I’m always on the hunt for a recipe that might be a keeper. All that said, I LOVE cooking and it’s hard for me not to be able to prepare a meal for my entire family where everyone’s pallet is satisfied. To throw salt on an open wound, my Husband doesn’t eat fruits or vegetables (to be fair… he drink orange juice and will eat lima beans drowned in butter and corn during the summer… I rest my case). As you can imagine dinner time is structured chaos at best. My youngest daughter and I are vegan…my Husband and oldest daughter are not. Very important to roast the black beans first, so don’t skip that step! I made enough quinoa to make these 2 weeks in a row! We’ve had with pasta sauce, but I also used as part of a Korean rice bowl with brown rice, edamame, broccoli, bbq sauce, and Siraccha! Supper delicious! Thanks so much for your great techniques! Minus fennel (just not a fan in my meatballs), all other ingredients remained as written. I used all fresh parsley (just b/c cheaper and keeps longer), so I added 1 tsp dried basil in addition to the dried oregano. Also, instead of sautéing meatballs, I just scooped them directly onto parchment paper-lined tray, sprayed them with cooking spray (you could probably skip this), and cooked for 20 minutes (flipping them over half way). Instead of sautéing shallots and garlic, I substituted 1/2 – 3/4 tsp garlic powder and 1/2 teaspoon onion powder. This recipe is step-intensive (having to make the quinoa and roasting black beans), so I was looking for a way to reduce. So, this recipe fills an important food role for us! I made a few modifications, just for time and ease (and based upon years of making meatballs (with meat:). My daughter and I have been vegetarian for a year now, and while she likes some meat substitutes, she is not a fan of the ground beef (including pre-made “meatless” meatballs). I’ve made these a couple of times now–fantastic recipe. save it in my cookbook!! Thank you so much!

I really liked this recipe, and will def. I also made this with the marinara sauce and linguine and it was a perfect serving for two! The batch of meatballs I made made about 25-30 in total, so i saved the rest to make with mashed potatoes later this week. In addition, i did add vegan mozzarella cheese to give it some cheesiness and at the end it was fabulous! In my recipe, i did also add panko instead of the vegan parmesan as I don’t normally eat this type of cheese and didn’t want to spend $4 on a bottle i may not use again.

Honestly, I think it would have been fine to have just cooked the meatballs on the frying pan as they were browning really nicely, but I stuck to the recipe to see where it went and it came out fine- just not too sure why i had to bake it. I will say make sure that your food processor is a big one, as i have a 1.5 cup one and I had to do it in seperate batches just to get it blended. I had to dry out the beans in the oven longer than written here, i did mine for about 25mins at 375 degrees. I made this recipe yesterday and do have to say it is quite labour intensive but it is quite delicious! I didn’t have quinoa so i substitued it for pot barley which I found still went very well together. I’ve bookmarked this recipe, which says a lot! Plan to make this again soon! Ps – fennel was brilliant addition. Less dishes and hoping this will allow the sauce to absorb. Next time, I’ll try cooking the meatballs in a pan with sauce and skip the oven. As a final step, we put the cooked balls in a pan with marina sauce and then into hoagie rolls with “cheese”. Who keeps shallots in their house?! :-)).

I also used an onion (didn’t have a shallot. I baked the beans for 25 minutes to dry them out. It was delicious and simple(ish)! I followed the recipe, with few changes (necessity). However, this recipe was straight-forward with basic pantry ingredients (no trip to store needed). I make them once, dirty every pan and use 1/2 of a precious day off from the hospital making a “minimalist” dinner (this has become a running joke in my house). Most are delicious but the prep time or number of sequential steps isn’t practical for me/my lifestyle. I’ve made several minimalist baker recipes over the years.

Delish meatballs