Roast meatballs with yoghurt sauce & chili butter

Recipe for more-ish spiced meatballs with the classic Turkish flavour treatment.

Apr 06, 2024

∙ Paid

Hey there,

I’ve been planning a Turkish meatball special for some time, but until that’s ready, I wanted to share a recipe I created for my Norwegian followers a few years ago, and which quickly became a reader favourite.

While perhaps not classic in flavour or form, the combination of spiced meatballs, yoghurt and chili butter (certainly influenced by the legendary Turkish meat dumplings mantı, which are served in the same way) is nothing short of delicious.

Hope you enjoy them as much as I do!

Vidar

While there are multiple steps and processes to make this dish, none of them are difficult or particularly time consuming (save, perhaps, shaping the mini meatballs).

The meatballs are pretty much textbook Lebanese/Syrian style flavoured with warming spices. I suggest using a fatty meat here – it’ll vastly improve both flavour and texture compared to using a low-fat mince, which is more suitable for pasta sauces and the like.

The yoghurt sauce and chili oil are both a breeze to make, taking a mere minutes in total. The only step to be mindful of, is heating the yoghurt. Don’t rush it, or your sauce may split.

How to avoid that? Use low heat and stir constantly. And I mean constantly. Without stopping. It doesn’t take long, so don’t leave the hob or start scrolling your phone while this is happening. Make sure that it never gets to a proper boil. If you see bubbles of the kind indicating a rolling boil starting to form, take off the heat immediately.

If, even with all your best efforts, the sauce still splits, you have two options. You can try to save it by mixing in more yoghurt and whisking vigorously. Or, if you’re not bothered about the unappetising looks of a split sauce, know it’ll still taste good.

And if you really can’t (or don’t want to) manage, don’t bother with the heat. This’ll be delicious with a cold yoghurt sauce, too. Skip the egg and cornflour mixture, and simply dilute the garlicky yoghurt with a little water until you’ve reached your desired consistency. Don’t forget the salt, though!

I enjoy this with rice or bread and a generous side salad. Green leaves with a little lemon juice, pomegranate molasses and extra virgin olive oil goes a long way.

Afiyet olsun!