The great thing about cooking is that it’s not brain surgery. If you make a mistake, you can start all over again! That’s good, because I made a couple of measuring missteps before I arrived at this ricotta turkey meatball recipe.
After eating some of the lentil meatballs that were prepared by my friend Jennie at her book launch party, I decided to give ricotta a chance in my meatballs. Previously, Parmesan was my cheese of choice for oven baked turkey meatballs and stovetop three-meat meatballs. I felt like Goldilocks as I tried to come up with the correct ingredient mix for this particular meatball recipe. Once, I decided to use ricotta, I started with 1 cup of the cheese in the recipe, which was too much/made the meatballs too cheesy. (Although my sons enjoyed them, my husband did not.) Then, I considered ¼ cup of ricotta…but that was too little/not enough cheese. Finally, I found the “just right” amount of ricotta to add: ½ a cup. Since my little chefs like to help me make meatballs, the process of figuring it out was fun. Enjoy!
“Just Right” Baked Turkey Ricotta Meatballs
Yield: 4-6 servings
Ingredients:
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- 1 lb of lean ground turkey
- 1 slice of the end of a bread loaf, crumbled up (or you can use ¼ cup of dried bread crumbs)
- 1/2 cup of ricotta cheese
- 1 egg
- 1/4 cup finely chopped onions
- 1/4 cup chopped parsley
- 1 ½ tsp of fresh oregano (or ½ tsp of dried oregano)
- 3 cloves of chopped garlic
- 1 1/2 tsp seasoned salt
- 1/2 tsp ground black pepper
Directions:
1. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees Fahrenheit.
2. Spread the olive oil on the bottom and sides of an 8-inch square Pyrex baking dish.
3. Thoroughly mix all of the rest of the ingredients together in a large bowl.
4. Use the mixture to roll golf ball sized meatballs and place them into the baking dish closely together.
5. Cook the meatballs in the oven for 20 minutes.
That’s it. Once the meatballs are cooked, take them from the dish and let them simmer in marinara sauce over a low heat for 15 to 20 minutes. You can serve them alone, as part of a meatball sandwich, with Italian spaghetti…or however you please.
Did I mention that if I would have read the Meatball Shop recipe correctly the first time that I would not have had to go through my trial and error? They had said 1 cup of ricotta for 2 pounds of meat…and I forgot to halve the cheese along with the meat! (Duh!)
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