The BEST Textured Italian Meatballs Recipe You'll Ever Taste
Equipment
- Mixing bowl
- Wooden spoon
- Large baking sheet
Ingredients
- 2.5 cups cooked green lentils
- 1 medium white or brown onion, very finely chopped
- 1/3rd cup rolled oats
- 1/3rd cup nutritional yeast
- 1/3rd cup finely chopped walnuts
- 3 Tbsp fresh, finely chopped parsley finely chopped parsley
- 2.5 Tbsp tomato paste
- 1.5 Tbsp dried basil
- 1 tsp paprika
- ½ tsp thyme
- Cracked black pepper to taste
- ½ tsp salt optional
Instructions
- Pre-heat over to 190C (374F) You may also wish to use your air-fryer on highest heat for roughly 20 minutes.
- Line a large baking sheet with tin foil or parchment paper
- Next add your cooked lentils to a large mixing bowl and use a fork to smoosh them down. Do not make them too mushy as you want texture. The idea is just to break about half of them down.
- Add the rest of your ingredients and mix thoroughly. You're going to have to get your hand in here to help with the mixing process and to roll your balls, so don't be shy.
- Once your meatball mix is well combined (but not smushed into a paste), you are ready to get rolling. This mix makes about 18-20 meatballs. If you make them bigger or smaller than this, you will have to adjust cooking times. An easy way to make more even portions of the mix is to flatten it down in the bottom of your mixing bowl and do a rough split with a knife into about 10 pieces. You can then split each piece in two before rolling. To roll, just take your meatball mixture between the palm of your hands and gently roll, then place on your prepared baking sheet. Your hands may get a little sticky, but you can scrape them down on the blunt side of a non-sharp dinner knife back into the bowl.
- Bake for roughly 26 minutes just above the middle of your oven.
- Serve with pre-heated marinara sauce which you can find a great recipe for on this website (I have left the link above this recipe block, along with the link for the 2 minute parmesan). It's always best to add your crispy meatballs last minute to your sauce once you have heated it up, which helps the meatballs stay crispy on their outside.