Hello, friends. Today we’re talking Meatballs for Spring and Easter. But first! A reminder of a special offer on annual paid subscriptions. You can sign up for a year of Nuggs at a whopping 25% discount! That’s just £30 for a whole year. As a paid sub, you’ll receive an extra weekly ‘full’ recipe PLUS access to the entire Flavour Nuggets archive (all recipes go behind the paywall after 2 weeks), and a direct line to me via the chat function. Whatcha waiting for?
It’s Easter this weekend, so we’re thinking about lamb. But what if you don’t want/need a whole leg or shoulder? What if, like me, you love lamb’s richness but crave some fragrance and freshness to bounce you into spring? I am coiled! I am ready! Enter these keftedes-inspired balls. Versatile, fun and a nod to the long weekend/significant religious calendar moment, depending on your point of view, without being simply *a bit much*. My method for cooking meatballs is pretty foolproof. For context, I spent years trying to fully cook them in a frying pan before realising it’s 100% not the best method. You end up peering over them for too long, toddling them around trying to cook the centres while evenly browning the outsides. They end up *cough* more caramelised than you’d like, your hob/kitchen is outrageously speckled with spitting fat, and the moisture content leaves much to be desired. Now, I briefly brown them in a pan before flinging them on a baking tray and into the oven, where they’ll finish cooking evenly in the all-encompassing heat.
I also add a slice of white bread soaked in milk to the meatball mixture; please, don’t use dry breadcrumbs. The milk-soaked mush makes the lightest balls of all. It’s also important to use good lamb with a high fat content, and to trap that fat inside the meatball by hand-mixing until the texture becomes slightly tacky. This encourages a protein in the meat called myosin to form a sticky network, which works to trap fat and moisture. I learned this during research for my book Live Fire, for which I interviewed Mustafa Akpinar from London’s FM Mangal restaurant about his method for making Adana kebabs. He has been cooking meat over fire since he was 11, so he knows a thing or two. Anyway, the vision here was to combine a few key spices with fistfuls of dill and basil and the oileaginous zeal of lemon zest. I rarely cook lamb without cumin, but more surprising to some might be the cinnamon - just a touch. I don’t love it as a spice in general, but it brings out the sweetness of lamb so well and is undetectable in the final meatball. Give it a whirl.
How to serve these:
Light, Fresh and Herbal Lamb Meatballs 1 slice of white bread, no crusts (around 50g without crusts) Preheat the oven to 200°C (fan). Tear the bread into small pieces and combine with the milk in a small bowl, mixing it to ensure it’s coated, then picking it up with your hands and squeezing to ensure it’s soaked through. It should disintegrate into a milky mush. Toast the whole spices in a dry pan until fragrant, moving them around, then grind to a powder in a spice grinder or pestle and mortar. Combine all the ingredients with the minced lamb, a generous seasoning of salt (a bit more than you think) and some black pepper. Mix well with your hands until the meat has a slightly tacky texture - it should stick to your hands without falling off. Stop at this point; you don’t want to over-mix as this will make the meatballs tough. Using wet hands, shape the mixture into around 16 meatballs. Heat a dash of olive oil in a heavy-based pan and brown the meatballs on all sides for 1 minute or so. Transfer to a lined baking tray and cook for around 5 minutes or until a probe thermometer reads 65°C.
SUPERSIZE ME! The best sauce for your balls this week = a pistachio number that’s as versatile and easy to make as it is lick-your-fingers delicious. Plus, the easiest yoghurt and sesame flatbreads AND a recipe for lamb and harissa kebabs. Nice! Until next time, Flavour Fans x
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Tuesday, April 15, 2025
Flavour nugget #24: light, fresh and herbal lamb meatballs
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