Turkey Meatballs

A couple of weeks ago my friend and I got together and spent a few hours making freezer meals.  We both work full-time and sometimes struggle to put a healthy homemade meal on the table every night after work.  Making freezer meals turned out to be an excellent solution!  We spent about 4 or 5 hours putting together our meals and each of us ended up with 14 freezer meals.

One of the recipes that we made was meatballs.  We mixed the meat, rolled them into balls and flash froze them before placing the meatballs in freezer bags.  When I was ready to use the meatballs, it took a minimal amount of time to cook the spaghetti (or spaghetti squash in my case), heat up some sauce, and cook the meatballs.  A healthy and delicious meal was on the dinner table in a record amount of time!

We're already planning our next freezer meal cooking day, as we've deemed our recent one a huge success!  Some of the recipes we froze are already on my blog, like pizza dough and beef stew, but I have a few new recipes that I'll be sharing in the future.  Have you ever made freezer meals?

Meatballs

Makes approximately 24 1-inch meatballs

1/4 cup Italian bread crumbs

1 egg, lightly beaten
1 Tablespoon milk
1 Tablespoon ketchup
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1 pound ground turkey

1.  In a medium bowl, mix all the ingredients together until completely combined.

2.  Roll meat into 1 inch balls.

**If you're freezing the meatballs: place the rolled meatballs in a single layer onto a wax paper lined cookie sheet and place in your freezer for approximately 1 hour.  When the meatballs are hard, place them in a Ziploc freezer bag and freeze.  When you're ready to cook the meatballs, continue at step 3.

3.  Preheat a small amount of olive oil in a skillet over medium heat.

4.  Add meatballs to the warm oil and cook for about 5 minutes per side, turning the meatballs as each side browns.  Cut into one meatball to ensure that it is completely cooked.

**You can also freeze the meatballs after cooking them.

Adapted from:  Finding Joy in My Kitchen