Gluten Free, Cheesy Beef Meatballs with Tomato and Veggie Sauce
Gluten Free Cheesy Beef Meatballs with Tomato and Veggie Sauce. A perfect meal for the whole family. Delicious, moist meatballs with a beautiful tomato and veg sauce that even the toddlers will gobble up.
Ingredients
Sauce
- 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil 36.6g of fat
- 1 clove garlic
- 1 eggplant
- 1 zuchinni
- 1 red capsicum
- 700 ml passata
- 6 basil leaves
Meatballs
- 500 g beef mince 24.5g of fat
- 80 g fine grated parmesan cheese 22.1g of fat
- 50 g almond meal 25.3g of fat
- 1/2 cup water
- 1/2 tsp dried oregano
- 1/2 tsp dried parsley
- 1/4 tsp garlic powder
- 1/4 tsp onion powder
- 2 eggs
Instructions
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Pre heat the oven to 180℃
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Cook 1/2 a cup of quinoa following package instructions.
Sauce
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Crush the clove of garlic and chop the veggies into chunks.
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Place a sauce pan on medium high heat and add the oil.
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Add the garlic to the oil, stirring frequently for about a minute (or until fragrant).
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Add the rest of the veggies. Stir them on and off for about 5 minutes.
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Pour in the jar of passata.
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Turn down the heat to low and leave to simmer as you prepare the meatballs.
Meatballs
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Place all the ingredients for the meatballs into a medium sized mixing bowl and mix it with your hands until fully combined.
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Line a baking tray with baking paper.
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Use a tablespoon measure to create evenly sized meatballs. Scoop out some of the mixture, roll it in your hand to form a ball and place on the baking paper. Continue until you have no mixture left.
Remember that the mixture is quite wet.
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Place the tray into the oven for 15 minutes.
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After the 15 minutes, remove the tray from the oven and turn the meatballs over. At this point your meatballs and tray will likely look like a big mess. Don't worry, once they've cooked all the way through they will be fine.
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Once all the meatballs have been turned over, return the tray to the oven for another 15 mins (or until cooked through). Remove from the oven and finish the sauce.
Sauce
After placing the meatballs back into the oven place 6 basil leaves into the veggie sauce.
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Pour the vegetables into a food processor and blitz it until it's nice and smooth.
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Add the quinoa to the smooth sauce and mix it through.
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Serve the meatballs smothered in the sauce. Add cream or butter to individual portions for a higher fat content.
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If freezing left overs, place the meatballs flat on a tray and freeze separately to the sauce. Once frozen through you can store them in a freezer bag or air tight container in the freezer. This will make it easier for you to defrost meatballs as needed.
If you have too much sauce for the amount of meatballs, there are plenty of other things you can do with it; serve it as a dipping sauce, use it as a pizza base, use it in wraps or just make extra meatballs. I freeze the sauce in small portions to defrost as needed.
Recipe Notes
Total fat content for the meatballs: Approximately 90g of fat.
Each meatball is approximately 4g of fat.
Total fat content for the sauce is 36.6g of fat. If splitting this by 8 it will be approximately 4g of fat per serve. Norah has such a small serve, I don't count the fat in the sauce for her, but I do add extra oil, butter or cream to her bowl and calculate that instead.