Baked Lithuanian pork meatballs with tomatoes and olives
For a simple dinner, when you are bored of everything else - Lituanian meatballs with tomato sauce and olives is a perfect choise. Do you know that weird feeling when you are not exactly sure what you want for lunch or dinner? In those cases, you need to turn on your own imagination, think about what to prepare, from what, how and etc… So this time I will make this part way easier for you. If you have your favorite ground meat, canned tomatoes and olives in the fridge, you can prepare very tasty meatballs for dinner.
The whole cooking process is very simple: just mix ground meat with the ingredients from the recipe, form the meatballs and fry them in one skillet (don’t forget to turn on the oven). While the meatballs are frying, you can start preparing tomato sauce in another skillet. Then put everything in a baking dish, add olives (you can sprinkle meatballs with cheese as well if you like) and bake for approximately 20 minutes. While meatballs are baking in the oven, you can cook some pasta, potatoes, couscous, or some other side dish (if you are experiencing huge laziness, a garlic-french loaf will serve here as well, and you will not need to cook and dirty the pots). And voila, the dinner (or lunch) is fully ready!
The whole cooking process is very simple: just mix ground meat with the ingredients from the recipe, form the meatballs and fry them in one skillet (don’t forget to turn on the oven). While the meatballs are frying, you can start preparing tomato sauce in another skillet. Then put everything in a baking dish, add olives (you can sprinkle meatballs with cheese as well if you like) and bake for approximately 20 minutes. While meatballs are baking in the oven, you can cook some pasta, potatoes, couscous, or some other side dish (if you are experiencing huge laziness, a garlic-french loaf will serve here as well, and you will not need to cook and dirty the pots). And voila, the dinner (or lunch) is fully ready!
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Ingredients
- ground pork: 500 grams (1-1.1 lb)
- plain breadcrumbs: 3 tbsp.
- eggs: 1
- blue onions: 1 small
- salt: 1/2 tsp.
- cumin powder: 1/2 tsp.
- garlic powder: 1/2 tsp.
- paprika powder: 1/2 tsp.
- black pepper: 1/3 tsp.
- olive oil (for frying)
- diced tomatoes: 1 can (14.5 oz; 400 grams)
- onions: 1 medium-sized
- pitted green olived: 1 handful
- garlic: 3 cloves
- olive oil (for frying)
- salt
- black pepper
For sauce:
- 1. First, I peeled the onion and grated it with a fine grater.
- 2. Mixed ground pork with grated onion, egg, breadcrumbs, salt, black pepper, cumin, paprika and garlic powder. Formed small golf-sized balls.
- 3. In a large skillet, preheated a little bit of olive oil over medium heat, added meatballs and fried on both sides until nicely brown in color. Don’t fry for a very long time, as the meatballs will finish cooking in the oven. Then removed the meatballs from the pan and placed them in a baking dish.
- 4. Sauce: I peeled the onion and garlic, finely diced them. Preheated a little oil over medium heat, added onion, fried until softened. Added garlic and fried for 60 seconds. Then added tomatoes, mixed and cooked for about 5 minutes, stirringed from time to time, then seasoned with salt and pepper.
- 5. Preheated the oven to 180 C (350 F).
- 6. Poured the sauce over the meatballs, added olives and baked in the oven for 20-25 minutes. You can serve with pasta or potatoes. You can also sprinkle meatballs with your favorite cheese, if you want.
- 7. Note: Instead of minced pork, you can easily use a mixture of ground beef, chicken, or any other type of ground meat that you really like.
Recipe Directions
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