Chicken Meatballs

Ground meat

1. Homemade chicken meatballs can be made from a whole chicken. For that, remove the skin from the carcass and carefully cut off all the meat, dark and white. A more accessible option is to use a mix of dark and white chicken meat: breast fillet and thighs. Either way, you can always use the leftover carcass to make a good chicken noodle soup.

2. Prepare the meat, rice and vegetables. If the meatballs are made of fillet and thighs, trim off any leftover fat and skin and cut out the bones.

   

   Boil 3 tbsp of rice (41 g) until done and let it cool. Adding cooked rice makes the meatballs softer and more filling. Fluffy varieties such as basmati or parboiled are best. It is better not to use round sticky rice, which gives a gluey porridge. Peel the vegetables for the mixture and the sauce.

   

3. Grind the white and dark meat in a meat grinder. How fine to grind is quite personal. You can run the meat through twice to make the mixture very uniform, or chop the meat thoroughly with a knife, which leaves nicely distinct pieces.

   

4. Mix the meat mixture. Peel 1–2 cloves of garlic and a small hot pepper, remove the seeds and inner white membranes, and chop finely with a knife. Add the pepper, garlic and cooked rice to the ground chicken, salt to taste and add a pinch of curry powder. No other spices are needed: the chicken meatballs will be spicy enough from the hot pepper and garlic.

   

   Mix the meat thoroughly, add a little cream or milk and mix again. Usually white bread soaked in milk is added to cutlet mixture. To make the meatballs more tender, I suggest adding 2–3 tbsp of stale bread roll grated on a fine grater. Once it soaks up the liquid it works just as well as soaked white bread and keeps the mixture fairly firm. Put the mixture in the fridge while you make the vegetable sauce.

   

Vegetable sauce

1. Fry the onion with the root vegetables until soft. Cut the peeled onion into large cubes and fry in 1–2 tbsp of olive oil until soft. Cut all the root vegetables (carrot, parsnip, celery) into cubes, slightly larger than for Olivier salad or vinaigrette. Add the root vegetables to the lightly fried onion and fry over medium heat, stirring and leaving the pan uncovered, until the pieces can be easily pierced with the tip of a knife.

   

2. Add the potato and simmer the sauce. Peel the potato and cut it into small cubes, the same way as the root vegetables. Add the potato to the fried vegetables, season with a little salt and pepper. If you like, add a pinch of curry powder.

   

   Pour in 2 cups of water (400 ml) and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to the minimum, cover the pan with a lid and simmer the sauce until the potato starts to break down noticeably.

   

Meatballs

1. Shape the meatballs. Take the mixture out of the fridge and roll balls with wet hands. The size is up to you: they can be very small, like meatballs for soup, or large, like ordinary cutlets. Put the shaped meatballs on a wet plate.

   

2. Roll the meatballs in flour and fry until golden brown. Pour the flour into a bowl and roll the meat balls in it one at a time. In another pan, heat the remaining olive oil over medium heat and add all the meatballs at once.

   

   Fry, turning often, until a nice dark golden crust forms. Chicken mixture is quite firm and does not crack while frying, so you can stir the meatballs with a wooden spatula, like potatoes while frying.

   

3. Pour the sauce over the meatballs and simmer until done. Pour the prepared sauce of root vegetables and potato over the fried meatballs, adding a little boiling water if needed. Stir very gently, taking care not to damage the meatballs.

   

   Simmer for at least 15 minutes over low heat, so the sauce barely bubbles, stirring fairly often. Chicken cooks quickly, but you may need to add a little time: when you cut a meatball, the meat should be white, not pink. It is important that the sauce ends up thick, without a lot of liquid.

   

Serving

1. Divide the sauce and meatballs among plates. Put the sauce of root vegetables and potato into small deep plates (soup plates will do), put the meatballs on top and spoon over the rest of the sauce. Sprinkle generously with finely chopped parsley.

   

   Serve the chicken meatballs with the vegetable sauce hot, with a piece of fresh bread. If you like, leave the garlic and hot pepper out of the mixture, and then you can safely give the meatballs to children, who will surely like them. The makeup of the vegetable sauce is up to you. For example, you can stew the meat balls in plain tomato sauce, and it will be very tasty.