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Whole30 Sausage Meatballs

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My husband loves meatballs and sauce.  So, several times a year, I make a batch or two of Sausage Venison Meatballs and we have them with pasta.  Since we have started Going Whole30, we haven’t eaten any pasta, but in the back of my mind, I have been holding onto the idea of making zoodles (spiralized zucchini).  And of course, we could have had them with a simple meat sauce like Super Easy Venison Tomato Sauce, but meatballs sounded intriguing.  Whole30 Sausage Meatballs would require rethinking the binding agent which is traditionally breadcrumbs.  (Wheat is a no-go on Whole30.)

Whole30 Sausage Meatballs

Whole30 Sausage Meatballs

Many of the recipes for Whole30 meatballs that I looked at via Pinterest didn’t include a binding agent to replace bread crumbs.  However, since I was making my meatballs with ground venison sausage, which has a very low fat content, I wasn’t sure this was going to work.  Michelle Tam of NomNom Paleo uses cooked cauliflower.  Almond flour is pretty coarse, so it would be like fine bread crumbs.

And then, on the drive to the grocery store, inspiration hit.  Mushrooms.

Whole30 Meatballs ground mushrooms

I purchased whole white mushrooms which I cleaned and pulverized in the food processor. (I have a Ninja <–affiliate link.)  Once the mushrooms were down to a coarse grain size, they were then perfect to aid in the formation of meatballs as I binding agent.  Five or six good sized mushrooms ended up being about a cup and a half.

Whole30 Meatball ingredients

Mix the ground sausage (we used venison sausage, but you can use beef, turkey or pork) with the mushrooms, eggs, onions and garlic.  Form them into balls and bake at 400° F.

Whole30 meatballs ready to cook

I made two sizes of meatballs.  The large ones are a little bigger than golf ball size.  We ate those with zoodles (which I made with this spiralizer <– also an affiliate link).  The small ones which were about an inch in size went into Whole30 Hearty Tomato Soup to make it even heartier.

More on Whole30

We have now been Going Whole30 for three weeks.  For more information on our Whole30 journey, you can read about going Whole30 with Kids, Whole30 Day 15 and One Week of Whole30 Meals or get a few new recipes like Smoked Tri Tip, Whole30 Chicken Nuggets and Whole30 Hearty Tomato Soup.

If you are looking to get started with Whole30, I highly recommend the book that started it all, It Starts with Food and check out some of our earlier posts.  And don’t forget to download our free Whole30 Meal Planner.

PS. This post may contain affiliate links. When you click the link and make a purchase through the link, we make a little money, this helps to keep The Semiconservative Granola Girl going. Thank you for your support.

Whole30 Sausage Meatballs

 

Print Recipe
 Whole30 Sausage Meatballs
Course Main Dish
Cuisine Whole30
Prep Time 25 minutes
Cook Time 30 minutes
Servings
meatballs (depends on the size)
Ingredients
Course Main Dish
Cuisine Whole30
Prep Time 25 minutes
Cook Time 30 minutes
Servings
meatballs (depends on the size)
Ingredients
Instructions
  1. Preheat the oven to 400° F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
  2. Mix all the ingredients thoroughly.
  3. For large meatballs, form into balls a little bigger than golf ball size or for smaller meatballs, about 1 inch in diameter. Place them on the baking sheet.
  4. Bake large meatballs for 25-30 or small meatballs for 15-20.
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Grandma Helen’s Salisbury Steak

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My husband used to rave about his grandmother’s Salisbury steak, so one week, we asked his mother for the recipe.  Grandma Helen is a lovely lady, 96 years-old, God bless her.  But the recipe calls for canned gravy.  Hello!  Canned gravy.  Not in this Granola Girl’s house.  The recipe for the Salisbury steak is true to Grandma Helen’s recipe, but the gravy is all Semiconservative Granola Girl, so the recipe should probably be called Grandma Helen’s Salisbury Steak with Granola Girl Mushroom Gravy, but that’s too long, so we’ll stick with Grandma Helen’s Salisbury Steak.

Grandma Helen's Salisbury Steaks

Grandma Helen’s Salisbury Steak.

I started by doubling her recipe because it makes a great lunch.  Start with 2 pounds of ground meat.  We use ground venison, but the original recipe calls for ground beef.  Chopped onion, salt, pepper, egg, Worcester sauce, prepared mustard and bread crumbs–in her words, “just enough to hold it together, use you own judgment.”

Salisbury Steak ingredients

Mix all of those ingredients and make 8-10 oblong patties.  Fry the patties in 1/4 cup of butter in a 12 inch cast iron skillet.  Don’t crowd them, so do them in batches.  They shrink, so they should fit back in the pan when you let it simmer in the gravy.  Remove them from the pan and prepare the gravy.

