Cooking with Kids: Part I - Porcupine Balls

I had "meatballs" on the menu for Friday night but wasn't sure how I wanted to prepare them. I have some tried and true recipes but then it occurred to me that we could take advantage of another night for our daughter to cook in the kitchen.

A very brief search landed me on a Paula Deen recipe for "porcupine balls" A VERY easy recipe and pretty much everything was stuff I had on hand or something that could be easily substituted.

First of all, we used 1 pound of meatloaf mix instead of just ground beef. We added 2 teaspoons of Worcestershire and 1/4 cup of Parmesan to the meatballs for added flavor based on some of the comments on the recipe.  The girl's favorite part of this recipe was making the "meatballs"...here is her "ITSA MEATBALL (add the Italian accent)" face:

I also had half of a package of onion soup mix leftover from another recipe, so we used that in the rice instead of the dried onion, seasoned salt and Italian seasoning. We also substituted one can of roasted garlic diced tomatoes and a can of vegetable broth for the regular tomatoes and beef broth.

One hour later and we had this:

Before trying them I can tell you I knew we should have made sure the meat was submerged in the sauce, as some of the rice on the outside was a little chewy. However, the rice in the sauce was super flavorful and personally my favorite part of the dish. We all agreed the meatballs themselves need to be seasoned more. I agree with my girl that some pepper and garlic slat should do the trick.

At the end of dinner, we only had TWO meatballs left, so I believe it was a success!