Cooking Meatballs With Vegetables, Garlic and Spicy Pepper

Vegetable Meatball Ingredients:

½ pound ground turkey
½ medium onion, chopped finely
½ medium zucchini
½ medium red bell peppers
½ medium yellow squash
¼ cup soft bread crumbs
½ tablespoon garlic, minced
1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper
½ tablespoon fresh basil
1/8 cup hoisin sauce
¼ teaspoon salt

Method:

1. Slice yellow summer squash and zucchini lengthwise using a sharp vegetable peeler in such a way that you get wide and flat ribbons. Set them aside.
2. De-seed the red pepper and discard the top. Cut the remaining part into about 1 inch or smaller strips. Trim the flesh to reduce the size of the strips further to about 1/8 inch. Leave aside.
3. Preheat the oven to 350 degree Fahrenheit.
4. Combine bread crumbs, chopped onion, minced garlic, ground turkey, cayenne pepper, fresh basil and salt in a large bowl. Mix this meat mixture well with your hands and shape it to 1 inch round balls. Arrange these meat balls in a shallow baking pan.
6. In a small bowl set half the amount of hoisin sauce aside and brush the meatballs lightly with the remaining hoisin sauce.
7. Place the glazed meatballs in the preheated oven and bake for about 19 to 20 minutes or until the meatballs are cooked through. Remove the baking dish from the oven and let it stand in the dish itself for 10 to 15 minutes or until the meatballs are cool enough to handle.
8. As the meatballs are getting cooled, cook sweet pepper, zucchini and yellow summer squash in a medium saucepan using large amounts of boiling water. Boil the vegetables on high heat for 2 to 3 minutes. As they turn little tender drain them immediately and rinse them with cold tap water. Drain the cold water.
9. Wrap each baked meatball with a ribbon of vegetable. To prevent it from opening you may secure it using a wooden toothpick.
10. Arrange these wrapped meatballs on an ungreased, clean baking sheet. Brush the wrapped meatballs with the remaining reserved hoisin sauce and place them in the heated oven. Bake at same temperature for 10 to 12 minutes. Serve hot. This recipe makes 20 servings, one meatball equals one serving.

Health Tip:

• Vegetable ribbon meatballs is a low calorie, diabetes friendly and heart friendly recipe as it provides about 30 calories, 1 gm total fat, 2 gm protein and 2 gm carbohydrates per serving.
• This recipe provides almost negligible saturated fats, 9 mg cholesterol and 76 mg sodium per serving.