Week 19: 5 Ingredients or Fewer - Grilled Lamb Meatballs

I don't do well with 5 ingredients or fewer. I subscribe to Cooks Illustrated. I go out of my way to do it complicated. My kitchen is often a disaster after I make dinner. (Luckily my wife doesn't mind cleaning up. At least she says she doesn't.) So I made my wife pick out what I was going to make. She really wanted me to make this, but she didn't think it would be flavored enough the way it was written. So I tweaked it...and cheated a bit.

Grilled Lamb Meatballs.

It. Was. Awesome.

My wife turned to me while eating and asked, "How am I going to make sure you remember how you made this?" I stared at her with a look until she realized that this was for the blog.

Seriously. Put this on your menu for next week. The sun will be out. Break out the grill. DO IT!

Grilled Lamb Meatballs

1lb ground lamb
1 c packed fresh mint
garlic, minced (I used about 3 tbsp)
whole cumin seed, toasted
1 tbsp and 1 tsp red wine vinegar

Doesn't count:
4 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
salt
pepper

1. Place lamb and garlic in a large mixing bowl.

2. Toast your cumin in a pan over high heat. It doesn't take long. It is done when you can smell it. Throw it in your spice grinder and grind it up. Add to the mixing bowl.

(Buy your spices at a spice dealer. SOOOO much cheaper than buying it at the grocery. If it comes as a whole seed get it whole and grind it yourself. You will appreciate the difference.)

5. Roughly chop the mint

4. Add the olive oil and red wine vinegar in your mini-blender/Magic Bullet. Add in most of your mint. Give it a whirl until it reaches paste-like consistency. (as seen below)

My personal consumer recommendation. This thing is awesome. Works great for making garlic/ginger paste for Indian food.

6. Add about 3 tbsp of the mint paste to your mixing bowl. Reserve some paste for dressing the meatballs.

7. Mix that stuff up and form one big ball of meat-ness in the bowl. Cover and refrigerate for 30 minutes. This helps the flavors spread into the meat.

8. After 30 minutes, add in about 1 1/2 tbsp kosher salt and remix the meat. This is why you don't salt until right before grilling. Form into small, slider-size patties.

9. Place on a hot grill and cook. (Mine was about 5 minutes on first side and 3 minutes on second, but my grill doesn't get super hot.)

10. Add another tsp of red wine vinegar and 3 tsp of olive oil to the blender with the remaining paste and blend to loosen. Top meatball with paste/vinaigrette.

Now. If you want to cheat, like we did, take a pocket pita, toast it, spread some Greek yoghurt inside with some mint paste, put the meat patties inside with some feta. Yum.