Porcupines

In the kitchen again 

So it is time to get back into the kitchen....I have a really easy and kind of fun recipe to share with you, a real classic; Porcupine meatballs. I actually made it earlier this week, but saved it to share today. I once again took a 1950's recipe and tweaked it to make it healthier. I switched the ground beef for turkey, doing that made me have to add a bit of binder, so some garlic herb bread crumbs did the trick. I was serving it on Fiesta Night here at Muse Cottage, so I added some cumin and some minced garlic and just a bit of chili powder so that it had a nice mild spicy flavor to go with the theme.  So how about we get started? 

There is a lot of recipes out there on the web for the Rice and Beef Porcupine meatballs, it seams each and every one is different, some add an egg as a binder, some call for a bunch of different seasonings or even soup mix, even the hunts recipe varies!  This one originally was so basic. Ground beef, long cook white rice, onion and salt and pepper, poultry seasoning...oh and tomato sauce....so it was easy to tweak and expand upon, and I think there is a few more that could be made...you already know I traded out meats, and added spices, and threw in the bread crumbs, I really think next time, because after an hour the rice still did not cook fully, I would trade out the long cook and do the quick cook rice, BUT, might ruin the porcupine effect. Just my opinion.  So here is the stats....

ORIGINAL

"1 pound of ground beef or in my case ground turkey

3 tbsp chopped onion

1/ tsp poultry seasoning

1/2 cup of raw  long cook rice, well washed

1/4 tsp pepper

1 tsp salt

Form mixture into 10-12 balls and brown lightly in

3 tbsp fat

Drain off excess fat and add 

2 cans of Hunt's Tomato Sauce

1 cup of water

Cover tightly, simmer 45-50 minutes until rice is tender 

Serve with flavory pan gravy"

MY TAKE 

Forgot to put bread crumbs in the photo...they were garlic herb

1 pound of ground turkey breast

about half a cup of chopped onions

2 tsp of cumin*

1 to 2 tsp chili powder*

1 tsp of garlic powder*

salt and pepper to taste

1/2 cup of seasoned bread crumbs for a binder 

optional is 1 egg or 1/4 cup egg beaters 

*Add more seasonings if you wish

form into the balls, I got 10 golf ball size balls

brown in olive oil in hot pan, searing all sides

Now here is what I did... I did not cook them in the same pan, I choose to bake them, either way is good.... REMOVE balls from the pan and put into a foil lined baking dish, cover with two cans, just normal cans of tomato sauce and 1 can of water, seal the foil tightly and place dish on baking sheet in case there is any spills. Cook for 45-60 minutes at 400 degrees or until rice is tender. Like I said at 60 minutes the rice still had bite, maybe with baking it takes longer? 

Kind of like a dump cake LOL
Just dump it all in and mix it....I
mixed it and then...

added bread crumbs and mixed again.

Such exciting photos right? 

As if you did not know what
browning meat looks like..
the balls became more like cubes!

Smothered in sauce and water...

Sealed without a kiss and popped into the oven to bake

60 minutes and those porcupine quills still had a bit of bite to
them, I think another 10 minutes and we would have been
golden! Maybe I mis-claculated the time...I did forget to set
a timer OOPS! 

I added some mozzarella ...so um not fiesta, but it is what I
had...and well you can not really see the rice quills because I added the
the cheese and THEN remembered the need for a photo ...
I think next time more rice, and maybe quick cook to
speed up the process, or just bake longer. Maybe it was
the switch from beef to turkey? 

Look real close, you can kind of see them, upper right hand corner to the left of the ball...see it, well do you? 

FINAL THOUGHTS

Ok so my final thoughts. It was easy, it was kind of fun, plastic gloves helped keep the goo off my hands, cause I can not stand actually touching raw meat, and in the end they tasted really good, even if the rice was kind of chewy....would I make them again? YES! Would I make them on the stove to see if that changed the rice situation, yeah I might, would I add an egg, yes, I think so...and at that point they are like my muffin meatloaves, but with rice in them, but hey, the family loved them, the name made us giggle and the addition of the cumin and chili powder was super good in it. So I would probably stamp this Ruby's Musings approved.