You may find it hard to believe, but it's already Wednesday thanks to Labor Day being the start of the week. That means it's What's for Dinner? Wednesday! This week we're breaking out our crock pots to make some Italian Meatballs. Slow cook your way to delicious, healthy, and multi-talented packs of protein goodness with this recipe. Before you start, be sure to heed this warning from our favorite "chef," The Zesty Guy: "You know, once you go Italian, you'll never go back (click if you're a visual learner to watch the video)!" Warning heeded? Awesome! Let's get this party started!
Here are your ingredients: (Want them ahead of time next week? Be sure to SUBSCRIBE to our weekly newsletter)
- 2 lbs lean, ground turkey
- 1.5 tbsp garlic powder
- 1.5 tbsp onion powder
- 1.5 tablespoon Italian Seasoning (equal parts thyme, rosemary, oregano, marjoram, basil)
- 1/2 cup chopped mushrooms (omit if you'd like yours to be more dense)
- 2 cups unsalted tomato sauce
- 2/3 cup grated Parmesan cheese
Step One: Find a bowl that can hold your turkey and spices. Add your turkey and spices to the bowl! Don't have Italian Seasoning on hand? Neither did we. Just mix together the herbs noted above (and if you need thyme, please come over...we have hundreds of containers of it for some odd reason).
Step Two: You never would have figured out this one on your own, but we have you covered. Using a dough scoop or your hands, form the meat + spice mixture into meatballs. You can pick the size. We made a little over 30 smaller meatballs. As you shape them, put them in your crock pot.
Step Three: Get your tomato sauce and pour it over your meatballs. Top the whole thing off with your Parmesan cheese.
Step Four: Cover your crock pot and tell it to "get low, get low, get low." You'll probably also need to set it to "Low" heat unless you have a rapping, high tech model (in which case we'd love it if you could share a video). We haven't upgraded to this model yet, but find singing while we cook makes our food a lot tastier. Let that baby run for 4 hours trying to stir occasionally (we made this once without stirring and it still tasted delish, but don't tell the crock pot police).
Step Five: Enjoy your Italian Meatballs over pasta, in a sandwich, or however else you like to eat your meat. We are addicted to making these as a sandwich with pita bread. If you have extra meatballs, you can always freeze them for another time. Yay! Life just became easier!
Are you going to try this recipe? Let us know what you think by posting in the comments below:
