Giant Beef Meatball with Ricotta Cheese / Weekly Recap

Hi Everyone,

One of my favorite things to do in life is to freak out my Husband!  Nothing more fun, when he says Oh My God!  He he!  I love that and it cracks me up!  Now you know me, I am a healthy food blogger and I do give you healthy recipes 90% of the time, well today is not one of those times.  However you could make it healthy, let me explain.  I made this for my Husband for Valentine’s Day dinner.

This is one pound of beef, mixed with ricotta cheese, parmesan cheese, bread crumbs, egg, seasonings and love!   See, when we went Vegas last year, we ate at Lavo’s restaurant at the Venetian and they served for an appetizer a huge meatball made of Kobe Beef.  It was so tender and so good, that we ate the whole huge meatball!!  I took Jenny there on my last trip and had the meatball.  I kind of felt bad leaving my Husband at home, so I decided for a Valentine’s Day treat I would make him that big meatball, but of course healthier!  Still it’s high in calories, which means the one we did eat at the restaurant must have been crazy high in calories.  I don’t even want to know!!  So when I had the whole pan sitting at my Husbands place at the dinner table, you should have seen his face!  He must have just about fell over!  ha ha  I love it!!!  He sat there with his cheese bread and fork and went to work!  He couldn’t eat all of it, but he did eat about half.  While he had that, I decided to be a little bit healthier and I made this new dish from Trader Joe’s.

This was a Tri-Color Quinoa with kale, sweet potatoes and carrots.  It serves 3, but I ate the whole thing.  It only made about 1 1/2 cups total.  I thought it was ok, but a little bland in flavor.  I probably won’t get it again, but at least I gave it a try.  Now back to the meatball!

I liked the recipe to the meatball and it pretty healthy if you do two things!  One make them into normal size meatballs and skip the searing of the meatball!  If you make them into small ones, I would place them in a mini muffin pan and bake them for about 20 -25 minutes until they are done.  It should make about 12 meatballs.  You can follow the ingredients in today’s recipe and use the cooking method on my Italian Meatballs.  The giant meatball was tender and I love the ricotta cheese added to it.  I know I will be making this again but in a smaller version.

Giant Ricotta Cheese Beef Meatball

Nutrition Information

• Serves: 4 servings

• Serving size: 4 oz (1/4 of the meatball)

Prep time:  10 mins

Total time:  10 mins

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One pounder meatball made with ground beef, ricotta cheese, seasonings and baked until tender and cooked through.

Ingredients

• 2 tbsp. olive oil
• ¼ cup onion, diced small
• 1 tsp. garlic, minced
• 1 lbs. Lean Ground Beef
• ¼ cup whole what panko bread crumbs
• ¼ cup egg substitute or 1 egg
• 1 dash salt
• 1 dash pepper
• 1 tsp. basil, dried
• 1 tsp. oregano
• ¼ cup ricotta cheese, fat free
• 1 tbsp, Parmesan cheese, shredded
• ¼ cup olive oil
• 1 25oz jar marinara sauce (3 cups)

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees
2. In an oven safe skillet add 2 tbsp. olive oil, onion and garlic. Saute over medium heat for about 5 minutes, until onion and garlic are tender. Drain onions and garlic onto a paper towel and squeeze out any of the oil. Place in a medium bowl to cool.
3. Once onions and garlic are cool in the same bowl, add ground beef, bread crumbs, egg substitute, salt, pepper, basil, oregano, ricotta cheese and parmesan cheese. With your hand mix until combined. Carefully form into a large meatball. Do not form it into a tight ball, just a nice loose ball.
4. In the same skillet as you used for the onions and garlic, add ¼ cup olive oil and place meatball in pan. Brown each side of the meatball. I used a spatula to turn the meatball to the other sides. If the meatball starts to fall a part, gently form it back into a ball. If it is sticking to the pain, add a pinch more olive oil. Once meatball is browned on all sides, take meatball out and clean the skillet.
5. Add a little bit of the marinara sauce to the skillet and place the meatball in the center of skillet and pour the remaining marinara sauce over the meatball. Slowly bring to a boil.
6. Once the sauce is boiling, place the skillet into the oven and bake for 60 - 70 minutes or until the internal temperature reaches 160 degrees.

