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Hi, I'm Natalie Riley, and this is the Shelf Reliance Test Kitchen.
Today, I'm using all kinds of THRIVE goodness to make a delicious spaghetti and meatball dinner for my family,
and I'm using THRIVE Spaghetti to do it.
Now I'm going to start with some tomatoes that I grew in my own garden from THRIVE Vegetable Seeds.
I'm going to roast these off with some onion and garlic and some herbs for a delicious flavor.
So I'm just going to slice these just in a little 'X' pattern
and just place them right in. I've got a roasting dish right here.
So I'll just place those in.
Okay, I've got all my tomato beauties ready.
Now a little onion for flavor.
Okay, these can be rough cuts. It doesn't need to be anything fancy.
It will roast down and cook down a little bit, so just kind of some rough dices.
Okay, that's actually plenty right there.
I've got some basil, and some parsley, and - my eyes are still watering!
I look like I'm crying.
Now, just kind of roll it up tight.
It makes it easier to slice that way.
This is going to smell so good as it roasts in the oven.
Okay, I'm going to add a little salt.
Canned tomatoes, which is what this is replacing,
have a lot of salt in them,
so you definitely need some flavor from the salt.
Add a little drizzle of olive oil.
I'm just going to toss to coat,
getting everything covered and ready.
Looks good. I kind of like the onions on the bottom,
because the moisture from the tomatoes will help it
so they don't burn.
That looks great.
Let's just toss it in the oven, and we'll work on our meatballs.
If I had more time, I'd turn the oven down and let those roast for a couple of hours,
but I'm going to try to do this all together in one,
so I've got that scorching hot, almost broil.
just so you know.
Okay, what I'm going to do is -
I've got some bread crumbs here,
and I'm going to rehydrate those in a little bit of our powdered milk.
You could use instant as well.
This is just going to add a lot of moisture to the meatball.
Just pat that down.
Okay, to these meatballs, I'm going to add
some THRIVE Onion for flavor, and this is a great place to use that,
because if you use fresh onions,
sometimes you get the big, clumpy chunks of onions and things,
so our little minced pieces of onion are going to be great.
This is a little Sausage TVP for fun,
and this is regular ground beef.
And then I'm going to add some more herbs in,
some of our parsley. I think I need more than that.
We need a little more flavor, so let's mince up a few more
before we give that a toss.
Just a generous handful.
Okay, that looks great. I'll just toss those in.
And now what I'm going to do is get my pan preheating
before I mix this up.
I'll drizzle a little olive oil in there.
Now don't be afraid to get the old hands messy on this one,
because it's just inevitable.
We've just got to - oh, I forgot my egg!
We've got to have our binding ingredient.
Now, I use our THRIVE Eggs a lot.
In fact, the last couple of months,
I've used half of a can, which is, like,
a hundred and something eggs. I just love them in baking.
But anytime I'm actually binding, I'm just going to use a regular egg.
So that's why I'm not using THRIVE Eggs today.
Okay, we don't want to make our meatballs tough,
so I'm just going to try to get this all incorporated and combined
without massacring it to death.
That looks great.
Okay, let's just form some meatballs.
You can do any kind of size you like. I kind of like a one-inch, kind of like this.
They'll shrink up quite a bit, actually, as they cook.
Just try to get them round and pretty uniform in size.
Those herbs are going to taste so good, and the THRIVE Onions.
Okay, I've got my last one here, and I'll just place that in.
I'll clean up and i'll just be right back in a minute to flip.
Okay, these have just been cooking away the last couple of minutes.
I'm just going to go around and loosen each one of them up before I flip it over.
You can see they're just golden-brown and delicious
on that cooked side.
They smell like heaven!
Okay, those look great. I'm going to give them a little bit of salt.
You could have done that, and it probably would have been better, in the mixing stage,
but it's fine to do it now.
My water's coming up to the boil, so I'm going to add in my pasta.
Let's salt the water first, actually, with THRIVE Salt.
It gives the pasta some flavor.
I'll just toss this in.
I'm going to give that a little toss so that we don't have any issues sticking.
Okay, and I'll give these one more turn.
I'll turn my heat back up.
I'm cooking these on about medium heat.
Okay, and I'm so excited about this Tomato Powder.
A little goes a long way. This is going to last you forever,
as you are about to see.
I'm just going to use about a third of a cup,
and then just rehydrate it with a little water.
It comes to life just like tomato paste or, if you add a little bit more water, tomato sauce.
It's thirsty; you're going to have to add quite a bit of water.
Isn't that beautiful?
This is going to save you so much money,
versus buying those cans of tomato paste.
This looks great.
I'm going to add a little bit of herbs to this, just some dried herbs.
This is just some Italian herbs.
If you had bought canned tomato paste, it would have a lot of salt and sugar,
so I'm just going to add a little pinch of salt,
and then I'll taste it later to see if it needs any sweetness.
I'm going to add some garlic.
Now, if I was really my garlicky self, I would have added garlic to everything,
and that's probably how I would do it at home,
but I've tamed it down for you today.
I'm just going to put the garlic in the sauce.
Okay, that's about five cloves of garlic.
It could even have more, in my opinion. I love garlic, especially fresh garlic.
All right, let's check in on our tomatoes, because our meatballs are ready.
Okay, those look great.
Now, what I'm going to do is -
this was really lean meat, so I don't need to drain it at all,
but if you needed to drain, then go ahead and just drain off some of that grease.
What I'm going to do is take some of these skins off,
because those aren't very nice to chew on,
as I place the tomatoes in.
Then we'll just let this cook down into a sauce, with this on top.
Really easy , right?
Okay, that looks great, and I'm just going to kind of munch 'em down,
just kind of crush them a little bit with my tongs into smaller pieces.
And they'll break down even further, a little bit, while we simmer this until the pasta's ready.
I'm also going to take these gorgeous onions and herbs and flavor right here
and pour that right in as well.
Okay, let's add in our tomato paste as well.
Okay, and we'll just let this simmer.
Just be real gentle with it; we don't want to break up our meatballs,
but kind of get it incorporated in together.
And we'll just come check back when our pasta's done, and everything will be ready!
Okay, I just drained my noodles, and my sauce has been simmering.
It looks beautiful and ready,
so let's plate this up!
We'll get some noodles on the plate.
And now, the sauce.
This looks so good. I almost might be tempted to eat this on camera.
Pretty risky.
All right, and I've got a little chiffonade of basil right here, just a little basil ribbon.
And a little bit of cheese; this is some parmesan.
This is all completely optional.
I'm just going to get a little parmesan shaving on top.
Kay, looks great.
And actually, I'm gonna go for it; it looks so good.
Mmm - that's great.
For more great ideas like this, I hope we see you at ShelfReliance.com