Mince is a regular in our house. You can’t beat it for meatballs, patties, Mexican, Italian and any quick throw-together you want to do – sometimes I just pan fry a handful of mince with onions and herbs and toss through my lunch salad if I don’t have the leftovers ‘bank’ to draw on. I don’t want to be one of those recipe writers (albeit a very occasional recipe writer these days) that spends hours with a pre-lim story, but I have been asked to unpack my process a bit more in thinking about food and how to make things yummy, so I do hope you’ll indulge the little unpack before the recipe.
Below, I’ve written out a recipe for my typical “start together, split and create two variations” mince week for us, by doing meatballs two ways. Another one of my “Choose your own adventure” ideas.
What I especially love about prepping a big batch of meatballs is you can serve some plain, some in sauce, some in a soup – they’re basically a “Protein Supplement” for meals, ready to rock and make a delicious, nourishing and easy meal or snack in minutes – or seconds if having a ‘nude meatball’ maybe just dipped in yoghurt or mayo. And? They’re a cheaper bang for your buck alternative to other cuts of meat – especially these days!
If you’ve followed my recipe writing style in the past, you’ll know I’m a huge fan of the “less-is-more” kitchen – what can I do to:
- Spend less time on complicated recipes and lengthy ingredient lists
- Less money and time meal prepping
- Less food waste, the biggest polluter related to food (not the cow!)
…all while ensuring MORE yumminess through simple tricks and tips…
If this type of cooking appeals and you’re looking to save money/waste and upgrade your food confidence for your health and the planet, you can get my second book anytime (or you could join the Low Tox Club and receive one as your welcome gift if you’re an Aussie! )
You can also keep reading, so let me step you through my process.
- Buy mince in a large amount of 2-4kg whenever grass-fed/pasture-raised mince is on special or an offer being made by my market stall or online re-gen farmer.
- Decide on a couple of ‘cuisine types’ I’m going to focus on. Ie, maybe I’ll focus on French and Moroccan, or Italian and Chinese or, as I did below, Italian and Japanese – if you pick two cuisines to focus on for your week as it relates to mince-based snacks and meals, 3-4 of which make up our week’s meals here, I’d say, as well as after school snacks or quick breakfasts on early sports mornings.
- From those two cuisines, you can then do everything that overlaps in both cuisines – ie, “Meatball making base-line” steps that you’ll see below, and then, split the mix in two.
- From there, you then make your two cuisine ‘type’ mince mixes.
- From there, you can then decide to just fry them all straight as little meatballs, cool and refrigerate or freeze however many you’re not confident you’ll get through (so if you live alone you’ll be freezing some vs family of 6 where you’ll get through it all within 3-4 days easily and be fine not to freeze.
- You might also decide to roll out half of the mix into meatballs, but make a few flat patties into square shape for a sandwich. My boy LOVES this variation.
- You pair with your pantry/fridge flavour helpers and enjoy plain.
- You use some for adding to a simple veggie soup or passata for a pasta sauce, or for the Japanese variety below, make a story fry of veg and throw a few meatballs in at the end.
Options. Options. Options. I’m going to be doing a mince masterclass in our Low Tox Club membership soon I think so I can talk through it all properly and answer questions.
Anyway, one of the things I do at the start of the term is ensure I have everything I need in the pantry/fridge to pass the new teen requirement of ALL FOOD APPARENTLY, which is “Is it exciting and easy enough” (Wasn’t on my parenting bingo card with my ‘I’ll eat anything” little guy till he was 14, but here we are! Anyone else experience this once the teen years were in full swing?).
At the start of each term I stock take for mayos, sauces, spices and herbs I’m likely to need in the busy weeks ahead and that I know I realistically won’t want to make if I’m getting up at 5.30am to get my boy to sports practice or record a coaching session with my business coaching students, and so…
Enter Part&Parcel. I love what Daniel and his team have done to make pantry staples that are super high quality, a little lighter on the pocket through a community model (one of his team members is a wonderful Go Low Tox course alumni student – love seeing where people end up once they’re values-aligned in their work. So cool. hey?)
Part&Parcel have a super reasonably priced range of organic herbs and spices (Lovin’ Body – 1/3 the price of Simply Organic!!) on their site, and the Good Fat Mayo range (my husband and son LOVE the chilli one!) as well as their tomato sauce/sweet chilli sauce, a significant up-level from their supermarket mainstream equivalents! If you fancy checking them out, I can gratefully offer you $20 on your first shop over $99 with the code LOWTOX20
A little pic of part of the stash that’s typical of a ‘start of term’ or ‘pantry stocktake/order’… The rest is in my favourite product highlights on Instagram.
I find myself craving a simpler way of shopping when I do. There are different places, trusted, ethical small businesses, and then saving money where I can in bulk buying, and things like Part&Parcel where there’s a discount if you are a member and then supermarkets for savings on things like coconut cream, Aldi olive oil, dark chocolate. Have you found yourself shifting the way you buy now?
