Last recipe of the week … or not!
I think I have never shared any meatball recipe on my blog yet. Can I be honest and say that I am not a big fan of meatballs? Sometimes, I feel they are too dry. But that recipe reconciled me with meatballs. They are so tasty and flavourful and not dry at all even though I baked them! You gotta try this recipe. It is baked with only 3 tsp of vegetable oil, can you believe it?
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| Click here for the printable recipe |
Ingredients:
- 500 g of ground chicken
- ½ cup of breadcrumbs – I used whole-wheat
- 1 small white onion
- 1 medium size carrot
- 2 cloves of garlic
- 1 stalk of lemongrass
- 1 tbsp of galangal – you can use ginger if you don’t have
- 2 tbsp of fish sauce
- 1 tbsp of lime juice
- 1 handful of cilantro leaves
- 1 tsp of coconut sugar
- 1 tbsp of cornstarch
- 1 tsp of baking powder
- 2 kaffir lime leaves
- ½ tsp of salt + black pepper
Directions:
- Have all the ingredients ready. Chop the lemongrass (just the white part and keep the green part for tea), roughly chop the onion and the carrot, and roughly tear apart the kaffir lime leaves with your hands. Peel the garlic and remove the germ
- In the blender, add the garlic, the galangal, the kaffir lime leaves, the lemongrass, and the carrot. Blend until there are no big chunks. Then add the onion and blend until there is no more large pieces of onion.
- Transfer the mix into a large bowl; add in the ground chicken and season with the fish sauce, the salt and pepper, the coconut sugar, the lime juice, the breadcrumbs, the baking powder and the tapioca.
- Mince the cilantro leaves with a knife and add them in the bowl
- Combine well. Use an ice-cream scoop to shape balls and lay them on a baking tray with a parchment paper.
- Drizzle a little bit of vegetable oil – I used 3 tsp in total for the entire tray – and bake in a preheated oven at 190°C or 370°F for about 20 to 25 minutes
You can serve them with a bowl of rice and a dipping sauce. I have my trusty dipping sauce that is made of 3 tbsp of lime juice, 2½ tbsp of fish sauce and 2 tbsp of coconut sugar+1/2 cup of water. To which I add 1 clove of garlic – minced and some chili pepper if only for adults. You can top some on a salad bowl like below and in a banh mi sandwich. But what my children like most is to come and snack on them when they are cooling on the baking tray
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| So yummy and full of green, everything I love about eating |
NB:
1. Blend the onion last otherwise by the time you manage to blend the lemongrass finely, the onion would have leaked too much water
2. Do not hesitate to add small chili pepper, I have young children so I can’t – pfff
3. The kaffir lime, galangal, and lemongrass are usually available at your local Asian store. They are sometimes packed and frozen together as they mostly go together in Thai cuisine. In France, I saw them being sold at Grand Frais as well.
4. You can totally double the batch and freeze them after they are cooked. Take some overnight to defrost in the fridge to eat them with a bowl of rice, in a banh mi or on a salad.
Enjoy these meatballs as much as we do!
