Mel's "I Can't Believe It's Turkey" Meatballs and Thick Spaghetti

Meatballs are a great delivery system for bold flavors because you can incorporate all kinds of herbs and spices  into the meat. I came up with this recipe when I was cooking Giada deLaurentiis’s turkey meatballs recipe and was missing the parsley and fresh garlic, but it was so cold out that I didn’t want to run to the store. I had some sofrito at home and used that as a substitute. It made for a lighter and more flavorful meatball; it had that rich, meaty flavor you can usually only get with beef. Using sofrito also meant no chopping and less cleanup work for me… yay! I made sofrito a permanent part of this recipe and never looked back.

Ingredients for the meat balls:

• 1 package of lean ground turkey (1 – 1.4 lbs)
• 1/3  cup of plain bread crumbs
• 1/4 cup of grated high quality Parmesan cheese (you will not get the same sharp flavor with the Kraft version)
• ¼ teaspoon of sea salt or ½ teaspoon of kosher salt
• ½ teaspoon of ground black pepper
• 4 tablespoons of sofrito
• 1 heaping tablespoon of ketchup
• 1 large egg
• 2 tablespoons of olive oil (for browning the meatballs in the pan)

Instructions for the meatballs:

Add all of the ingredients, except for the olive oil, into a large bowl and mix by hand until incorporated (do not over-mix).

Using light pressure, shape the meat into balls about the size of golf balls or slightly smaller.

Arrange them on a sheet pan lined with aluminum foil until you've used all the meat from that bowl.

Heat the 2 tablespoons of olive oil on a large non-stick pan with medium high heat and carefully drop each ball into the pan.

Brown on all sides.

Lower the heat to a medium low simmer. Add half of a 24 oz jar of your favorite spaghetti sauce and cook for ten minutes. You can add additional olive oil to the sauce if you want it thinner. I prefer olive oil instead of water because it thins the sauce without making the meatballs mushy or diluting the flavor.

You can cut open the largest meatball and if there is no pink in the middle then you know it’s done. You should turn off the heat at this point otherwise your meatballs will overcook and come out dry.

Ingredients for the spaghetti:

Half or a whole package of thick spaghetti (you can use regular, sprouted, or whole wheat spaghetti if you want). I used Barrilla.

Half to an entire jar of your favorite pasta sauce. I like Newman’s All Natural Tomato and Basil Bombolina.

A large pot of water

1 – 4 teaspoons of salt

Instructions for the spaghetti:

Fill a pot with cold water and salt to taste (the 1 – 4 teaspoons depends on the amount of water and spaghetti you use and how salty you like it). If  you have fresh spaghetti, wait until the water is boiling then add it in and cook until al dente. With dry spaghetti, you add it in with the cold water, only when the water starts to boil do you time it for the 8 – 11 minutes until it’s al dente. Capiche?

Strain the cooked spaghetti, mix in a little bit of good olive oil and serve it on a plate with the sauce and meatballs on top. I like to keep the meatballs and spaghetti  separate until the food is served in order to give guests the option of how much sauce they want.