh ground pepper
pinch red pepper flakes

Chop onions and mushrooms. The smaller the chop you get on these, the easier it is to hide the veggies from kids or other suspecting eaters. It doubles the volume of the meat and keeps them moist.

Optional: Saute onions and mushrooms in olive oil over medium heat - for 12-15 minutes or until they start to caramelize. (Add some salt to speed up process and a bitlater pepper and some of the herbs) If you do this step, you'll want bigger veggies. Then you can either run your knife over the cooked veggies or you can pulverize in an electric chopper/blender etc.

Add mushroom mixture to ground meat, along with splash of the sherry, remainder of spices and egg. Combine, but don't over mix.
Divide and make into balls - size will vary cooking time - brown (and cook in pot or place in oven-safe dish) in same pot as used for mushrooms and onions, adding sherry/wine to deglaze any time the pot gets too brown.
Alternately, set the oven to 350, place shaped meatballs into a pyrex or on a baking sheet and bake 25-30 minutes (or cover in a sauce and bake until ready to serve).

Enjoy!