Guest Post: Pesto-Parmesan Meatballs Recipe
Hey guys! Lucky for you, Mariel and Mary Anne from the fabulous budget-cooking blog Feast On the Cheap are sharing a delicious meatball recipe with you today. I was especially excited when Mariel told me she would be sharing a meat recipe. As you may have noticed, my blog is a little lacking in this area. This particular recipe looks fabulous, don’t you agree? I’m super excited to try it myself. A big thanks to these two talented ladies for guest posting today. I hope you enjoy!
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Mariel here from Feast on the Cheap. My mom and I are so thrilled to be guest posting on Cheap Recipe Blog. We are big fans of Haley’s budget-conscious philosophy and even bigger fans of her incredibly humbling food photography. Hopefully we can do her proud with this dish!
When my one-year-old son first started eating table food, I was still at a place in my post-partum “adventure” where cooking felt a bit Sisyphean. I’d browse inspiring recipes, print them out, buy all the ingredients and then they’d sit untouched in the fridge. I tended to rely heavily on Whole Foods’ prepared and packaged meals, justifying the sky-high price tag by telling myself it was the next best thing to home-cooking.
One of my son’s favorite meals was spaghetti with pesto-Parmesan chicken meatballs from their poultry department. But we ran through the small package pretty quickly and although delicious, they were a lot saltier than I’d like for my little one.
Once I got back into the kitchen in earnest, this was one of the first things I decided to recreate.
Since we don’t eat much red meat and because my guy is now drinking cow’s milk, which is lower in iron than formula, I went with beef instead of chicken and snuck in some spinach.
These are absolutely heavenly, just like “mama” might make and they’re a total snap to prepare. They take all of five minutes of actual hands-on time, which feels miraculous when that’s about all the time you have to get dinner ready.
More Great Meatball Recipes
- Paleo confetti chicken meatballs
- Paleo zucchini meatballs with creamy tomato sauce
- My Norwegian grandma’s meatball recipe
- Creamy Swedish meatballs with aromatic spices
- Chicken banh mi meatballs
Pesto-Parmesan Meatballs
The grand total for this recipe assuming a “well-stocked” kitchen: $14.51 Cost per meatball: $1.20.
Ingredients
- 1 1/4 pound lean ground beef
- 3/4 cup Italian-style breadcrumbs
- 1/3 cup basil pesto
- 1/4 cup fresh spinach, chopped finely
- 1/4 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese
- 1 extra large egg, lightly beaten
- A pinch of salt and pepper
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 375F. Line a baking sheet with foil and spray with Pam or cooking spray.
- In a large bowl, combine all ingredients and mix thoroughly with your (clean) hands. Roll the meatball mixture into racquetball-size balls (somewhere between a golf ball and a tennis ball). Place meatballs onto prepared baking sheet, spacing about 1-2 inches apart.
- Bake for 10 minutes then flip and bake for another 10 minutes, or until cooked through. Serve alone or atop spaghetti with marinara.
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These sound wonderful! And I bet the pesto just takes them over the top!
This recipe for meatballs is ‘over the top’. They look absolutely wonderful and can hardly wait to try them. YUM!