Not-Meatballs

Not-Meatballs:

2 C. slightly overcooked lentils*

2 C. cooked brown rice

2 T. olive oil

1 large onion finely diced

2 cloves garlic

3 medium carrots (chopped in food processor about 1 C.)

3 stalks celery (Chopped in food processor about 1 C.)

8 oz mushrooms (chopped fine in food processor)

¼ C. wine, beer, or stock.

2-3 tablespoons tomato paste

2 T. Worcestershire sauce

2 T. Chili paste

1 T. liquid smoke

1 T. dried thyme

2 T. dried parsley

½ T dried oregano and/or basil*

2 T. dried shiitake mushroom powder*

1 C. wheat bread crumbs, toasted*.

Instructions:

1. Cook rice and lentils and cook to room temp.
2.  Process carrots and celery to tiny bits in food processor. Scrape into bowl. Process mushrooms into tiny bits in food processor. Scrape into a bowl.*
3. Sauté onions and garlic in olive oil until onions start to brown.
4. Add carrots and celery and cook until pan is mostly dry and vegetables start to caramelize
5. Add mushrooms and season mixture with salt and pepper.
6. When mushrooms have started to brown, add tomato paste and chili paste and cook until it starts to darken 2-3 minutes.
7. Add dried spices and liquid to deglaze.
8. Add Worcestershire sauce and liquid smoke.
9. Add vegetable mixture to rice and lentils. When it’s all cool enough to mix with hands add toasted bread crumbs and shitake powder. Taste for seasoning. Add salt and pepper to taste.
10. Mix with hands until thoroughly combined. Chill mixture in fridge for 30-minutes to an hour.
11. Form into 1 inch balls. (I used a cookie scoop). Place balls on an oiled baking sheet* This recipe made about two dozen, give or take.
12. Spray not-meatballs with olive oil cooking spray and bake in a 375 oven for 20 minutes, turning balls over half way through the baking time so the brown more evenly.

Cook’s Notes:

Meat eating friends did not hate these. I do not hate these. In spaghetti and “meatballs” with basic marinara and a little shredded parm, they were nearly as good as real meatballs.

I made these twice, adding about twice as much rice the second time. Full disclosure, the second time I made them I was out of tomato paste. I used ketchup. Negligibly sweeter, I skipped cooking the raw taste out of the tomato paste when I used the ketchup.

I cooked both my lentils and my rice in a pressure cooker. The lentils were maybe a little overcooked and breaking down already, but that turned out fine. If I’d cooked them less they might have added more texture, less creaminess. (One bag of lentils made two batches of meatballs, so I didn’t recook lentils for the second run at this recipe.)

I hand diced my onions, but used a food processor on the rest of the veggies. I wanted them pretty uniform and finely chopped. Could also be hand chopped or grated if you don’t have a food processor.

When it comes to dried spices, whatever Italianish mix you like. I was out of oregano, which I prefer, so I used basil. If you don’t want heat, leave out the chili paste (though it’s pretty mild distributed through all the rice and lentils). If I had some fennel seed, I probably would have crushed up a half teaspoon to give it that sausage-like flavor, but I didn’t have any.

The first time I made these I had wine. I used that to deglaze. The second time I was drinking a bottle of black lager. I used that. Water or stock would work just fine. I cooked the veggie mix in cast iron and I wanted all the browned flavor I could get.

For bread crumbs I tore up two slices of bread toasted them slowly until they were browned and dried out then made them into crumbs in my food processor. Crackers or Toasted rolled oatmeal pulsed to crumbs would work just fine as a binder.

I’m pretty happy with the texture of these. I think if I fried them rather than baked them they’d have nearly normal meatball texture on the outside. Hard to escape the creamy-not meaty texture of the lentils, which is why I upped the rice on the second batch.

I also reserved about a cup and a half of the mix and scrambled it like ground beef in a non-stick pan for a vegan lasagna experiment. More on that if it works.

I’m freezing the second batch before baking so I can cook them a few at a time. Whether you bake them off before freezing is probably negligible. The first batch hung out in my fridge all week and were heated up mostly in the toaster oven. The outsides crisped up a little. Slightly less than actual meatballs with some fat in them might.

Shiitake powder: put dried shiitake mushrooms in the blender. Process until powder. Use in all the things that should taste like meat but aren’t meat. The shitake powder makes all the difference in this recipe.

Recipe Based on http://www.thugkitchen.com/meatballs