Pork Meatballs with Apples, Onions + Toasted Walnuts

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If you would have told me a year ago that I would now be cooking and eating meatballs, I may have thought you were crazy. But, here we are and that is exactly what I am doing. I have been buying local ground pork almost weekly and these meatballs are one of my favorite creations using it. They are a combination of ground pork, onions, apples, toasted walnuts, dried thyme, nutmeg, salt, pepper and eggs. That’s it.

So, they’re definitely different than a traditional meatball. There are no breadcrumbs in these. I did a bit of research and found several recipes that didn’t use breadcrumbs successfully, so I decided to leave them out. Out of everything in these meatballs, not one ingredient or flavor stands out in particular to me – it all just sort of comes together very well. They taste like warming fall nourishment. As far as how to serve them, we have done them several different ways – with spaghetti squash and a healthy serving of pecorino Romano cheese, with a lemon tahini sauce and plain with a side of roasted cauliflower. When I was testing these, there were so many days when I packed a few of these meatballs with a bunch of roasted veggies for my lunch – no sauce, no cheese and they were just amazing. Flavor-wise, I don’t know how they would be with a red sauce, but I think that they would taste amazing with a garlicky alfredo-ish sauce. That’ll be next on my list.

One other note on this recipe – I only tested this with ground pork, so I’m not sure how these would be with another type of ground meat. I do feel like the pork lends itself very well with the other flavors going on in this recipe.

Enjoy this fall nourishment!







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Pork Meatballs with Apples, Onions + Toasted Walnuts

Ingredients

  • 1 cup walnuts,
  • 2 tablespoons butter
  • 1 onion
  • 2 small apples
  • 4 garlic cloves, minced
  • 2 pounds ground pork
  • 2 eggs
  • 2 teaspoons salt
  • 2 teaspoons thyme
  • 2 teaspoons nutmeg
  • 1 teaspoon black pepper
  • Juice from one lemon

Instructions

  1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper.

  2. Roughly chop onion and apple. Heat 2 tablespoons butter in a pan over medium high heat and add onion, apple and minced garlic. Cook until slightly softened and slightly caramelized.

  3. Remove onion, apple and garlic mixture to a bowl and let cool slightly.

  4. Add walnuts to the pan, and cook over medium high heat until toasted. Remove from pan and place walnuts in a food processor. Process until crumb like in texture. Remove and set aside.

  5. Add onion, apple and garlic mixture to the food processor and process until slightly pureed, but with chunks remaining.

  6. In a large bowl, mix together ground pork, eggs, salt, thyme, nutmeg, black pepper, lemon juice, walnuts and onion, apple and garlic mixture. Mix until well combined.

  7. Form meatballs and place on prepared baking sheet. Bake for 15 minutes at 400 degrees, or until internal temperature is almost at 160 degrees. Broil for 5 minutes to brown the top of the meatballs and to finish cooking.

 

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