Gingery Pork Meatballs with Noodles

It seems like everyone's saving their pennies these days, and that fact has prompted Cooking Light to start a new feature called "Budget Cooking". Their recipe for Gingery Pork Meatballs with Noodles (Sept 2010) is advertised with a price tag of $2.06 a serving - let's see if it packs big flavor at a low cost.

The ingredient list is heavy on pantry staples, i.e., things Cooking Light thinks you should already have in your kitchen. Items like breadcrumbs, soy sauce, sesame oil, and some spices aren't counted in the calculation, which allows the "budget" label to be applied to a dish that, at face value, has a laundry lists of components. These items can have high costs if you don't have them on hand, but you're guaranteed to get loads of use out of them, especially if you frequent the magazine's files for recipe ideas. All of the ingredients for this particular recipe are easy to find, including the "wide rice noodles", which we scored from a local Whole Foods-style grocer.

A lot of times, as we skim recipes when creating our weekly menu, we miss the little "idle times" hidden in the instructions. Make sure you budget 30 minutes for the meatball mixture to chill. This would be a great time to chop up the ingredients for the noodles or, if you're super-prepared, to fit in a quick workout or throw in a load of laundry!

Now, the recipe itself says, "cook noodles according to package directions," which would be easy to do...if we could read Japanese. Thankfully, a quick Google search yielded several preparation options. We picked the path of least resistance, soaking the noodles for 30 minutes, then adding as detailed in step 3 of the recipe. Either 30 minutes wasn't enough, or we should've bitten the bullet and boiled them, because we ended up with some seriously crunchy noodles!

At left is the finished product: a lovely, easy-to-assemble taste of Asian cuisine. The meatballs are moist and the ginger, garlic, and soy sauce give them a distinct taste that will breathe life into your dinner repertoire. We took them to work the following day and were pleasantly surprised by how the flavors held up after a turn in the microwave. (No improvement in those noodles, unfortunately, but we'll keep at it!)

This one's a keeper, gang. Tuck it away in your recipe file for a rainy day and wow the pants off of your roommate, significant other, or whoever else is over for dinner!