Recipe: Sweet & Sour Vegetables with Turkey Balls

Sweet & sour sauce will go with most things but we like to cook it with a lot of vegetables and have a little meat to go with it. These turkey mince balls are tasty and easy to make.

As ever, items in italics are from our garden.

Ingredients (for 2)

  • 200g tomatoes
  • 50g carrots
  • 30g french beans
  • 1 medium courgette
  • 250g turkey mince (we use thighs & breast mixed)
  • 1 inch piece of ginger pealed & grated
  • 1/3 tsp ground cinamon
  • 1 garlic clove (we use 1/2 tsp prechopped)
  • 1 tbsp cornflour (or more to thicken)
  • 2 tbsp cider vinegar
  • 1 tsp sweet chilli sauce
  • 1/2 tsp sugar
  • 4 pineapple slices (tinned)
  • 25-40 ml pineapple juice
  • 1 small onion
  • 1-2 peppers
  • Rice to serve (decide how much you want)


Sweet & Sour Vegetables with Turkey Mince Balls

Method

  1. Pre-heat the oven to 200C
  2. Put the rice on to cook (however you would normally cook rice)
  3. Chop the onion into large(ish) pieces & cut the carrot into thick(ish) rounds and all the other vegetables into fork sized pieces.
  4. Mix the mince, half the ginger & all the cinnamon in a bowl, mix together & make into 6 – 8 small balls. Put them on a lightly oiled baking tray and put them in the oven to cook for around 20 minutes.
  5. At the same time:
    1. Put the Onions in a frying pan with a spray of oil and cook for about 8 minutes until softened.
    2. Skin the tomatoes and whizz them up to make a sauce
    3. Put the cornflour into a jug and add some of the vinegar to make a paste, then add the pineapple juice, 25ml water, garlic, chilli sauce, tomatoes & remaining vinegar. There should be 250-300ml liquid but it doesn’t matter if there’s more or less.
    4. When the onions are soft, add the carrots, peppers, french beans, courgettes and any other vegetables you’ve chosen to add and fry for a further five minutes or so.
    5. Add the tomatoes and another 100ml or so of water and simmer until the carrots are tender and the other vegetables cooked.
    6. Depending on how much liquid you have at this point, you may want to add some more cornflour to thicken or keep boiling it until it thickens.
  6. Add the pineapple and the meatballs and cook for a futher five minutes or so until the meatballs are cooke through.
  7. Serve with the rice

As we said, this sauce goes well on its own or with any meat, sausages, chicken, etc.. It doesn’t take too long to make and is easily multiplied if you’re cooking for a larger number.