Step-Up Your At-Home Meals

Whether you consider yourself a home chef or prefer to watch your roommate make dinner from the couch, navigating healthy eating and shopping while at school can be hard. While the fast-food options that occupy pretty much all of E. College Ave. are alluring, they usually aren’t worth the money, the line or the feeling afterward. And not to mention having to walk there! Easy home meals in reality are the ultimate lazy girl option and will make your apartment smell delicious! These meals are so quick they can even be made as the preamble to your pregame. 

Caramelized Onion Meatballs

The title may sound daunting, but we promise this is easy! These meatballs are so versatile they are sure to become a regular in your dinner rotation.

What You’ll Need

• Meat of choice (for this recipe we’re using ground turkey)
• 3 large onions (any color you prefer, red has the strongest flavor)
• Dill
• 1 egg
• Panko breadcrumbs
• Side vegetable of your choice
• Rice

The rice and side vegetables are completely optional but you can add whatever you’d like to make these meatballs into a meal!

What You’ll Do

1. To start, you’re going to want to chop up your onions into thin slices. 
2. Then add olive oil and begin to sauté. The onions will take around 15 minutes to fully caramelize so stir every few minutes.
3. While the onions continue to cook, you’re going to put your raw meat into a bowl and add one raw egg.
4. Then add about a cup of panko to the mixture along with two teaspoons each of salt, pepper and garlic powder.
5. Once your onions are cooked, you’re going to set them aside to cool. In the meantime, chop up your dill into fine pieces or you can use dried dill from the seasoning section. Add as much as you like depending on how strong you’d like the dill flavor to be. For this recipe add one bundle or about a tablespoon.
6. Once your onions are room temperature, you’re going to add the onions and dill to the meat mixture and mix everything until fully incorporated. Note that the meat will cook prematurely if you add the onions while hot and do not mix too much or it will make the meat tough!
7. Take handfuls of the meat mixture and roll in your hands into ball shapes. One pack of meat should yield about eight small meatballs.
8. Add the meatballs back into the pan you used for the onions and add more olive oil.
9. The pan should be on medium-high and you’re going to want to sear each side of the meatballs until they are golden brown. Once you get it to sear on either side, you’re going to set the heat to medium-low and cover for ten minutes. Continuously flip the meatballs every few minutes so they do not burn on either side.

Final Step

Now eat with whatever side dishes you’d like! Our personal favorite is to have them with a little parmesan on top, served with rice and broccoli.

Taco Bar

Now we know this isn’t revolutionary, but it is a quick and easy way to make a meal everyone will love. A taco bar is not only a 15-minute meal but leaves room for customization in case you have any picky eaters in your apartment.

What You’ll Need

• Ground turkey (or any meat of choice)
• 2 jars of salsa
• Tortilla’s
• Sour cream
• Cheese
• Lettuce

This is a suggested shopping list for this recipe but don’t forget this is completely customizable! Add or remove anything you don’t like.

What You’ll Do

1. To start, if you have any veggies going bad you can chop those up and add olive oil to your pan on medium heat (if you don’t have any, that’s fine too!)
2. Add your meat to the pan, then with a spatula breaking it up. 
3. Now it’s time to season! You can use whatever you have in your pantry but the staple few you will want to add are salt, pepper, garlic powder and onion powder. Add about a teaspoon of each.
4. Once the meat is mostly cooked, when there is only some pink left, you are going to pour in a jar of your favorite salsa.
5. Once you have dumped the salsa in, fill the jar with a splash of water and shake it around to get all of the leftovers off the sides of the jar and then add to the pan.
6. Continue to stir until everything is incorporated then cover with a lid. Turn the heat to low and allow the meat to simmer for at least five more minutes.

Final Step

Now it’s time to serve or allow others to serve themselves! At this point, all you have to do is assemble your taco with all of your favorite toppings. If there is any leftover meat, save it for even quicker meals throughout the week!

Step up your weeknight meal game and try one of these easy dinners! Let us know what you think by tagging us @VALLEYmag on Instagram!

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