Because homemade is always better than pre-packaged

Ingredients

1. 1 lb. ground beef, turkey, or meat alternative.
2. ½ cup breadcrumbs (or a chopped butt-end slice of bread).
3. Salt, pepper, chili powder and onion powder to taste.
4. 3 cloves minced garlic (or to taste).
5. 1 egg.

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. While the oven is preheating, combine ingredients in a mixing bowl except for ground beef.
3. Once ingredients are mixed well, add ground beef and use hands to combine.
4. Form the mixture into 1-inch meatballs and place on baking pan about ½-inch apart.
5. Bake for 25-30 minutes.
   1. Tip: properly cooked meatballs should have an internal temperature of 165 degrees.

Once your meatballs are done cooking and have cooled, they can either be stored in the fridge for up to 3 days as your weekly meal prep or be stored in the freezer.

Or, as I did, I paired the meatballs with wild rice, gravy and asparagus. The recipe for the gravy can be found below.

Keep in mind that I completely eyeballed this recipe and had to use my chef wits when I realized I didn’t have flour and had to use plain pancake mix instead.

Ingredients

1. 1 cup flour (or plain pancake mix if you’re in the middle of the recipe and find that you don’t have flour).
   1. Add the flour gradually until you have reached the desired thickness. You may not use all of the flour or you may need more.
2. 2 tbsp butter (or any kind of fat such as oil, pan drippings or bacon fat).
3. 1 cup of chicken broth.

Directions

1. In a medium-size saucepan, melt butter (or any other fat such as oil) over medium-high heat.
2. Whisk in flour until well combined and no clumps remain.
   1. This is a gradual process so don’t add all the flour at once.
3. Slowly pour in broth and whisk well.
4. Bring mixture to a simmer and heat until thickened to desired consistency (about 2 minutes) while whisking constantly to avoid burning to the pan.