Vegan Meatballs

As you can probably tell by now, I love feeding people.  My husband and I had our parents over for dinner on Saturday night and I was super excited to cook for them.  I love having people over and you can guarantee I'm going to make way too much food (who doesn't love leftovers?).  Having people over (especially on weekends) allows me to really bring it to the waltz when it comes to meal prep.

Since our parents were our guests I'm made everything from scratch. I'm kicked the husband and child out of the house (don't worry they had fun seeing Santa) so I could really get to work (and clean this place up!).  I dressed the puggle up in her best Christmas outfit and got to work…

I mentioned my sauce recipe on here before so that was in the works because I'm made (drumroll) vegan  meatballs!  How do you make vegan meatballs you may ask, well I'll tell you.  The main ingredient for my meatballs is mushrooms.  Don't turn your nose up yet.  Mushrooms are a nice meat substitute because (not to be redundant but) they have a nice meatiness to them.  You've probably seen portobello mushroom burgers on menus before.  My husband it not really a big fan of mushrooms but he likes when they are disguised in a recipe.  I've tested these meatballs out on him before and he approves so stay with me...

Meatballs are fun to make.  Vegan meatballs are especially fun because you don't have to fret about contamination from meat or eggs.  You can really get your hands dirty (literally) with vegan meatballs (after washing them first of course!).

I've seen quite a few recipes for vegan meatballs online, and I took inspiration here and there depending on my family's preferences.  My (now vegan) husband always talks about his nana's meatball recipe and how they had oatmeal in them.  Of course I couldn't make vegan meatballs without oatmeal so I incorporated that into mine.  Here's what I did…

Ingredients

• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 1/4 cups oatmeal (uncooked)
• 10 ounces of sliced mushrooms 
• 1 chopped onion
• 3 cloves of garlic chopped
• 1 shallot (you don't really need the shallot, but I love them!)
• 1/4 cup of whole wheat flour
• vegetable oil (for frying)
• salt and pepper to taste

First in a pan I sautéed the onion, garlic and shallot in olive oil until they were lightly browned.  I then added the veggies to the Vitamix (you can use a food processor if you don't have one).  I added my flour and oatmeal (add spices here!) to the mix.  

You should get a sticky brown mixture and you should not be able to differentiate between onion, oatmeal and so on.  This mix is going to be pretty hot after sautéing the veggies so let it sit in the fridge for a little bit.  Once it's cooled I scooped out about two tablespoons at a time and rolled it into a ball.  You can really make you meatballs any size (tiny ones would be great for sliders!), plus you don't really have to worry about internal temperature (since it's vegan!)

You know I like to be healthy, but sometimes you need to fry…these meatballs are a perfect example.  I put my meatballs in a pan with some vegetable oil.  I cooked and flipped them over medium heat until the meatballs were browned on the outside.   

I then added my meatballs to my homemade sauce and served over pasta.  I know they're not your traditional Italian meatballs but everyone seemed to enjoy them!  Cheers!