A warm and homely meal packed full of flavour!
Ingredients:
I have used half spaghetti and half zucchini spirals (zoodles) not because pasta is ‘bad’ (because it’s not! It’s delicious and a great source of fibre and whole grains), but as an easy way to include more veggies in your diet. For a lot of people, it can be hard to eat enough veggies and small tweaks like this make it a lot easier to achieve our daily 5 serves. I promise you it absolutely does not ruin the taste at all, in fact, it may even taste better!
Adaptations:
If you want to save time you don’t have to bake the meatballs, instead you could cook the meatballs and sauce for a further 5 minutes in the pan, or until the meatballs are cooked through
Meal prep:
This recipe is great for meal prep! Store it in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 5 days or make a double batch of the meatballs and freeze half for a quick and easy meal another day
Healthy Baked Meatballs
Ingredients
- 500 g extra lean beef mince
- 2 tbsp fresh oregano chopped
- 1/3 cup breadcrumbs
- 1 egg
- 1 pinch salt
- 1 pinch pepper
- 1 tsp olive oil
- 1 tsp garlic finely chopped
- 700 g passata
- 3 tbsp tomato paste
- 2 tbsp fresh basil chopped
- 1/4 cup water
- 100 g baby spinach
- 1/4 cup shredded cheese
- 2 zucchinis
- 250 g spaghetti
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 200c.
- In a bowl mix together the mince, oregano, breadcrumbs, egg, salt and pepper.
- Roll the mince mixture into golf ball size balls
- Add the olive oil to a large frying pan over medium heat. Place the meatballs in the pan and brown on each side. Turning after roughly 2-3 minutes on each side
- Remove the meatballs from the pan and place in a large heatproof baking dish
- In the previous pan, mix together the garlic, passata, tomato paste, basil and water. Let it simmer for 2 minutes before mixing in the baby spinach. Simmer for a further 2 minutes.
- Add the sauce to the dish with the meatballs and top with cheese. Bake for 20 minutes
- Meanwhile, spiralize the zucchini (or peel it into ribbons) and cook spaghetti according to packet instructions. After the spaghetti has cooked, don’t tip out the water.
- In the pasta water, blanch the zoodles for 2 minutes and then mix it with the cooked pasta
- Serve the zoodles and spaghetti with the meatballs and sauce.