Man, am I getting good at making turkey meatballs. I figured out a few prep tricks that you might as well do up front, it makes the next couple batches so easy to throw together. I mean, this is because the canadian bacon I get comes eleven slices to the package. Why would you make a prime number of slices of anything, you can't divide that any way evenly. Anyway. I would do it this way even if there were twelve slices.
a bunch of parsley
1 package of canadian bacon
2-4 onions
4 garlic cloves
First, actually, sort through your parsley bunch and throw out any wilted pieces, rinse and shake dry. Whack off the stems, throw the parsley in a food processor and chop fine. I envisioned ending up with a quart-size box of parsley, but no. It was a small bunch, pretty much enough for two recipes. Set aside however much you're going to use for today's batch, a good handful, and freeze the rest in a container.
Next quarter the bacon, throw it in the food processor, and chop fine. There might be little bits of parsley in there, that's fine. Scrape it all into a saute pan over low heat. Then quarter the onions, you're aiming for an amount equivalent to four small onions. I had giant onions, so I used two this time. Throw the onions and garlic in the processor and pulse to chop, pay a little mind to not pureeing the onions. Which I did slightly. Add the onions to the pan and turn up the heat. Saute the bacon and onions until golden brown, about ten to twenty minutes. Divide the mixture into quarters, set aside one quarter for today's recipe and freeze the other three quarters in containers.
OKAY NOW, pretend you did all this and now you want to make turkey meatballs.
2-3 slices whole wheat bread, or about a cup of crumb1/3 cup almond milk
1 egg
1 lb ground turkey
2 tablespoons tomato paste
1 tablespoon olive oil
Heat oven to 400 degrees. Scoop out some frozen parsley into a large bowl, also thaw out a container of bacon and onion mixture and put that into the large bowl. Dice the bread and soak it in the almond milk in a small bowl. (And you know what, I also started a freezer container for bread crumbs. Ahhh the sweetie man will eat his way through a loaf of bread and when he gets to the heels, he starts a new loaf. I have had seventeen heels of bread in my fridge at times; so now I am going to use them for turkey meatballs, I dice them up and throw them in the freezer. So now I can scoop out a cup of crumb and soak it in almond milk.)
Beat the egg in the large bowl with the parsley and bacon, then add the turkey, one tablespoon of tomato paste (I also freeze extra tomato paste, so I took that out of the freezer too), and the squeezed-out bread, and mix it all together.
Divide the meat mixture into however many meatballs you want and put them on a baking sheet.
Stir together the other tablespoon of tomato paste and the olive oil in the same small bowl that you soaked the bread in, and brush the paste over the meatballs.
Bake the meatballs for twenty minutes until cooked through.
