Baked Turkey Meatballs

I promised I’d post about the turkey meatballs I made this weekend and luckily, this is a cheerful post. They were absolutely delicious and quite easy to throw together.

Baked Turkey Meatballs (via Anita at Home Cooking Memories)

Ingredients

• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 large onion, finely chopped
• 2 garlic cloves, finely minced
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
• 1/4 teaspoon dried thyme leaves
• 1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
• 16 oz frozen chopped spinach (defrosted, drained, and squeezed to remove excess water) I used fresh spinach because that’s what I had on hand and it worked great.
• 2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
• 1/3 cup chicken broth
• 2 1/2 lbs lean ground turkey
• 3/4 cup bread crumbs
• 2 large eggs

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Prepare a large baking sheet by spraying with cooking spray.
2. In a frying pan on medium heat, heat olive oil until hot. Then add onion, garlic, salt, pepper, thyme, and oregano. Sauté until onion is tender (about 5-6 minutes total time).
3. Add spinach to pan and combine with onion mixture. Add Worcestershire sauce and chicken broth and mix well to combine. Cook until most of the liquid has cooked out (evaporated). Because I used fresh spinach, I ended up just draining the liquid out. It would’ve taken too long to cook it all off. Remove from heat and allow to cool to room temperature.
4. In a large bowl, combine the turkey, bread crumbs, and egg. Add cooled onion/spinach mixture to the meat. I do all of this step with my hands, but you can use a spoon if you prefer.
5. With your hands, create meatballs that are about 1 – 1 1/2 inches in diameter and place them on the baking sheet. Leave a little bit of space between each meatball. When you are done shaping your meatballs, you will probably have about 40-42 meatballs from this recipe. Don’t need that many? Freeze them after baking or cut this recipe in half (but I say freeze them and then you’ve done the work only once and have a future meal).
6. Bake until your meatballs are cooked through – which was about 20 minutes for my oven. Remove from oven and serve as desired.

These were delicious. I sliced them in half and threw together a bowl of pasta with broccoli. If you hate standing over an open flame, I’d recommend you try this recipe. The meatballs were browned and crispy on the outside while remaining moist on the inside. Oh, one more note: I only had about a pound and a half of ground turkey but I didn’t really change any of the other recipe instructions and it worked out fine, I just had about 20 meatballs instead of 40. Next time I’ll buy extra turkey and freeze some of the finished meatballs.

So easy and so tasty!