Ingredients – For 4/5 People
Start to finish – roughly 45 minutes
Please note that all ingredients are rough scales and you should play around depending on your balance.
500g Minced Beef (Ideally Organic, grass fed)
1 Large onion, or to taste
6 Spring Onions, also to taste
200g Mushrooms
400g Tomatoes, I like plum if I can get them or on the vine for taste
1 Tbsp Tomato Puree (ideally organic without anything added)
Oregano to taste, or Basil
4 Cloves of Garlic… or more
Red Chilli, optional to taste. I usually use 3 to 5 medium/large.
1 Tbsp Coconut oil
The Vegetables of your choice, I selected Broccoli and Leeks
If you don’t want to use tomato puree then double the tomatoes – it just takes a little longer to sweat them down… usually it takes an extra 20 minutes but it does vary depending on how watery you would like the sauce.
I will also add some rice or something healthy with a little extra starch for myself as i am a carb type primarily.
The Method
- Roughly chop the tomatoes and place them in a large saucepan with enough water to cover the bottom of the pan. I generally use quite a high heat to start to get the water simmering before reducing it to a medium heat. Keep stirring the tomatoes to make sure that none catch on the bottom and just to see how well they are doing.
- Whilst you wait for the tomatoes finely chop the onion and mushrooms (and chilli if you are using).
- Melt the coconut oil into a frying pan large enough to make the meatballs. Lightly fry the onion, mushroom and chilli.
- Place the garlic and oregano that you are using into the tomato mixture and add the puree if you are using it. If you really like it hot you can also add more chilli and chilli powder to the sauce not just in the balls.
- Place it in a bowl with the mince and hand mix together. There may well be extra onions etc but just add them to the tomatoes which should be starting to look rather good by now! Depending on your mince you may need to add some egg to bind it all together.
- Decide how many people you are cooking for and then devide the mince mixture into roughly even sized balls so that there are enough for everyone.
- Return the pan that you used for the onion mixture to a medium heat and check that there is a little oil left in the pan to seal the balls… If you don’t want to end up with just a bunch of mince in tomatoe sauce make sure that you seal the balls well – believe me it’s not quite the same LOL.
- Whilst the balls are sealing add enough water to the sweated down tomato sauce to house all the meatballs. Then add the meatballs to the tomatoes and make sure that it is simmering nicely.
- The meatballs are going to take about 20 minutes to cook depending on how big they are so now is the time to start cooking your vegetables.
- After 15-20 minutes test one of the larger meatballs to see if they are cooked through.
- Once everything is perfect, plate up and enjoy!