Are you sick of the same old protein rotation? Chicken, beef ,chicken, chicken, chicken......Watch another episode of Class B RV cooking with Christine from Irene Iron Fitness. This week she makes Greek kofta meatballs (beef, lamb combo) in her tiny kitchen in an Airstream Sprinter van. Full Recipe Link: https://ireneironfitness.com/greek-ko... These Greek Kofta Meatballs with Tzatziki will make your kitchen smell like a Greek restaurant. The warm, sweet scent of the spices mixed with the fresh herbs create the most comforting aroma. Allspice, nutmeg, and cayenne are pulled from the pantry for this recipe. This unusual combo makes people say, "mmmmm, what is in this?". When you are trying to consistently eat healthy it is all about enjoying what you eat...day after day, after week, month after month. How do you break up the monotony? Do you find yourself rotating the same menu items over and over? Having your staples is great and also important to whip up a recipe on the quick. But what if just changing the spices you mix in can change the entire result of the recipe? I try to do this often with my meatballs and my bunless burgers (such as my Greek mint turkey burger). Have a great recipe for a meatball, and change the spices involved to give it a fresh taste like we do here with this Greek kofta. What the heck is a kofta? Wikipedia defines Koftas as "a family of meatball or meatloaf dishes found in the Indian subcontinent, South Caucasian, Middle Eastern, Balkan, and Central Asian cuisines. In the simplest form, koftas consist of balls of minced or ground meat - usually beef, chicken, lamb, or pork - mixed with spices and/or onions". Traditionally, koftas are formed around a skewer and grilled. I do not have a grill or skewers in my tiny class B RV kitchen. None the less I still make these meatballs in the shape of a kebab sans the skewer. Serve these bad-boys up with my homemade tzatziki sauce. The cool cucumber mint dipping sauce pairs so well with the rich koftas and brightens up the dish. One of my best food prep tips for being consistent with healthy eating is to have pre-cooked proteins ready to eat throughout the week. This recipe is perfect to have around, for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Serve these on top of a greek salad, with rice, or with a simple tomato/cucumber salad on the side.
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Video Summary
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Christine from Irene Iron Fitness demonstrates how to make Greek Kofta meatballs paired with a homemade tzatziki sauce. The recipe focuses on using pantry spices to create a flavorful, versatile meal suitable for appetizers, entrees, or weekly meal prep.
Hi, I'm Christine with Irene Iron Fitness. Thanks for joining. Everybody gets stuck in a rut where
you make the same boring dishes week after week, so this time try these greek kofta meatballs
and shake things up using a variety of spices right from your pantry. With these greek kofta
meatballs we're going to serve a tzatziki sauce and it can be really easy to make this on your
own at home rather than buying it at the store. So first we're going to prepare the tzatziki sauce
and we're going to start with a cucumber, english cucumber. We're going to take a quarter of it to
use on the sauce. Next we're going to grate it. We're going to use this grater and you want to
grate it into a strainer and the purpose is to get all the juices out of the cucumber so it doesn't
make your sauce runny. So this is going to sit just like this while we do the rest of the preparation
for the sauce and the meatballs. We're going to let this strain out as long as possible. We're
going to add it into the sauce at the end so just put it aside for now. In today's spices we're using
salt and pepper. Salt and pepper in both the sauce and the meatballs. We have dill. The dill is just
going in the sauce. We have nutmeg, cayenne, and allspice. Those three are going in the meatballs.
While the cucumber is straining in the background we're going to get the rest of the tzatziki sauce
ready and to do that I'm just going to take some yogurt, put it in a bowl, and then I'm going to
mix in salt, pepper, dill, some grated garlic, and some fresh lemon juice. The grated garlic
is going to get better as it sits with the yogurt so that's why we want to do this right now so that
it can sit and mellow while we cook the meatballs. Next we're going to get the mixture ready for our
meatballs. So we're going to use a food processor for this. If you don't have one that's okay just
finely chop the best you can. My food processor is quite small so I might have to work in two
different batches but we're going to take an onion. We're going to take garlic and fresh parsley
and we're going to get all processed in your processor and put it in a bowl so that we can
mix it with our meat. So we have our mixture ready with the onions, garlic, and parsley. That's in
here. Next we're going to add in all of the spices. Mix that up well. Then we'll add in our meat. I
have one pound of beef and a half pound of lamb. After we have it all mixed together then we're
going to form the kofta meatballs. We're going to form it into 12 meatballs. There are two ounces
of meat per ball. So I'm making the meatballs here and I'm weighing out each meatball just to
make sure that they're the same size. And then traditionally these are put onto skewers so you
would have a skewer that you would fold these right around and you would put those on a grill.
I don't have a grill. I don't have skewers so I'm still mimicking the shape but I'm just going to
be putting them on my saute pan instead. If you have skewers this would be a really fun way
to do it and get the kids more excited. Anything on a stick I think is fun for the children to eat
but you could do this shape here which I'm going for one inch thick by about two to three inches
tall wide or you could do a traditional meatball. You could even make these into sliders or just
regular hamburger patties. So it's pretty versatile what you do with this mixture.
Our meatballs are ready. I have 12 of them on two plates. So you want to get these formed
before you start cooking. I have a 12 inch skillet that's getting warm on medium high heat
and I have a teaspoon of olive oil on here and I'm going to just put them in
and flip them, get them brown, get them cooked through. While these are cooking we're going to
finish the tzatziki sauce by putting that cucumber back into the mixture.
It's had time to drain so quite a bit of water came out of those cucumbers.
To finish the tzatziki sauce it's really easy. You just take your cucumbers which is now drained.
If you go ahead and push any extra moisture out that's going to help. It's going to keep your
dip from getting watery. You have that here and put it right in. Mix it. The meatballs are going
to be rich. They're going to have a lot of flavor and this tzatziki sauce is going to be great just
to wake it up a little bit and add some nice light vibrant flavor to your meatballs. And that's all
you have to do. This is ready to go so you can put in the fridge and wait for your meat to get
finished so you can serve it. The greek kafta meatballs are done. They're on this platter.
They look so nice and you could serve this as an appetizer or an entree at a party while your
guests with or without the sticks. It smells like a greek restaurant in here and I'm really excited
to eat these. I'm going to have them for lunches throughout the week. This will get me about six
lunches and I recommend trying it for your meal prep. Have something that you're excited to eat
all week long. If you like what you see please subscribe. Give me a thumbs up. Check out my
full recipe on my blog ireneironfitness.com and then meet me here next week for more.
