Spinach Balls In The Kitchen

 

These are so delicious I guarantee you will be popping them in your mouth like M&Ms. They make for a great easy appetizer if you’re having a dinner party, as a replacement for meatballs in your spaghetti or as a yummy snack for yourself. (I even make them for dinner in high quantities when I’m in a pinch) And the best part is, no dirtying pans on the stove top!

It’s all pretty simple stuff and this is one of those recipes you can experiment with and have fun mixing different things. For my balls, (pause for highly immature giggle) I went with a spinach, feta and dried cranberries mix. It’s a no lose combo that tastes like thanksgiving stuffing.

The hardest part is chopping up the onion- I always cry a river. Make sure your frozen spinach is well drained. It’s kind of a pain but one trick I learned is to thaw your spinach over night then place the spinach on a clean dish towel. Wrap the towel around the spinach and squeeze out the water through the towel. Give it some real gusto when you squeeze, you wont look like Grace Kelly (more like Hulk Hogan) but your spinach balls wont be soggy so it’s worth it.

When I made these it was it was the day before grocery day and I had next to nothing for grub in the house including eggs so I had to be crafty. Why can’t chickens be a common household pet? I used ground flax as an egg substitute which also adds the fibre intake so it wouldn’t be a bad idea to do even if you did have eggs around. One tablespoons flax plus three tablespoons water equals one egg.

This is how it should look. It reminds me of the left over milk from your cereal bowl.

 

It just gets dumped in like a regular egg and works wonders to hold all your goods together.

I rolled half my mix then added cranberries to the other half for some sweetness.

 

Roll them into about twenty little balls. Save yourself the extra leg work of cleaning a cookie sheet and just cover it in handy dandy parchment paper.

 

And there you have it. They look pretty much identical to when you first put them in except they’re warm and the cheese is melty.

Spinach Balls

Yields 20 balls

Ingredients:

1 package well drained frozen spinach (about 1 cup when drained)

1/2 cup feta

1/2 onion

1 cup bread crumbs

1/2 cup dried cranberries

1 egg or flax substitute

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Dice onions and mix well with spinach, feta, cranberries. Add egg or egg substitute and mix until everything is moist. Form into little balls, about the size of golf balls. Line your cookie sheet with parchment paper (or if you’re less lazy than me spray it down with some Pam). Spread out balls on cookie sheet and bake for 35-45 minutes. Cool for ten minutes or so then shamelessly dig in. Sour cream makes a great dip for these treats.

Enjoy!