Vietnamese Pork Meatballs with Noodle Salad - Syn Free

This syn free meal is super simple and quick to make plus it’s perfect for an easy picky dinner, just fry the meatballs, wrap in lettuce cups with a dollop of noodles and sauce - you’re all set!  It looks like a lot of ingredients but once you have this stuff it’ll make loads of meals so it’s definitely worth having in the cupboard!
 
Word of warning, this can be spicy depending on your taste…I added extra chilis and it was great although my friend may have disagreed as her face went very pink! 

This makes 30 small meatballs.

Ingredients:

Meatballs
500g 5% pork mince
2 tablespoons fish sauce
2 scallions finely diced
Freshly ground black pepper
Frylite

Lettuce leaves suitable for cups (butter/iceberg or similar)

Sweet Chilli Vinaigrette
4 tablespoons white wine vinegar
2 tablespoons cold water
½ teaspoon sweetener
2 garlic cloves pressed
1 small red chilli pepper deseeded and finely diced

Noodles
Dry vermicelli noodles

Garnish
Finely chopped red chillis, spring onions or coriander leaves to garnish (optional)

Method:

Put the pork mince in a bowl with the fish sauce and the chopped scallions and ground black pepper.  Mix thoroughly (I used my hands) and set aside to infuse for a little bit.

Time to make the vinaigrette, it isn’t like a sweet chili sauce, it really is like a spicy, garlicky vinaigrette but it’s really tasty.  Basically, add everything to a little bowl and give it a stir – it’s truly as simple as that!

Break your lettuce into leaves or cups, make sure they’re washed, dried and clean!!  Set to one side.

Back to the meatballs.  Get a small amount and form into a small meatball shape, the mixture will make 30 meatballs so if you’re unsure how much mince to use divide the mince mix into three roughly even sized balls and get 10 from each…you can leave them as meatballs if you like, I made meatballs and then gave them a little squash, not a lot but enough to make them flatter top and bottom as I wanted to make sure they were cooked though the middle

Syn free Vietnamese Pork Meatballs
I cooked the meatballs next as I wanted the noodles to still be warm, you can make the noodles now if you’d prefer them cold – entirely up to you!

Regardless which order you do it all in,  now is the time to put a pan of water on to boil as this is what you’ll cook the noodles in

This was the order I made the meal in:

Meatballs: To cook the meatballs just get a large frying pan, spray lightly with Frylite (I used the olive oil one) and pop the meatballs in.  Fry over a medium heat until they’re cooked through.  It won’t take long, I found it was about 3-4 minutes each side, maybe a little more but I left them long enough to blacken slightly for taste – don’t keep turning them – just cook one side then over they goI waited until the meatballs were done on one side and turned them.  Once they were all turned I put the vermicelli noodles in the boiling water and took the pan off the heat.  Just leave them sitting there, they’re so fine they’ll cook in the hot water, you don’t want to boil the life out of them!  Give the noodles a couple of minutes, and I literally mean three minutes – then pour into a sieve to drain.  Run them under the cold water to stop them cooking and wrap them in a clean tea towel.  Quick squeeze to get rid of any excess water and they’re done.

Your meatballs should be ready now so it’s time to assemble the meal


I put the lettuce cups, meatballs and sauce on a big serving plate and the noodles in a bowl on the side and served the meal family style.  We assembled it with whatever quantities of each we had but two meatballs a dollop of noodles and good spoonful of sauce worked perfectly!!!  That’s the technical terms, you can’t get it wrong!

Syne Free Vietnamese Pork Meatballs with Noodles



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