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Dinner

Turkey meatballs + marinara + whole-grain pasta

The dinner nobody argues about. Make a double batch and freeze half raw.

Servings
4
Total
30 min
Skill
Easy

What you need

Ingredients

Making for

4 servings

  • Ground turkey (lean)0.25 lb
  • Whole-grain pasta4 oz
  • Marinara sauce0.5 cup
  • Eggs0.25 each
  • Garlic cloves0.5 each

Quantities scale linearly with servings. Round to the nearest practical amount when shopping.

Steps

  1. 1

    One egg per pound, and do not skip it

    1 lb ground turkey, 1 egg, 2 cloves minced garlic, salt and pepper. The egg is the binder. Lean turkey has little fat to hold itself together and without the egg the meatballs crumble into the sauce.

  2. 2

    Mix it barely, then stop

    Combine with your hands until it just comes together, about fifteen seconds. Worked hard, ground meat goes dense and springy, and turkey shows this far more than beef.

  3. 3

    Wet hands, golf balls, hot pan

    Wet hands stop the mix sticking. Roll about 16 balls the size of a golf ball. Brown them in a hot skillet for 6 to 8 minutes, turning, or spread on a sheet pan at 400F for 15. They do not need to be cooked through here.

    7:00

  4. 4

    Finish them in the sauce

    Two cups of marinara into the pan, meatballs in, lid on, 10 minutes on low. They finish cooking in the sauce, which keeps them moist and puts the turkey flavour into the sauce rather than leaving it in the pan.

    10:00

  5. 5

    Pasta last, and save a mug of the water

    Whole-grain pasta to the box time. Before draining, keep a mug of the cooking water and add a splash to the sauce. The starch in it is what makes sauce cling to pasta instead of sliding off into the bottom of the bowl.

Coach's notes

  • Roll the second batch raw onto a tray, freeze, then bag them. Straight from frozen into sauce with 10 extra minutes and dinner needs no thought at all.
  • Lean ground turkey is roughly 22 g of protein per 4 oz, comparable to beef with much less saturated fat.
  • Check the marinara label. Plenty of jars carry 10 g of sugar a serving, and the plain ones taste better anyway.
  • Whole-grain pasta genuinely matters on a training day. White pasta is gone from the system in about an hour.