Dinner with a Point: Teriyaki meatball skewers fun to make, more fun to eat

We’ve retained a bag of Trader Joe’s mini-meatballs in our freezer because the early times of our relationship. Not the very same bag, of course, but a lot of, lots of different bags, which we have eaten at the level of one or two a month for 27 decades. I have to confess that I have a very potent attachment to these mini-meatballs. They’re what my partner would make on evenings when I labored late and he was at residence with our newborn daughter. He’d bake two dozen minor meatballs and steam a bag of petite peas and that would be supper, bless his cotton socks. Right after a extensive working day at do the job sandwiched between extensive commutes, coming dwelling to one thing hot and nourishing was just the ticket. I’d flop down on the couch, hold my toddler in one particular hand and place meatballs in my mouth with the other. The peas were a very little messier but babies make everything messier, so if a couple peas joined the dust bunnies on the ground, no one particular was the wiser.

But back to the teriyaki meatball skewers. Established your oven to 350 degrees and assemble your components: extensive metallic or wooden skewers (readily available to acquire at most grocery outlets, if you really don’t presently have them), meatballs, teriyaki sauce, red and environmentally friendly bell peppers, a red onion and pineapple chunks. Chop the peppers and the onion into rough chunk-size squares and drain the pineapple. Now, lots of of you may perhaps be pondering: “How do I get these meatballs onto skewers if they’re frozen?” (At the very least, that’s what I wondered.) The respond to: You don’t. You enable them thaw in the fridge right away. I’m sorry that this dish normally takes that substantially preparing, but there you have it. Lifetime is entire of problems.

So, make certain your meatballs are thawed or mostly thawed. Don’t fear about ingesting some thing terrible from raw meatballs — I signify, preferably, you need to generally be anxious about this, and need to be hypervigilant when handling any meat solution — since the Trader Joe’s mini-meatballs are thoroughly cooked prior to they’re frozen. The instructions allow for you to cook dinner them from frozen or thawed the only variation is the cooking time.

Future, assemble your skewers. I’m likely to give you an “order of assembly,” but you can place things on the skewers nevertheless you like. You never even have to use the vegetables I described. Use something you want, due to the fact, let us deal with it, teriyaki sauce is fantastic on everything. Attempt zucchini, cauliflower, celery, cherry tomatoes, mushrooms, chunks of squash or (since it is springtime) asparagus. My pattern was environmentally friendly pepper, crimson pepper, onion, pineapple, meatball. That way the meatball absorbs some of the pineapple juice, at minimum theoretically.

I built four huge skewers with 4 meatballs on just about every skewer, but you could get 8 or 10 skewers out of a one bag of meatballs the Trader Joe’s model has 42 1-inch meatballs in a person bag. A even further notice on food basic safety: If you have thawed the meatballs but never conclusion up employing all of them, never put them back again in the freezer. Use them inside of a day or so. Make a meatball sub or bake them up and serve them with barbecue sauce. I employed the remaining meatballs to make a sweet-and-bitter stir-fry, utilizing the leftover peppers, onions and pineapple, as well as some chopped spring asparagus. It was pretty good, but it did not evaluate to the skewers, for the reason that roasting delivers out the pure sweetness of the vegetables and presents the meatballs a crispy exterior.