I am fortunate enough to already have a couple of great recipes for turkey meatballs; one with a few scoops of pesto mixed into the meat and then simmered in marinara, and another more simple meatball served with a lovely tart cranberry sauce, a little riff on Thanksgiving dinner (minus the following week of dry leftovers). Despite the existence of these known winners, I had a hankering for spiced Swedish meatballs. I wanted a more robust sauce than the typical Swedish meatball condiment, so I read a few recipes and Frankensteined them all into this, using half a pound of raw ground turkey leftover from making my husband a taco pizza the other night. Yes, you read that right. No, I don't want to talk about it.
A big concern when cooking with ground turkey is because it's so very lean, it can easily dry out. Not so with these guys. These suckers are moist. I think the trick is soaking your bread crumbs in milk before mixing them into the meat. As Mr. Batali would say, I'm talking "big boy bread crumbs", as in made from actual bread, not the sawdust from the little blue cardboard can. "You're such a food snob! Like I have fresh bakery bread just LAYING AROUND everyday! GAWD," you say. Not so, friends. I just freeze that shit. Whenever you've got half a baguette or hunk of sourdough that you know you're not going to eat (shame on you), tear it into hunks, pop into a Ziploc and freeze. Then you can just take out as much as you need, give it a rough chop (very easily to do when frozen) and broil for a minute to toast up and bring back to life. Vwa-lah, lovely fresh bread crumbs whenever you need them. I don't want to know what people did before Ziploc bags. Those were uncivilized times.
