Find­ing my night­shade intol­er­ance forced me to give up meatballs…at least meat­balls that way I’ve always pre­pared them. In an attempt to find a meat­ball I like, I sud­denly thought…‘Swedish.’ There is pork in here, which I rarely eat, but I will make this once in a blue moon. I also think vari­ety is key for a suc­cess­ful gluten-free diet.

This is Alton Brown’s recipe, with changes to make it gluten-free. I also changed a pro­ce­dure to lighten the meat­balls. A note on ingre­di­ents: I’ve devel­oped a friend­ship with my butcher. He is always pro­vid­ing me some par­tic­u­lar cut (like deboned chicken breasts with the skin — more on that later) and he always freshly grinds my meat. If you want to know what you’re eat­ing, find a meat mar­ket you trust and have them grind the cut of meat you want. It takes a bit more time, but your butcher will be happy to do this. My ground pork for this recipe came from two bone­less pork loins.

This recipe calls for beef stock, but I was fresh out, so I used home­made chicken stock. To my sur­prise, it worked per­fectly. I served this with steamed broc­coli and Brus­sels sprouts and a sim­ple green salad. My fam­ily loved it.

Prep time: 30 min­utes
Total time: 55 min­utes
Yield: 42 meat­balls
Serv­ings: Serves 6

2 slices gluten-free bread, crusts removed (I use the rice bread from Trader Joe’s which is free of night­shades)
1/4 c. milk (or a non-dairy sub­sti­tute, like almond or rice milk)
3–4 T but­ter (or a non-dairy sub­sti­tute, like Spec­trum)
1/2 c. finely chopped onion
1 tsp. plus a pinch of kosher salt
3/4 lb. ground chuck
3/4 lb. ground pork
2 large egg yolks
1/2 tsp. black pep­per
1/4 tsp. ground all­spice
1/4 tsp. freshly grated nut­meg
1/4 c. rice flour or 1 tsp. arrow­root
3 c. beef or chicken stock or any com­bi­na­tion of both
1/4 c. heavy whip­ping cream (omit for non-dairy)
minced flat-leaf (Ital­ian) parsley

1. Pre­heat oven to 200 degrees or to your warm setting.
2. Cut the crust off the bread. Tear into pieces and place in a mix­ing bowl. Cover with milk and set aside.
3. In a medium saute pan, melt 1 T but­ter over medium heat. Add the onion and a pinch of salt and sweat until the onion is soft, about 4 min­utes. Remove from the heat and add to mix­ing bowl with the bread and milk.
4. To the mix­ture, add ground chuck, ground pork, egg yolks, 1 tsp. kosher salt, black pep­per, all­spice and nut­meg. With two forks, mix gen­tly so that the mix­ture won’t get too com­pacted, which makes for heavy meatballs.
5.  Shape meat­balls into rounds with your hands. If you have  a scale, you can mea­sure them to about 1 ounce, although I like mine a bit smaller. Shape all meat­balls and set aside.
6. Heat the 2 T but­ter in the sauté pan over medium-low heat. Add meat­balls, 14 at a time and sauté for 8–10 min­utes, turn­ing mid­way, mak­ing sure to get sides browned as well. After fully cooked, trans­fer each batch into a heat­proof bak­ing dish and place in the warm­ing oven.
7. Once all the meat­balls are cooked, decrease the heat to low and add the rice flour (or arrow­root) to the pan with the drip­pings. Incor­po­rate with a spat­ula or whisk. (I needed to add another T of but­ter here). Stir for 1 minute, then stir in the stock, bring­ing it to a sim­mer for sev­eral min­utes until it thick­ens. Adjust for sea­son­ing and add a pinch of salt if needed. Stir in the cream to fur­ther thicken or omit to keep dairy-free.
8. Remove meat­balls from oven, cover with sauce and serve with minced pars­ley sprin­kled on top.