When people hear meatballs, typically what comes to mind is beef meatballs in tomato sauce, over pasta. If you're from other parts of the world,
Swedish meatballs in a cream sauce may be their first association.
But as a forager and frugalista, not to mention someone who likes to change things up a lot in the kitchen, I don't generally make the typical meatballs. Sometimes I do, yes, but more often than not I make my meatballs with ground chicken or ground turkey, since I am able to buy it at a fraction of the cost of ground meat where I live.
I'm always looking for new and different ways to use greens in my kitchen, since foraging in my area (and most areas) is predominantly leafy greens of various shapes and sizes, and it gets boring to eat greens the same way ad nauseum.
A few years back, I thought that instead of the bread crumbs or ground vegetables or other fillers people add to meatballs to both stretch them out and make them more moist, since I had such an abundance of greens, why not add them into my meatballs? Ever since doing that, I realized how amazing that combination was. Added bonus- you get foods in funky new colors- bright green meatballs replacing the typical brown. Remember back in the day when
Heinz put out ketchup in a variety of colors, including green ketchup? Green meatballs are exciting and different in a similar way to that green ketchup, and I even got my girls, who typically aren't so into greens (wild or not), to really love this dish, so much so that despite the huge amount that I made, there were no leftovers.
These green meatballs taste amazing as is, and can be eaten without any sauce at all, but I made them even better by combining them with a sauce made from creamed greens, and served over
oven baked spiralized sweet potato "noodles" for myself and over rice for the kids. Simply amazing. The best part- this meal was not only frugal and delicious, it was paleo, egg free, dairy free, healthy, making my body feel great.
I've included the recipes for both the green meatballs, which can be served with whatever sauce you like, and the creamed greens, which can be served both with or without meatballs (either green ones or standard meatballs), and over whatever you like, whether grains, pasta, potatoes, etc...
I couldn't recommend these recipes more highly.
I used a combination of
nettles and
chickweed for my meatballs, and wild swiss chard/wild beet greens for my creamed sauce, but the greens you use are up to you. You can use any non bitter greens for the meatballs, foraged or store bought, such as kale, spinach,
mallow,
milk thistle, hollyhocks, etc... For the sauce, you can use any greens you'd like, even bitter ones- just make sure to de-bitter them first if using bitter ones (chop and either soak them in boiling water or bring to a boil for a few minutes, depending on their bitterness).
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My wild swiss chard. Like regular chard, only smaller. And free, |
Just a note: depending on preference, you can either blend up your onion in the food processor or not. However, if you do blend them instead of mincing them well, they will make your meatballs more watery and therefore harder to shape into perfect circles, and they will need to be boiled, not baked. Though this recipe does call for boiling the meatballs, if you just use chopped onions instead of minced, and you see the meatball mixture is firm enough to shape into balls, feel free to bake them instead.
Green Meatballs in Creamed Greens Recipe- Frugal, Paleo, Egg Free, Dairy Free and Delicious