As anyone who follows me on Twitter knows, I’ve been slightly obsessed with Gordon Ramsay lately. Thanks to hulu.com I’ve watched 2 seasons of Kitchen Nightmares back to back and I’ve caught up on the last season of Hell’s Kitchen and The F Word.

On a previous season of Kitchen Nightmares, he gave a meatball recipe to one restaurant owner which turned into a huge success for them. Of course I immediately went on a search for the recipe online and found it. I made it the other night (with variations for what I had on hand) and … mmm … it’s going to become a favorite for sure.

Here’s my version of the recipe I came up with, loosely based on Gordon Ramsay’s Italian meatball recipe from “The F Word”:

1/2 lb lean ground beef
1/2 lb ground pork
1/2 cup finely chopped parsley
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 medium yellow onion, minced
3 tbsp breadcrumbs
1/8th cup milk (approx)
flour
olive oil

Soak the breadcrumbs in the milk (just enough to cover), then drain. Mix together all the ingredients except the flour. Form into small meatballs (I used a cookie scoop to get the right size). Roll the meatballs in a thin layer of flour and then pan fry in olive oil.

Remove the meatballs from the frying pan, place into a baking pan, top with tomato sauce of choice, and bake at 325 for a further 10 minutes.

Although the recipe calls for the meatballs to be fried in olive oil before being baked, the calorie and fat count remains reasonable. However, you could probably reduce both by spritzing the meatballs with oil and frying/oven baking them on a cookie sheet, and then moving them to the pan/sauce to finish up. I might try them that way next.

This recipe makes about 4 servings. Nutritional info for each serving (including about 1/4 cup of tomato sauce for each person): 342 cals, 13.9g fat, 15g carbs, 37.5g protein. (Source: Calorie Count Recipe Analyser)

Enjoy!