Salisbury Steaks in the making

Semiconservative Granola Girl Gravy

Add more butter if necessary, I used another quarter of a cup.  Cook the onions and mushrooms down.  Add 3 tablespoons of flour to make a roux.

Salisbury Steak roux

Slowly add 3 cups of beef broth.  Allow the gravy to come to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer.  At this point, return the patties to the pan and allow them to simmer for 20 minutes to an hour.

Making Gravy for Salisbury Steaks

We serve this over egg noodles or with mashed potatoes.  You know how my husband feels about those.

Looking for other ideas for weekend venison meals, check out Venison Sausage Meatballs and Venison Pepper Steaks.

PS. This post contains affiliate links. When you click the link and make a purchase through the link, we make a little money, this helps to keep The Semiconservative Granola Girl going. We don’t recommend anything that we don’t use and love.  Thank you for your support.

Salisbury Steaks

Print Recipe
 Grandma Helen's Salisbury Steak
Course Main Dish
Cuisine Locavore
Prep Time 45 minutes
Cook Time 30 minutes
Passive Time 20-60 minutes
Servings
patties
Ingredients
Salisbury Steaks
Mushroom Gravy
Course Main Dish
Cuisine Locavore
Prep Time 45 minutes
Cook Time 30 minutes
Passive Time 20-60 minutes
Servings
patties
Ingredients
Salisbury Steaks
Mushroom Gravy
Instructions
  1. With you hands, mix all of the ingredients for the Salisbury Steaks, except the butter. Form 8-10 oblong patties.
  2. Fry the patties in 1/4 cup of butter until cooked to your preference. Do not crowd the patties, prepare them in batches as necessary. Remove from heat.
  3. In the same skillet, add additional 1/4 cup of butter, sliced onions and mushrooms. Cook until soft (about 15 minutes).
  4. Add flour to the butter, mushroom, onion mixture. Slowly add the flour so that it is completely absorbed by the butter to create a paste-like consistency.
  5. Slowly add the broth to mixture. Make sure to add it slowly so that there are no lumps. You cannot get lumps out later. Bring to a boil. Reduce to a simmer and allow to thinken.
  6. Add patties back to the gravy and allow them to cook together over low heat for 20 minutes to an hour or longer.
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Venison Sausage Meatballs

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Don’t you just love those big meatballs you get at restaurants!  Meatballs at home are just so much work, but sometimes it is worth it to get your hands dirty so that you can have a big restaurant style meatball.  These venison sausage meatballs fit the bill.  However, this is a weekend kind of meal because mixing and forming meatballs can be a little time-consuming.

Venison Sausage Meatballs

Truthfully, our venison stores are getting a little low.  Last year, hubby only harvested three deer, the goal is usually five.  And it’s okay, but our freezer is now down to a few roasts, several packages of chops and A LOT of mild sausage.  There is only so many times one can make Super Easy Venison Tomato Sauce.  So this weekend, we decided to make venison sausage meatballs instead.

Venison Sausage Meatballs

We started with two pounds of venison sausage.  If you are not a venison fan, you could always make these with a ground sausage of your choice.  Mix this with bread crumbs, chopped onion, minced garlic, Worcester sauce, milk and eggs.

ingredients for venison sausage meatballs

 

Cook with Your Kids

Meatballs are a great opportunity to cook with your kids.  Fortunately or unfortunately, both kids we delighted to help when I ask, so I put Sunshine to work making the Super Easy Tomato Sauce.  This meant The Boy could get his hands really dirty (after he washed them of course) mixing the meat. (Boys are sloppy, look at all the breadcrumbs he “splashed” out!)

venison sausage meatballs--mixing the meatballs with hands

Sunshine was at the stove adding, onions, garlic, canned tomatoes and measuring the herbs.  The great thing about the herbs that go into my tomato sauce is they are pretty forgiving, so she couldn’t make a mistake!

stirring super easy venison tomato sauce

About the time that sauce was ready to just simmer, The Boy was done with mixing the meat mixture.  So all three of us worked to form bigger than a golf ball sized venison sausage meatballs.  Then, they were bored which was fine with me.

