If good meatballs don’t scream romance, I’m not sure what does 😉 . I was fretting a little that my vegan meatball recipe that I had planned for today isn’t very Valentine’s Day suitable so I added a little red tomato sauce to them and voila, the recipe is very current again.
In all seriousness, we have been enjoying these new vegan meatballs for a while now and I think they may be my favourite ‘meatballs’ on the blog so far, so I thought I would share so that you could experience a little meatball love yourself 🙂 . These have been inspired by IKEA meatballs, which we both really enjoyed but which I was dismayed to discover contain a lot of fat – like ‘you don’t need to add any oil to the pan to fry them’ amount of fat. I did enjoy them and I am not vowing not to have them ever again, but certainly not that often. This discovery has prompted me to experiment. What I really liked about them was a bit of chew and resistance that is hard to replicate with plants without using something like vital wheat gluten, which would render these not gluten-free. IKEA achieves it using pea protein but as I didn’t have any, I thought that it may be worth trying with psyllium husks which are used to replace gluten in gluten-free baking and I had it in my cupboard. It worked a charm once I played around with the quantities. I used two different shiitake mushrooms, fresh and dried. The former contribute texture and flavour as they are famous for their depth of flavour and meatiness, the latter, which was originally a leftover from a mushroom stock I made for a mushroom risotto, contributes even more flavour and tackles waste, which I personally like. Whenever I make something that calls for mushroom stock like my vegan ramen, risotto or bolognese and I cannot be bothered to chop rehydrated mushrooms finely, I freeze them and then add them to my meatballs to enhance their taste and nothing gets thrown away. I hate waste so that kind of efficiency really appeals to me. These guys are flavoursome, meaty with a bit of a chew – perfect over a saucy pasta or in a sandwich. I hope you’ll give them a try and enjoy them as much as we have!
30 ml / 2 tbsp vegetable oil, extra for frying 1 medium onion, diced finely 4 garlic cloves, diced finely 2 x 400 g / 14 oz plum tomatoes 2 tsp Italian herbs or ¼ dried thyme, basil, parsley, rosemary, marjoram and ¾ tsp oregano ¾ tsp salt, adjust to taste ½ tsp black pepper, to taste a good pinch chilli flakes (optional) ½-1 tsp sugar (optional)
