Two Packets of turkey mince, I'm forever seeing Turkey mince in the supermarket, marked down for quick sale. Maybe no one else is buying it but that's fine, all the more for me at much cheapness. These two packs were about 90 pence each from Asda, throw it in a bowl and jig it around a bit to get it all loosened up.
Season with pepper and vegeta, bit of garlic powder, oregano and I also found some cous-cous in the cupboard, so I used half a packet of that thrown in for padding and to help absorb the excess moisture, you can use stuffing mix as well, sage and onion or whatever, this helps hold ones balls together later on.
If you haven't got a mandolin then get one, it's the poor mans Moulinex. Chop up four large onions half rings and half finely cut, throw the fine cut onion into the bowl with the mince and start the rings sautéing gently in olive oil ...
...while you start forming the mince mixture in to balls.
Before you go any further, form a bit of the mixture into a small burger shape, about the size of a Baby-Bell, and cook this in a teaspoon of olive oil in a non-stick pan, make sure it is completely cooked and scoff it, see what the flavour is like and if you need to add anything.
Roll in seasoned flour, I seasoned my flour with black pepper and Vegeta ...
I first found vegeta years ago in Greece, it's used all over mainland Europe and it is just starting to show up on UK supermeerkat shelves. It is like a salt, savoury food flavouring and I use it now in pretty much every savoury dish I make, in place of salt. Get some and try it.
So once you are happy with your balls, start gently frying them, this should help then stay together in the tomato sauce.
The tomato sauce was just a plain tin off chopped tomatoes. nothing fancy. They were tipped into the sautéed onions from earlier and I added another tin full of water from washing the sauce from the bottom of the tin. Most of this will cook off as steam during the simmering of the meatballs. If I'm in the mood for making my sauce fancy, I add vinegar, brown sugar and cinnamon but this time I couldn't be bothered with the faff, so I just put a big squirt of squeezy ketchup instead, because I'm common like that.
So simmer your balls gently, on a low heat, so your balls don't stick, and agitate them from time to time, just to make sure they are OK.
During the simmering, I stir in a good teaspooney sized dollop of yeast extract and let it mingle and melt through the tomato sauce, it gives it a bit more of a meaty beefy flavour and makes me do NOM NOM NOM noises.
Out of the two packs of turkey mince I made 12 meetballs in tomato sauce to go in the freezer...
...and 8 or so burgers.
After I had taken the 12 meatballs and put them in the sauce, I left the remaining meatballs in the frying pan and squished them with the spatula so they looked more burgery and fit in to a roll better than a meatball does.
I make them this size rather than big burger size for the same reason, because most of the general supermarket rolls aren't that huge and of course this make it go further NOM NOM NOM etc.
I ended up eating my burgers with fresh tomatoes in balsamic glaze and garlic bread cut into burger sized slices and caramelised onion chutney. I then lay on the floor in a food coma.
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