I’m always looking for quick and easy recipes for a mid-week dinner. This recipe ticks so many boxes. It’s quick and easy, it tastes great, and it’s really healthy! Let me introduce the super easy lemongrass and ginger meatballs!
Very few ingredients
One thing that frustrates me with a lot of recipes out there is that they need 15 different ingredients. And sometimes – often – I miss quite a few of them. As I have been cooking for many years, I have the confidence to do a lot of swaps or even omit ingredients without the dish suffering for it.
But many home-cooks don’t have this confidence in their ability to cook and being quite nervous about cooking or following a recipe.
So this recipe has very few ingredients and you can swap things around based on what you have in your fridge. So a great dinner for whatever you have left in your fridge before your next shop!
Cooking with essential oils
In this recipe, I will suggest you swap fresh lemongrass for the essential oil (dōTERRA lemongrass only, as it is safe to ingest thanks to to the highest purity of the oil).
This is for quite a few reasons. First, lemongrass is not something that can be found easily and this isn’t something I often have in my fridge. I have found I buy it to use it, but it usually dries up in the fridge before I’ve had a chance to use it. Plus it’s really expensive. And finally, it’s quite a bit of work to cook with it, as it’s quite hard to chop.
When cooking with essential oils, less is more. So I usually use the toothpick method – you put some oil on the toothpick and dip it into the food you want to flavour. And you taste, until this is to your liking. But as you are adding it to raw meat in this case, you can’t taste it. So you just go with a few drops (3 in this case).
If you’d like to get essential oils, you can do so here. Though I would recommend you get in touch with me first.
The trick with ginger is to freeze it
You can also use ginger essential oil. However, I got quite a lot of fresh ginger in my weekly delivery of vegetables, so I now have a lot to use up. But as with everything, it goes off, usually before I’ve had a chance to use it all. Plus, I have always found it a bit of a hassle to cook with. You need to peel it and then grate or chop it.
Well no more hassle… you just freeze it. As I buy organic, I don’t even bother peeling it. And then I use a fine grater and I just grate the frozen ginger and put the root back into my freezer once I’ve got enough. So easy, it saves time, money and effort!
For more vegetable ideas, feel free to download my FREE vegetable ebook
I hope you enjoy this recipe for lemongrass and ginger meatballs.
Lemongrass and ginger meatballs with vegetable stir fry
Ingredients
Meatballs
- 500 g mince (you can use pork or beef or any preferred meat)
- 2 cloves of garlic crushed
- 1 tsp ginger grated
- 3 drops lemongrass essential oil (food grade only) Alternative: 1 lemongrass stick finely chopped and minced in a food processor
- 1/2 tbsp fish sauce (I use Red Boat, as it hasn't got added sugar or salt)
- 1 tbsp coconut aminos or Tamari (GF) soy sauce
Vegetable stir fry
- 1 tbsp coconut oil
- 1 onion (chopped finely)
- 2 garlic cloves (minced)
- 1 tsp ginger (grated)
- 3 carrots
- 1/2 head broccoli (in small florets)
- 1/2 head cabbage (finely sliced)
- 1 red pepper (omit if in strict AIP elimination / not reintroduced)
- 6 mushrooms (sliced)
- 1 tbsp fish sauce
- 2 tbsp coconut aminos or tamari (GF) soy sauce (if reintroduced)
Instructions
Meat balls
- Put all the ingredients into a bowl
- Mix thoroughly
- Make some balls - try to keep them all the same size. I use an ice cream scoop to help me judge the amount
- Bake in the oven until golden (about 20 mins)
Vegetable stir fry
- Prepare all the vegetables
- Warm some oil in a woke or large pan (skillet)
- Add the onion, garlic and ginger
- Once soften, add the carrots and broccoli
- Cover and "steam" on low heat for 5 mins till soft
- Add the cabbage, red pepper and stir fry for a couple more minutes
- Add the mushrooms and the sauces
- I sometimes add a couple of drops of lemongrass essential oil at the end
- Once the meatballs are cooked through (cut one in the middle just to be sure), add them to the pan and serve