Sustainable & Homemade Delicious Meatballs

If you are looking for a light spring meal which is filling and delicious this is the recipe for you. We are trying to continue our sustainable lifestyles and make our meals based on locally sourced produce and as many fresh items as possible. The iodine free diet means that we cannot use any preserved foods which has helped us perfect the light flavouring.

Homemade Delicious Meatballs with Spaghetti Recipe

(based on 4 servings)

• 2 slices of bread (homemade iodine free)

• 250g minced beef

• 250g minced pork 

• 1/2 tsp ground nutmeg

• 1/2 zest of a lemon 

• 1 egg yolk or 2 egg whites for iodine free 

• 1 sprig of fresh sage/thyme

• 1 sprig of fresh rosemary

• 1 onion

• 1/3 cup olive oil

• 8-10 fresh tomatoes

• 4 cloves of garlic

• 1/3 cup fresh basil

• 200g of spaghetti 

• Pecorino cheese

1. Slice the bottom of the tomatoes and place in boiling water. After approximately 30 seconds remove and place into ice cold water to cool down. You can then peel each tomato and cut in half. Take out the seeds and squeeze the discarded seeds through a sieve and save the liquid in a container. Chop the remainder of the tomatoes

2. Dice the onion, mince the garlic cloves and measure out the fresh basil and leave to one side

3. Whiz the slices of bread in a food processor and place into a large bowl to make the meatballs

4. Add the minced meat (we sometimes have a pork and beef mixture but sometimes just have 500g beef), nutmeg, lemon zest, egg yolk (for iodine free version we used egg whites) and a pinch of seasoning (bit of SAXA salt and a bit of pepper)

5. Finely chop the sage (thyme can be used instead) and the rosemary and add this to the bowl

6. Mix throughly with your hands and shape the mince mixture into small golf balls and place onto a tray

7. Heat a large pot and add the olive oil; once hot add the meatballs and brown each one and remove from pan

8. Using the same pan add the onions and sauce for a few minutes. Then add the garlic and mix well

9. Add the tomatoes and the tomato juice and bring to boil

10. Once boiling add the meatballs back into the pan and let this simmer while you make the spaghetti 

11. In another pan heat water until boiling and add SAXA salt. Then cook the spaghetti as normal

12. Serve the spaghetti and then add the meatballs with sauce on top

With the iodine free diet we searched high and low for salt with no iodine but found this very difficult. We ended up scrolling through the Macmillan forum and found that SAXA salt (in the UK) is iodine free! It was only 90p which is ridiculous, all our searching and time spent and we found it was the salt we already had in the larder!