French Onion Lamb Meatballs

Meatballs are more than just rolling seasoned ground meat into balls and cooking. Really good meatballs, I mean moist tender and deeply flavored, but not overwhelmingly so, meatballs call for ingredients and techniques that give you that end result. And, that's precisely what these french onion lamb meatballs are, the very best, most moist and tender flavorful meatballs you'll ever taste!

Now most people think the perfect meatball is a combination of beef, pork and sometimes veal. But, I'm here to tell you that ground lamb is the bomb when you're making meatballs! You might think that the lamb would give the meatballs a real Middle Eastern slant, since that's typically where you see ground lamb used, in Middle Eastern meatballs and kefta. However, this recipe for french onion lamb meatballs blasts that myth, or rather taste.

Ground lamb has a ton of nutritional value. Yes. it's a little pricier than regular beef and pork, but the benefits are worth the extra investment. Lamb, which is mostly protein, does have varying amounts of fat in it. It's a warehouse of vitamins and minerals like B12, selenium, zinc, niacin, phosphorous, and iron. And, because the lamb has a higher fat content than beef, you can cut out the pork in these meatballs and just stick with straight lamb. If you're interested in looking at the comparison between lamb and beef, the check out this article. And, there, of course, are many more in cyberspace!

Bottom line on this recipe is that these meatballs meet all the important criteria to me for a great meatball! While the meatballs had a more Italian flair, I decided to serve with a distinctively Middle Eastern side versus pasta. So I simply put some olive oil, drained garbanzo beans in a skillet over medium heat and seasoned them with salt, pepper, harissa and ground cumin then served them over a mound of fresh European greens. I'm telling you this is about as fine a dish as you could order in a fancy dancy restaurant!