Notes

Here is the recipe to use the ingredients above to make into 12 meatballs instead of one big one. Just omit the marinara sauce, olive oil and browning the meatballs.

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.

In a large mixing bowl combine all of the ingredients except the olive oil and marinara sauce.

Using a food scale, weigh meatball mixture to 1.5-ounce portions, about the size of a golf ball. Roll into a ball and place each meatball into a mini muffin pan tin.

Bake for 20 - 25 minutes or until golden and cooked through.

Let them cool, Use immediately or freeze for future use.

Calories for the Giant meatball: 445, Fat: 28.3, Cholesterol: 60, Sodium: 919, Potassium: 66, Carbs: 18.8, Fiber: 3.9, Sugar: 5.9, Protein: 30

Calories for 1 meatball making them into 12 smaller ones: 63, Fat: 1.7, Cholesterol: 20, Sodium: 61, Potassium: 22, Carbs: 2.3, Fiber: .03, Sugar: .05, Protein: 9.5

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I’m still laughing over the meatball!  I am surprised how good it turned out!!  I did have to test it after all, so I could tell you how it was.  I will most definitely make it again, but as a normal meatball size.  Here is this weeks weekly recap:

Sunday:  Red Velvet Pancakes – #SundaySupper – I just love these pancakes and they were so much fun to cut into heart shapes.  My family really liked them and I’m glad to finally get the red color right!

Monday:  Grilled Chipotle Chicken with Chipotle Cream Sauce – SRC – This was probably one of my favorite dishes this week.  I’m pretty weak when it comes to peppers and the chipotle seasoning in this dish was just right!  Not to spicy!!  But perfect!  Even my Husband liked this dish, which kind of surprised me!  Sorry the pics aren’t so great!  I have a hard time photographing meat dishes!

Tuesday:   Valentine’s Day Round Up – This was my Valentine’s Day round-up!  However I don’t think we need a holiday to celebrate fun treats!!  I’ll take them anytime of the year!

Wednesday:   Chocolate Coconut Mousse – All I can say about this dessert is it is chocolaty!  It is so sweet, decadent and rich!  It will sure to please any chocolate lover, guaranteed!!!  Since I did portion them out correctly, I had a little bit left, and I mixed it with greek yogurt!  All I can say is YUM!!!

Thursday:  My Red Carpet Visit and Big Giveaway Today – This was my fun trip to the wax museum while I was in Vegas!  Jenny and I had a blast.  It was so much fun being goofy!  This was also my big giveaway, which is a Special K gift basket with a $100.  gift card for Walmart.  Don’t forget to enter.  I’ll pick a winner tomorrow evening and announce the winner on Monday!

Friday:  Lemon Chicken with Broccoli – I love this dish!  Makes for a nice quick dinner!  The whole thing took about 10 minutes!  The chicken was tender and the broccoli was steamed to perfection.  It would be great served over rice or pasta.  I was going to serve it with brown rice, but I ended up with a baked sweet potato instead!  I heart sweet potatoes!

Well that’s it for this week!  It’s been a busy week and with a little bit of pressure.  I’m happy to say we have Monday off, which will give me a day to catch up on my blog and household chores.  I heard it’s suppose to be nice out too, so I’m hoping to get into my garden and pull some weeds.  By the way, remember all my doctors appointments I had this week?  I had 3 in one day!  Well, I got the results back from my mammogram and my results were good!  Yah!!  Now to wait for the blood test.  Crossing fingers it’s good!

Have a great weekend!!!

Toodles,

Jennifer

P.S.  This weeks craving is  Pizza Burgers!  I have been craving a burger and I’m going to make one this weekend!!

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