Baked Beef & Buckwheat Meatballs

Ingredients

1 cup buckwheat / kasha, uncooked
1 kg ground beef (could also use half chicken or pork meat, or a combination of these to your liking)
1 onion, finely diced
2 carrots, grated
2 eggs, beaten
1 teaspoon paprika (or to taste)
pepper, to taste
salt, to taste
oil, for frying

Directions

Prepare the buckwheat:
Cook 1 cup buckwheat with 2 cups of water and 1 stock cube in a rice cooker. Let the rice cooker cook it all for the automatic cycle (which takes 25 minutes on my rice cooker), then leave it on ‘warm’ for another 15 minutes so it’s nice and fluffy. You could also use leftover cooked buckwheat.

Prepare the meatballs:
Heat some oil in a frying pan and fry the onion and carrot until softened. Purée in a blender.
In a large bowl, combine the meat, onion and carrot blend, buckwheat, and spices. Form into meatball or patty shapes and fry in a pan until browned. To finish cooking, bake in an oven preheated to 180C / 350F for 20-25 minutes until no longer pink in the middle.

My Notes

I’ve made meatballs with bulgur wheat before so thought I’d try it with buckwheat instead. I didn’t use fresh carrot or onions, I used about 1/2 cup of caramelised onion I had leftover from something else. I didn’t fry the meatballs at all: after forming them, I put them in the fridge for an hour to firm up, then baked them in the oven for 25 minutes. I divided the meatball mixture up into 3 batches and used different spice blends: one was Montreal steak spice, one was za’atar and sumac, one was baharat. This recipe made about 50 meatballs, most of which we froze for another time.