Greek Meatballs and Tzatziki Sauce

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Ground turkey. You sure can do a lot with it, and it gets boring if you don't figure out what.  I made some meatballs the other week with shrimp in them which were a hit with people visiting, so I went back to that well last night when it came time to cook up some chow.

This time, I made some meatballs which had a little kick and a citrus twist, and to compliment them, I found a recipe for a healthy (read, made without oil, etc) version of Tzatziki sauce and changed it up just a little bit.  The result: Hot, slightly-spicy meatballs with a tang to them, and cool dill-flavored cucumber sauce to dip with.

Really good.  And we also have a recipe for over roasted cauliflower which Dawn whipped up last night to go with them.  She made some of the Meatless Meatballs from Trader Joe's for herself instead of these, being a veggiesaurus.  Bear in mind if you make this, the sauce takes a little time since you have to drain the cucumbers and let the sauce hang out a few hours (well not really, but it tastes better that way).

Greek Meatball ingredients:

• 1 pound lean ground turkey (or whatever you prefer)
• 1 small jalapeno, finely diced and seeded
• 1/2 a lemon's worth of zest. (Save the lemon itself, you need it for the sauce!)
• 1 tsp kosher salt
• 1 tsp ground black pepper
• 3 Tbsp oat bran (or seasoned bread crumbs if you prefer)
• 2 egg whites
• 2 garlic cloves, minced
• 1/3 cup onion, finely diced

You could lightly saute the onion, jalapeno and garlic if you like to bring out the flavors. I just put them in raw.  So basically, just mix all of the above together very well, and make meatballs which are no more than about an inch wide.  If you go too big, they might not cook through all the way.

Sizzlin' Meatballs, aw yeah.

Heat a nonstick pan to medium or medium high, then lightly spray with nonfat veggie oil and put in the first group of meatballs, leave a little space between each for turning.  Brown them and then turn, repeat until all but one side of each are browned.  When you turn them onto the 'last' side, pour about 1/3 cup of water into the pan and cover it, let the steam cook the meatballs for about 4 minutes.

Tzatziki Sauce Ingredients. (Makes about 3 cups - 1/2 this recipe if you want less!)

• 3 cups of nonfat Greek yogurt (plain)
• 1 garlic clove, chopped up
• 2 medium size cucumbers
• 1 Tbsp kosher salt
• 1 Tbsp dill (Fresh is better, but I used from the spice cabinet and it was fine!)
• Juice from 1 lemon (which you should have thanks to the meatballs!) - it's about 3 Tbsp.
• Kosher salt + ground black pepper to taste

Preparing the cucumbers (35 minutes):



Draining Cucumbers



1. Peel the cucumbers (potato peeler works for this)

2. Slice in half the long way

3. Use a sharp spoon or melon baller and gently scrape out the seeds, leaving empty 'boats' only.

4. Slice the cucumbers into thick slices

5. Put the sliced cucumber in a large colander or strainer in the sink, sprinkle on 1 Tbsp of kosher salt

6. Let them sit for 30 minutes. This is to drain the moisture from them.

You can rinse the salt off if you want,but most is gone.

Making the sauce:



Finished Tzatziki Sauce



1. Put the cucumber, garlic, lemon juice, dill and a few grinds of black pepper into a food processor.

2. Process until well blended, but don't totally liquefy - very slightly chunky is good.

3. Mix the results into the Greek yogurt in a large bowl.

4. Taste - at this point add a little salt if you think it needs some.

5. Put it int he fridge a couple of hours to let the flavors sink in.

TIP: I just saved the empty container (with lid) from the Greek yogurt, and used it to store the finished sauce. This sauce will keep for 2-3 days so plan to nom nom nom pretty soon.

3 cups is a lot of sauce - but this stuff is really tasty and good to eat on pita chips (which I can't have at the moment) - and to dip veggies into, etc.  Of course in this particular case, you dip the meatballs into a bit of it.  The flavor worked out really well with the tangy meatballs.

I'm going to give a shout-out to the following website, which I stole this Tzatziki Sauce recipe from - it has some great steps and pix of preparing the cucumbers in case my version of the instructions didn't make a damn bit of sense to you. ;)

Kalyn's Kitchen