I didn’t want to heat the oven. (It is summer and hot.  We living in an 1860s farmhouse, so no air conditioning.)  I heated some olive oil in my 12.5 inch cast iron skillet (similar to this one and probably the most used pan in the house!) and cooked them on the stove top.  As the sides browned up, I turned the sausage meatballs to insure that they cooked evenly.

sausage meatballs in the skillet

Once they were cooked through (about 25 minutes), I added them to the sauce to cook a little more, just to let all the flavors work together.  This is certainly an unnecessary step.

venison sausage meatballs

Eat & Enjoy

Serve over pasta or as a sandwich or eat them as they are with cheese!  Freeze the extra meatballs in sauce or by themselves.  We used about half for this meal and saved half for another meal.  Suddenly a time consuming preparation became a quick weeknight meal for Meal Planning once we return to the busy school year.

So, give these meatballs a try and let us know in the comments below how you use them!

PS. This post contains affiliate links. When you click the link and make a purchase through the link, we make a little money, this helps to keep The Semiconservative Granola Girl going. Thank you for your support.

Print Recipe
 Venison Sausage Meatballs
Course Main Dish
Prep Time 60 minutes
Cook Time 25 minutes
Servings
mealballs (depending on the size)
Ingredients
Course Main Dish
Prep Time 60 minutes
Cook Time 25 minutes
Servings
mealballs (depending on the size)
Ingredients
Instructions
  1. Mix all ingredients thoroughly except the olive oil.
  2. Form into balls a little bigger than golf ball size.
  3. Heat the olive oil in a heavy (cast iron) skillet over medium heat. Add meatballs to the hot oil. Cook until brown and then turn as needed. About 25-30 (depending on size). Meatballs should be cooked through so there is no red meat in the center
Recipe Notes

You could choose to bake the meatballs instead of cooking them on the stove top.  Preheat a 400 degree oven.  Bake 20-25 minutes on a parchment line baking sheet until meatballs are cooked through.  Turn once about half way through.

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Super Easy Venison Tomato Sauce

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Homemade tomato sauce conjures ideas of tomatoes slow cooking on the stove for hours.  However, the truth is you can make a super easy venison tomato sauce in about 20 minutes.  And, you’re Italian friends will not know the difference.  Oh, and if you’re not into venison, this can be made vegetarian or with the ground meat of your choice.  Friends, you never have to buy jarred sauce again!

Super easy venison tomato sauce

We use this as the base sauce for many a recipe.  Obviously, we use it for sauce over pasta.  Just the other night, Sunshine made the sauce (with guidance) while The Boy and I made Venison Sausage Meatballs.  In this version, the only meat was the meatballs.  A batch of this sauce is also the foundation of Baked Ravioli.

Super Easy Venison Tomato Sauce

Start by browning venison (or the ground meat of your choice) in olive oil.  Add onion and garlic  when the meat is mostly done.  Cook until the onion is translucent. (Love the Oxo Garlic Press for fresh minced garlic–see the photo below.)

browned venison sausage for venison tomato sauce

Add canned crushed tomatoes, oregano, basil, parsley, and salt.

super easy venison tomato sauce ingredients

Simmer 15 minutes or longer.  Serve over pasta or as the base for another meal.

Super Easy Venison Tomato Sauce & Meal Planning

super easy venison tomato sauce

This is so quick and so easy.  It can easily fit into your meal planning for a weeknight meal that takes 20 or so minutes to prepare.  You can make it on the weekend and use it during the week for an even quicker weeknight meal.  Double, triple or even quadruple the batch and freeze it for later.  I’m not very good with the whole freezer meal thing which I mentioned in my meal planning post, 5 Tips Meal Planning; however, frozen sauce is a different thing because frozen sauce can become so many other things.  I just freeze it in quart sized freeze zipper bags.

We also freeze our leftovers and these become the foundation of the next batch of sauce.  Before the kids started eating sauce, I think we had leftover sauce in the freezer that we would thaw and add to for a run of probably a year or more.  I know that sounds gross, but really it wasn’t.  It was never exactly the same sauce as the one we pulled out at the beginning of the meal.  Now, we generally use it up within a month of two because we add it to Venison Parmesan or Baked Ravioli or Baked Ziti.

So, give this sauce a try and let us know in the comments below how you use it!

PS. This post contains affiliate links. When you click the link and make a purchase through the link, we make a little money, this helps to keep The Semiconservative Granola Girl going. Thank you for your support.

 

Print Recipe
 Super Easy Venison Tomato Sauce
Course Main Dish
Cuisine Locavore
Prep Time 5 minutes
Cook Time 20 minutes
Servings
people
Ingredients
Course Main Dish
Cuisine Locavore
Prep Time 5 minutes
Cook Time 20 minutes
Servings
people
Ingredients
Instructions
  1. Heat oil in a large sauce pan. Brown the ground meat.
  2. When meat is just about cooked through, add chopped onion and minced garlic.
  3. Add tomatoes, herbs and salt. Simmer at least 15 minutes.
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