As vegetarians, we are amazed by the explosion of plant based meals out in the market. It is a far cry from what we had growing up when being vegetarian involved choosing between cheese pizza or a dry black bean burger if you were lucky! We’ve experimented a lot with plant based meats – Morningstar Farms sausage patties and bacon are a regular at our brunch table and over the last year we have been trying out a lot more of Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat products. We’ve used the ground beef before in our Zucchini Lasagna and decided we liked the flavors and texture so much that we wanted to try our hand at meatballs! 

As long as you remember to defrost the ground beef overnight or at least for a few hours, this recipe actually comes together really fast. Add breadcrumbs, seasoning and bake – and serve with your favorite pasta! The ground beef itself is fairly oily so it doesn’t need much additional fat other than a little bit of milk. As an added bonus, we used the meatballs the next night and repurposed them into a quick tikka masala with some frozen veggies and a Maya Kaimal brand simmer sauce. No food left behind in our house 🙂 

Tips & Tricks

• Adjust the seasoning based on taste, we knew we were going to use the meatballs in a non-Italian way for the tikka masala so we omitted Italian seasoning but that would definitely up the game for these meatballs if you’re serving with pasta
• You can also throw in some thawed spinach to make the recipe more veggie packed! 

Recipe Information

• Prep time: 15 minutes
• Cook time: 20 minutes
• Yield: 12-14 meatballs

Ingredients

• 1 pack thawed Beyond Meat ground beef 
• 1 egg
• 1/4 cup panko breadcrumbs 
• 1/4 cup milk
• 1/2 onion diced
• 1 jalapeño diced 
• 2 tsp garlic powder
• 2 tsp paprika 
• salt/pepper to taste

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 400F
2. Mix all ingredients into a bowl and shape into meatballs using 1 tbsp each 
3. Place on parchment paper covered baking sheet and bake for 18-20 min until cooked through 
4. Serve with your favorite pasta!