Meatballs with Beef Heart (Gluten, grain, and egg free)

This blog is called "Meatballs For Sarah" so it's about time I started cooking some meatballs! Of course they are gluten, grain, and egg free. I’ve heard it’s easy to sneak beef heart into meatballs, and it’s true, these meatballs are 20% heart and you can’t taste it. They special ordered the heart for me at Bi-Rite and ground it for me, in retrospect it would have been fun to bring home an actual heart. Once ground it looks just like any other ground meat. Beef heart is a great natural source of Coenzyme Q10.

I’m calling these “half and half” meatballs since half are cooked in the oven, the other half are cooked on the stove and simmered in marinara.

Ingredients:
1 pound Niman Ranch ground lamb
1 pound Heritage Foods berkshire ground pork
½ pound Marin Sun Farms ground beef heart
15 ounce jar Marinara Sauce
1/2 cup shredded parmesean
½ cup ground pork rinds
1 T soy sauce
1 tsp dried onion flakes
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp basil
1 tsp oregano
1 tsp salt

Mix together all ingredients except marinara sauce.

Form meatballs (this made 58 meatballs for me)

Place ½ meatballs in the over at 350 for 30 minutes.

Brown the rest of the meatballs in a pan with olive oil.

When cooked, add to marinara sauce. Allow to simmer for 30 minutes.

The finished product

A comparison of meatballs oven vs stove

The stove/simmer meatballs definitely tasted better, of course they have more of a messy factor which is something to take into account with a 3 year  old.