Another tip I have is “You can only serve yourselves a TINY amount of sauce/mayo at a time – no harm in giving yourselves more if you want it, but no ‘huge blob’ where 1/3 is left on the plate. Little changes and bigger appreciation for the preciousness of food, can go a long way if we teach these things explicitly.
I’ve also found that having a conversation regularly around food waste and prioritising what needs eating to be especially helpful with family, to save money and protect the quality of the items you want to buy into your home – we’ve wasted so much less since I started the “here’s what everyone’s taking to work/school for lunch to get finished up today” policy. No complaints now. Everyone knows I can’t be the only hoover in the family responsible for leftovers, and we’ve cut our waste to save money rather than cutting our quality too much. I’d love to hear how you’re tackling rising food costs.
Anyway, I hope you enjoy the recipe/efficiency idea below, which is about using mince two ways for easy meatballs. It’s a weekly feature, rotating through different spice ideas at our house – remember – if you keep the ratio of herbs/spices to mince amount respected, then you really can have a play with this and move through all sorts of cuisines over the weeks, to create variety and excitement in flavour, instead of variety through endless different recipes.
Can’t wait to hear what you think. Enjoy!
Meatballs batching - Italian and Asian meatballs with half the work
Ingredients
Basic meatball overlap ingredients - all of this first grouypyou will measure and mix and then divide it to go on to make the two varieties for variation over the following 2-3 days.
- 700 grams beef
- 500 grams pork Or you can use all of one kind of mince or chicken mince too
- 1 egg For an egg free version you can do 1.5tsp flaxseed powder mixed with 3 tbsp water to make a binding gel
- 3 tbsp gluten free blend flour or buckwheat flour or tapioca flour or teff flour or green banana flour.
- 2 pinches pepper
- 1 carrot fine grated or blender chopped to fine
- 1 zucchini grated, or blender chopped to 'fine' with the juice squeezed out of it in a clean tea towel
- 2 cloves garlic crushed or blender chopped to fine with the carrot and zucchini
Italian Ingredients if doing the italian version
- 1/4 cup passata
- 1 tbsp mixed italian seasoning
- 1 tsp dried basil leaves (optional)
- 1 tbsp pesto (I used the one from Part&Parcel
Japanese Ingredients
And then also prep into a little jar or jug to have ready to add to the Japanese version:
- 1/4 cup stock (vegetable, beef or chicken stock are all fine)
- 1 tbsp tamari
- 1/2 - 1 tsp honey to make a sticky sauce
Instructions
Basic mix
- Mix all of the basic meatball overlap ingredients.
- Then split mix into 2 bowls and make your two different types of seasonings.
Italian Mix + Cooking
- To cook, heat up a large pan with a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil to medium heat.
- Roll into small meatballs about 1 inch spheres so they’re bite-sized, dropping them in as soon as they’re formed and cook for about 7-8 minutes on all sides until cooked through.
Japanese Mix + Cooking
- To cook, heat up a large frying pan with 1 tbsp coconut or sesame oil on medium.
- Roll into small meatballs about 1 inch spheres so they’re bite-sized, dropping them in as soon as they’re formed and cook for about 7-8 minutes on all sides until cooked through.
- Once browned, you can then add the sticky sauce ingredients t create a delicious sticky glaze and enjoy them hot for dinner with veggies or my soba noodle dish, or cold in lunch boxes - pack them a little serviette for sticky hands!
Notes
Cook’s note for the Italian Variation
You could easily add 1/2 cup chicken stock and 1/2 cup passata and turn this into a pasta sauce, otherwise they’re great as they are for easy snacks and lunchboxes. You could also heat up 2-3 cups chicken, beef or veggie stock and chop a few veggies through it, add some little mini pasta shapes, and throw in the meatballs for an Italian chicken, vegetable, noodle soup! See? One method, many 'recipes variations' for variety minus needing lots more recipe-learning brainspace. Winning!Cook's note for the Japanese Variation
You could make a simple favourite veggie stirfry with cashews, and cut your Japanese meatballs in half so they heat quicker, and toss your meatballs through the stir fry and enjoy as is or with some steamed rice.We took half of each of both types to a beach picnic and they were all gone pretty quickly – a crowd hit! The other half of the Italian meatball mix went into a veggie/buckwheat noodle soup in some basic chicken stock the next night for dinner, and the rest of the Japanese ones made it a day for teen lunch, my lunch in a salad and afterschool snacks. Done and dusted!
Exhibit A: That Good Fat Chilli Mayo and also the Yuzu Sodaly from Part&Parcel
I dread to think the profit margins Woolies squeezes out of these excellent small businesses – much prefer to buy it from another small business as my way of still getting something I’d be getting anyway, that at the member price, isn’t much of a price difference at all, in my experience!
So – are you inspired to cook two ways, once, after reading this? Any questions? Anything you’d want me to include in a demo class when I do one?
Fire away, and most importantly, enjoy!
