I will admit it…I am a sucker for Italian food. Because I have a great spaghetti sauce recipe, I just had to modify a fabulous recipe for Italian meatballs that I got from the Mom of one of my old college friends. I wanted to make it a little more whole food-based. I also wanted to replace the bread crumbs that are typically in a meatball recipe and make it gluten-free for those who are Celiac or who have a gluten intolerance.
After altering them up, they are just as divine are the originals, but with whole food ingredients that I can feel good about eating and that makes my body happy too. They are perfect for spaghetti and meatballs!
Even though I’m single I really like to make up a large batch of them, cook them, let them cool, and then freeze them. They freeze very well and it’s nice to be able to pull out a few to use for my dinner. It really makes it easy to make quick spaghetti and meatballs instead of getting a frozen dinner or fast food!
If you use ground oatmeal, then these meatballs are gluten-free. If you use almond meal (or any other nut or seed meal) then these Italian meatballs are grain-free.
Italian Meatballs
Ingredients
- 1 lb ground beef
- 1 egg
- ¼ cup plus 2 tbsp ground oatmeal or almond meal
- 2 tbsp fresh grated Parmesan cheese
- 2 tsp garlic powder or 3-4 cloves fresh garlic chopped
- 2 tsp dried parsley
- ½ tsp sea salt
Instructions
- Mix all ingredients together in large mixing bowl.
- Roll into 24 meatballs.
- Bake at 350 for 20 minutes
