Thanksgiving Dinner Meatballs

The dried cranberries make mixing this meat a little fun. Since they are dried it seems to make it easier to incorporate them into the meat mixture. I also think that when you are using turkey and chicken as the base for meatballs, it’s a little easier to add those ingredients to the mix that are a little more difficult to fully incorporate.  The ground turkey is a little looser and a little slipperier to work with for meatballs but sometimes that works in your favor.

Working with turkey as the base for your meatball can be a little different than working with beef. The challenge with turkey is that it’s a little leaner so it doesn’t hold together as easily as beef meatballs. The one trick that I can tell you is to have your cooking spray handy to spray on your hands to coat them before you roll the meatballs out. This prevents the meatball mixture from sticking to your hands – which I will tell you after making many many meatballs can slow you down and just be annoying. I have cooking spray around to coat my hands during the meatball rolling process and it helps the speed of making the meatballs and the ease of it as well. Especially for these meatballs that have the extra element of stuffing in the meatball.

The thing that you want to keep in mind with making these meatballs is the the stuffing should act like a side to the meat – just like at Thanksgiving. The last thing you want to do is to combine the meat and the stuffing where it’s hard to differentiate between the two flavors and textures. The point of this meatball is to remind you of all of the great flavors and textures of a Thanksgiving dinner. This requires a delicate touch when rolling out the meatballs so the stuffing and meat stay separate but still come together to form a bite sized ball.

The other thing that really makes this meatball pop is adding a little gravy on top once the meatballs are out of the oven and ready to be served – you can buy store brought gravy and add it to a crockpot to keep these meatballs warm for your guests or loved ones – or you can find my amazing turkey gravy recipe here.

Adding cooking spray to the baking sheet for meatballs that aren’t made from beef or fattier meats is super helpful to prevent the meatballs from sticking to the foil or the pan that you choose to cook the meatballs on.

You can make these without the dried cranberries if you’re a person that isn’t too into the fruit and meat combination. The turkey and stuffing meatball is what makes these little balls remind me of the holidays.

I have brought these to many potlucks and friend’s houses to share and they have always been a crowd favorite. One way to make these meatballs feel more like your Thanksgiving feast you get to have once a year with your loved ones is to serve them over mashed potatoes. Talk about the ultimate comfort food! It’s like having a Thanksgiving bowl for dinner or it always reminds me of the day after leftovers where you either throw everything in a bowl or make that amazing Thanksgiving leftover sandwich.

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