New Recipe Review- Baked Meatballs

For my new recipe this week, I tried Alton Brown's baked meatball recipe from the Food Network. I had wanted to try doing something out-of-the-ordinary with meatballs for a while, but I had trouble finding any original recipes. They were all basically ground meat, egg, Italian bread crumbs, garlic, basil, and Romano cheese- which is the same way I've always made them. There had to be something different out there!

So when I found this recipe, I definitely thought it had what I was looking for.

Of course, I made changes. We're trying to be a bit more health-conscious (and budget-friendly for goodness sakes!), so I just used ground turkey instead of the ground lamb, sirloin, and pork. I also chopped up and sautéed some mushrooms, eggplant, and zucchini for extra veggies, in addition to the spinach. I think I made them a bit bigger than the recipe called for, since I only got 16 instead of 20 (and had to bake them a couple minutes longer). I put them in the crockpot with the tomato sauce on low for about an hour to mix the flavors.

 Yummy sautéeing vegetables.

Meat- GOOOOD, cheese- GOOOD, veggies- GOOOOOD. (ha, at least how I see it!)

 All ready to bake

Get in that sauce!!

I served them over linguine, and they were really good! I know this sounds crazy, but I think the veggies actually gave them a meatier flavor (especially with using turkey instead of beef). It wasn't much more difficult than regular meatballs, so I'll probably be making them this way from now on!

Original recipe can be found here.