Turkey Meatballs and Marry Me Chicken Pasta
Welcome to the pendulum swing that will now be the Sunday Cooking Newsletter!
Welcome back to the first Sunday Cooking newsletter in quite some time! In the past, many of these newsletters were food recaps of the previous week, but instead of just reviewing meals, I wanted to use this weekly newsletter to give you inspiration for the week ahead.
If you follow me on TikTok (@fakerchlfreeman—shameless plug!), you might have seen my recent post about wanting to be more realistic and honest about what I’m eating in my everyday life. One of the reasons why Hashtag Cooking fizzled out was that I was working on eating healthier, but I didn’t think that fit in with what I wanted my blog to be. Then, I was worried that Hashtag Cooking might become boring… so I stopped writing.
But, over the past few months, I decided I’d rather write about food—whatever that may look like—than not write about food. So, here I am writing and reformatting the Sunday Cooking newsletter. To honor the dinner era I’m currently in—trying to eat healthier, balanced meals on weeknights and satisfying all of my cravings on the weekends—I decided to share two meal ideas for the coming week that work for each occasion.
Weeknight Option: Baked Turkey Meatballs
My recent hyper-fixation meal for a weeknight dinner is this turkey meatball recipe. This is a great option for dinner after a busy day. I premake my meatball mixture and refrigerate it until I’m ready to use it. Then, I shape the meatballs and pop them in the oven with some potatoes or vegetables for about 15 minutes.
I do modify this meatball recipe a little bit. My Aldi (and I’m assuming every Aldi) sells ground turkey in 1.2-pound batches, so I almost cut the recipe in half. I also always forget to buy Worcestershire sauce at the store, so I substitute soy sauce. It works just as well, and still adds another layer of flavor to the meatballs. And, of course, I go a little heavy on the onion!
I always serve these with sweet potatoes and some other vegetable side, and it’s completely filling!
Now, if you’ve already written this recipe off because you’re not a huge fan of ground turkey or turkey in general, I’d reconsider. My boyfriend is not a ground turkey fan, and he can put away like twelve of these meatballs in a sitting.
All Bets Are Off Weekend Option: Marry Me Chicken Pasta
Marry Me Chicken Pasta is objectively one of the best pasta dishes out there. However, my roommate and I had friends over for a little dinner this weekend, and my go-to for a fun weekend dinner is always an indulgent pasta. Particularly one that has a bunch of dairy in it. Like this one!
There are tons of recipes for Marry Me Chicken Pasta on the internet; I believe it had a moment of virality a couple of years ago. I completely understand the hype. Here’s another one to throw in the mix!
Marry Me Chicken Pasta (Feeds 4 Hungry Adults)
You will need:
2 lbs chicken - I recommend dark meat, like boneless thighs
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 large sweet or Vidalia onion
16 oz dried pasta - I recommend rigatoni, orecchiette, or fusilli (any shape that will funnel as much sauce into your mouth as possible)
8-oz jar sundried tomatoes
1 1/2 cups heavy cream
1/2 cup Parmesan cheese
2 tablespoons minced garlic
Salt, Pepper, Red Pepper Flakes, Italian Seasoning to taste
How to make it:
This dish is super simple to make. Other than boiling the pasta in a pot, it’s basically a one-pan meal.
Prep: Before doing anything else, I diced my entire onion and cut my chicken into small pieces. Think chicken nugget-size. When I made this recipe this weekend, I used chicken breasts, but I highly recommend using dark meat instead! I seasoned my chicken generously with salt, pepper, and Italian seasoning
Pasta: I set a large pot of water to boil on the side while cooking my chicken and sauce. Once the water came to a rolling boil, I heavily salted it and added my pasta. Before straining my pasta, I reserved around 3/4 cup of pasta water for my sauce.
Sauce: I heated two of my three tablespoons of oil over medium heat in a large pan. I added the entire diced onion to the pan and cooked it for 2-3 minutes before adding the last tablespoon of olive oil and my chicken. Since my chicken was in nugget-size pieces, it cooked fairly quickly—around 5-6 minutes. About a minute before my chicken was done, I added my minced garlic and preferred amount of red pepper flakes to the pan.
After my chicken was cooked all the way through, I added an entire jar of sundried tomatoes to the pan. If your tomatoes come julienne-cut in the jar, you may want to give them an extra chop before using them. I cooked those for another minute before adding my heavy cream, pasta water, and parmesan cheese to the pan. Let it simmer for two minutes. Taste your sauce. Add salt and pepper if needed.
Put it all together: If your pan is big enough, add your pasta to the sauce and toss. My pan was not big enough, so I added my pasta and my sauce to the large pot I cooked my noodles in and tossed them. Garnish with basil or parsley and serve with extra parmesan cheese!
If you’ve made it this far in the newsletter, congratulations! You’ve read so much that you could probably add this to your Goodreads! I’ve rambled on far too long, but I hope you try adding these recipes into your dinner rotation this week or next. Or don’t! It’s your life!
Whatever food journey you’re on, I hope you know there is a place for you here in this little community of food lovers. Happy Sunday! Happy cooking!