This dinner is a hybrid of meatballs and meatloaf and is served over spaghetti squash “noodles” topped with marinara sauce. The meatballs are more like a meatloaf recipe because often times meatballs contain not the greatest quality of ingredients. They are also baked in muffin tins and are a little bigger than traditional meatballs. 1/8 pound of beef for each meatball which means 2-3 meatballs per person.
When you are choosing a marinara sauce, make sure to read the label. All sauces are NOT created equally. When I buy my sauce it is for convenience because I didn’t have time to make mine at home and I want to make sure that I am feeding my body the best quality ingredients as possible. First off, choose an organic marinara sauce. Next, make sure there is NO added sugar in the sauce. Tomatoes naturally have some sugar (fructose) in them, so every sauce will contain some sugar. But read the ingredients and make sure it doesn’t say sugar, evaporated cane juice, or high fructose corn syrup. Also, make sure it comes in glass. A canned sauce will have a BPA lined can (because of the acid from the tomatoes).
Ingredients
1 medium spaghetti squash
1 pound grass fed ground beef, thawed
1 egg
1/2 cup parmesan cheese (or feta/shredded goat cheese for dairy free)
1/2 cup almond flour (used as bread crumbs)
salt and pepper
1 teaspoon italian seasoning
Marinara sauce (fresh or canned) to top the meatballs and spaghetti squash
Directions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F
- Gut a spaghetti squash in half and scoop out the seeded insides with a big spoon. Put each half of the spaghetti squash on a cookie sheet and cook for 60 minutes. The meatloaf will take 30 minutes, so make sure to plan ahead and start the squash 30 minutes earlier.
- Add the grass fed beef to a large bowl. Add the egg, cheese, almond flour, salt and pepper and italian seasoning to the top of the beef. Using your freshly cleaned hands, mix up the beef until all of the ingredients are mixed. Be careful not to over mix.
- You are going to make 8 meatballs from the pound of ground beef. I split the beef into four parts with my hands and then made two meatballs from each quarter.
- Set each meatball into a muffin tin slot and put in the oven.
- Bake for 30 minutes until the beef is cooked through and the top is getting slightly browned.
- While the meatballs are cooking, heat the marinara sauce on the stove in a sauce pan
- Using a fork, scrape out the squash so it will resemble noodles and put on the bottom of a serving plate. Place the meatballs on top and pour the marinara sauce around the edges of the plate or on top of the meatballs.
Enjoy!
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Kelli Schulte says
I can’t wait to try this one. If we can only do limited nuts what would you suggest for a binder? Could I use flax meal and water, then skip the egg and almond flour??? Hmmm…as eggs are iffy to at times for Hannah! Let me know if you have any ideas!
Just Enjoy Food says
I bet you could do coconut flour as a binder instead of the almond flour. Just 1/2 or 1/3 the coconut flour because it’s so much drier than almond flour. Then I would do the flax egg to replace the egg. I bet any more flax would make them kind of sticky or goopy. You will have to let me know how it goes!
Joy says
Hey Meghan, thanks for the tips about past sauce when making my own sauce I frequently use organic but canned tomato sauce or diced tomatoes and tomato paste what do you use to avoid the BPA when making from scratch?
Just Enjoy Food says
I like using tomatoes that are stored in glass or in a boxed carton. Bionaturea is a great brand and you can find them on sale or online for cheaper. They have lots of different tomato varieties. I wish canned tomatoes were a great option, but they aren’t. Tomatoes are so acidic that they have to line cans with BPA or they will eat the cans. I like beans and coconut milk in a can, so you can still buy those. It’s just the tomatoes I’d start to switch in your pantry.