Lamb Meatballs with Cucumber Yogurt

Ingredients

Meatballs

• 1 lb ground lamb

• 1 small onion, grated

• 3 cloves of garlic, grated

• 1/3 cup raisins: golden or regular will work

• 1/3 cup pine nuts

  • Substitute: slivered almonds—you may want to give these a rough chop to make them slightly smaller

• 1/3 cup parsley or mint (or combo of both)

• 2 tsps cumin

• 1 tsp paprika

  • Note: if using smoked paprika, I recommend using less as it’s a powerful flavor

• 1/2 tsp cayenne (more if you would like them spicier)

• 1/2 tsp powdered ginger

Cucumber Yogurt: the quantities here will be completely dependent on how much sauce you want—no measurements need to be exact

• 1/2-1 cup plain or Greek yogurt

• ~1/2 English cucumber or 1 Persian cucumber, shredded

• Olive oil

• Salt

• 1/2 lemon (optional)

• Parsley or mint (optional)

Method

Meatballs

• First, grate or mince your onion and garlic

  • Tip: I used a box grater for the onion and a microplane for the garlic to grate them into a fine pulp. You could also mince them by putting in a food processor and pulsing until they are in very small, relatively even pieces. If you don’t have any of these tools, you can mince by hand by thoroughly chopping them

• Combine all of your meatball ingredients in a mixing bowl: lamb, onion, garlic, pine nuts, raisins, parsley/mint, and spices

• Mix with your hands until everything is well incorporated

• Heat up a cast iron skillet or grill pan to extremely high heat

• Coat your hands with a small amount of olive oil and then form the lamb mixture into meatballs. The size is up to you, but make sure the meatballs are evenly sized with one another so that they take the same amount of time to cook

• Place the meatballs into the screaming hot pan and press down lightly with the back of a spatula

  • Note: your goal here is to flatten the bottom surface of the meatball so that all of the meat browns. If it is in a sphere, it will be harder to get the meat evenly browned

• Once the meat is browned on one side (probably after 4ish minutes depending on the size of your meatball), flip them over and finish cooking on the other side

Cucumber Yogurt

• Shred cucumber using box grater. As with the onion and garlic above, if you don’t have a box grater you can finely dice the cucumber or pulse it in a food processor

• Add cucumber to yogurt and mix until combined

• Add a glug of olive oil, juice from half a lemon, salt, and chopped parsley and/or mint and mix until combined

These would pair well with the following recipes: