You’ll love this delicious baked turkey meatballs in tomato and chilli sauce recipe. Not only is lean turkey mince often cheaper than beef, but baking instead of frying these turkey meatballs makes them a much healthier alternative too. This super easy quick healthy meal for four can be on the table in just one hour!
Today folks I’d like to show you just how easy it is to take a few simple ingredients and make them into this sumptuous baked turkey meatballs dish.
There’s no more having to buy processed meatballs filled with I don’t know what when you can make your own.
Plus, it’s so worthwhile spending the time to cook from scratch to know that what you are feeding yourselves and your family is a good wholesome heart healthy meal!
Firstly, it’s a simple process of adding all the meatball ingredients into a bowl and mixing them together in the good old fashioned way, with your hands!
Next, and again just using your hands, form either 12 or 16 balls of the turkey mixture (depending on how many you want to serve to each person) and place them onto the greased baking tray.
Now, we’re not taking art classes or making sculptures here so they don’t have to be perfectly sized. Indeed mine frequently aren’t as you can see!
Pop the tray of meatballs into your preheated oven and let them bake for approximately 25 – 30 minutes.
Then, keep an eye on them whilst baking, as you don’t want them to burn.
Also, I don’t know if you’re got an oven like mine that although it’s a fan oven, it doesn’t seem to cook things evenly. So I need to turn the tray of meatballs around halfway during cooking to ensure they’re cooked through evenly.
The final stage, whilst you’re baking these meatballs is to make your sauce, which is as simply heating your sauce ingredients in a frying pan until they’re reduced to a thicker consistency.
And then once the sauce and the meatballs are ready you simply put them all into the frying pan, garnish and serve!
You know folks, I love recipes like this where no time is wasted sitting around whilst parts cook.
Here, you make the meatballs, and then once they’re baking you make the sauce at the same time. You can even get the dishes done at the same time!
And talking of running around, Lady Lynne and I made this last Saturday before the Great Scottish Run 10k.
In order to get an extra carb fuel up before my race we put these delicious baked turkey meatballs into half a baguette each. Not something I would normally do, but you know, needs must!
Oh and my time? It was 46.37, so I shaved nearly 2 minutes off that 48.35 from last year. I’m absolutely chuffed to bits with that! 🙂
I tried really hard to keep up with the 45 minute pacer but found myself out of breath. Lynne says I need to do interval training if I want to get to that stage next year. What do you think?
- 500 g lean turkey mince
- 1 tsp olive oil
- 3 cloves garlic crushed
- 1 small egg beaten
- 1 tsp mixed herbs
- 50 g wholemeal breadcrumbs
- 1 small onion finely chopped
- Freshly ground salt and pepper
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- 1 clove garlic crushed
- 400 g tin chopped tomatoes
- ¼ tsp chilli flakes
- Freshly ground salt and pepper
- Freshly chopped basil to garnish
- Preheat oven to 200C Fan
- Lightly grease a baking tray
- In a large bowl mix together the turkey mince, olive oil, garlic, egg, herbs, breadcrumbs and onion. Season with salt and pepper.
- Form the mixture into 12 - 16 balls using your hands and place onto the baking tray.
- Place in baking tray into the oven and bake near the top for approximately 30 minutes until browned.
- Whilst the meatballs are cooking make the tomato and chilli sauce.
- Gently heat the olive oil in a large frying pan, add the crushed garlic and stir for a few seconds in the hot oil.
- Add the chopped tomatoes and chilli flakes, stir well with the oil and garlic and allow to simmer gently until the tomatoes have broken down. Season with freshly ground salt and pepper.
- Once the meatballs are ready, place them in the pan with the sauce, scatter in some basil and serve.
Serves 3 - 4 meatballs per person, depending on how big you make them!
Thank you again to those good folks at Cirio for their excellent chopped tomatoes which they sent me so that I could make this delicious baked turkey meatballs in tomato and chilli sauce for you, my readers.
The quality of Cirio’s chopped tomatoes make the tomato and chilli sauce in this baked turkey meatballs dish just so rich and fresh tasting!
Anyway, that’s my opinion. Let me know yours in the comments below. And thanks for taking your time to hop on over to Neil’s Healthy Meals today.
How about checking out some equally excellent blogs at thinking out loud? 😀
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Love the sound of that chili sauce! It’s sounds like the perfect way to dress up these classic meatballs 🙂
rachel @ athletic avocado recently posted…Sweet Potato Chocolate Chip Homemade Granola Bars {Gluten-Free + Vegan!}
Thanks Rachel, a nice and simple sauce eh? Just perfect for complimenting the little meatball beauties! 🙂
First – CONGRATS on shaving 2 minutes of your speed – Neil! How fantastic! If you had dangled a baguette filled with these baked turkey balls in front of me, I’d have probably been able to shave maybe half a minute but gosh – these look so good! I love that you baked them and ooh that sauce is divine!
Shashi at RunninSrilankan recently posted…Ginger Cardamom Cookies
I’ve got some of those meatballs left in the freezer for you here Sashi! 😉
But maybe I should keep them and see if I can reduce my speed by another 2 minutes next year by filling another baguette with them. Ha ha ha 😆