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The Vortex Meatball

When I put up the recipe for my Greek Meat Surprise Snacks, I couldn't believe the amount of hits I got on it. FastPaleo made it their Recipe of the Day (I was so proud!) and my statcounter went thru the roof. It seems that people like recipes for tasty meat snacks. Yay! Cause I like tasty meat snacks. Bring on the Vortex Meatball. I'm naming it The Vortex Meatball because 1, I can. And 2, my band, Viki Vortex and the Cumshots, has been going thru a bit of a bacon kick. Yep. We even have a new bacon-inspired logo! See, when I was recently at Rebellion Punk Festival, I carried cooked bacon around in my handbag to snack on. Because, seriously, there is not much 'paleo friendly food' up in Blackpool. I was impressed by the backstage area serving vegan food though. Well, when I say impressed, I was pleased that I could get them to do me a plate of salad and then I could sprinkle my bacon on top! So I wanted to come up with something portable, with bacon, that would be handy for me to take on my travels on the tour bus. (I'm kidding there. We don't have a tour bus.... but if we did have a tour bus, I would make bucket loads of Vortex Meatballs.) As I have been on a bit of a fruit and meat kick. Well, all right, I've always liked that combination. These Vortex Meatballs are a mouthful of heaven. Seriously. I was pretty darn impressed with this one... and so glad that I actually wrote down EXACTLY what I did. Because I'm going to be making these again. You know, for the Bacon Powered Tour.
Courses ,
Servings 18
Ingredients
  • 800 grams ground meat (half beef and half pork)
  • 300 grams bacon
  • 1 red onion
  • 1 egg
  • 4 cloves garlic
  • 9 dates
  • 2 teaspoons fennel
  • 2 teaspoons oregano
  • 1 teaspoon paprika
Instructions

  1. Preheat the oven to 220 C. It was pretty hot.

  2. Remove 6 slices of bacon and set aside and then roughly chop up the remain bacon to fit into the food processor (don't bother separating the strips) and put it in there with the onion, garlic, egg, fennel, oregano and paprika. Whizz it around to chop up the bacon. It turns a gorgeous red colour!

  3. Add in the minced meat and whizz it quickly round, not too long. Just enough to mix. Or just mix it all up in a separate bowl.

  4. Cut the dates in half, lengthways, and remove the seed thingie. You will have 18 halves. (My math is awesome, no?)

  5. Take the 6 slices of bacon that you set aside earlier and cut each into thirds. Wrap 1 third a piece of bacon round each half of a date. They won't stay wrapped, but just bear with me. It's easier to do this step and THEN carry on...

  6. Take a bacon wrapped date half parcel and a handful of the minced meat/bacon mixture and wrap it 'round. Like you're making scotch eggs. The meat mixture is pretty sticky, so it's actually rather easy. Encase each bacon'd date half in meat.

    The mixture made about 18 meatballs. About an inch and half in diameter. I had a li'l bit of bacon and a little bit of meat leftover so made one meatball, without date, wrapped in bacon. This was also very tasty! Just for future reference!

  7. Stick them all on a baking tray lined with greaseproof baking paper and bake for about 40 minutes.

  8. When you're happy they are cooked, take em out and let them cool as LONG as you can possibly hold out.... which, honestly, isn't long.

Read it online: https://thecreativecaveman.com/recipe/vikivortexmeatball/