Quick and easy Greek pan fried meatballs (keftedes)

Crispy on the outside, tender and juicy on the inside. These meatballs are a must with lemon juice! They’re so good you’ll be enjoying them as a flavorful appetizer or a light main course. It’s perfect for busy weeknights or last-minute get-togethers. Quick and easy to make—ready in under 30 minutes! Plus, they’re make-ahead friendly. You can fry the meatballs ahead and reheat them in the oven before serving. To reheat, bake at 350°F for 10 minutes.

Pair with a bowl of soup and a Greek salad for a refreshing summer meal. Serve them in pita bread like falafel, with Tzatziki, or even in a salad. Plus, you can use lamb, beef, veal, chicken, or follow Italian or Swedish recipes. The choice is yours!

*Greek Salad Recipe:* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bS9acX4nIgg

*INGREDIENTS*
2 pounds lamb
1 tbsp garlic
1 tbsp Parmesan
2 eggs
1 cup fresh breadcrumbs
1 cup milk
2 tsp salt
2 tsp pepper
1/4 cup Italian Parsley
1/4 cup mint
3 oz Tomato sauce https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKFeRl2CKWc
1 oz lemon juice

_Frying:_
Flour, for dusting
Olive oil, to fry
3-4 minutes per side.

*CHAPTERS*
00:00 – Introduction
00:40 – Ingredients and preparation
03:14 – Forming and flour coating patties
05:50 – Pan-frying instructions
07:03 – Serving suggestions
09:40 – Don’t forget to make your Tzatziki!
14:42 – Final thoughts

*Tzatziki Sauce Recipe:* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1dj9F7WkPM

Tags: Greek, Meatballs, Quick & Easy, Make-Ahead, Appetizer, Main Course, Lamb, Beef, Chicken, Italian, Swedish, Lemon, Garlic, Parmesan, Breadcrumbs, Herbs, keftedes

so this week on Medusa Kitchen we’re making Greek keftedes served with tzatziki sauce and lemon and onions it’s a lamb meatball that’s pan fried with fresh mint cheese similar to a meatloaf recipe quick and easy can be done in less than half an hour and you got dinner on the table it’s a great summertime light dinner bowl of soup or a Greek salad to go with it you’re good we’re making a really popular appetizer at Medusa Keftedes which is a pan fried Greek meatball my mother used to make these at least every other week my dad loved them we’re gonna show you how to make that today and we’re just gonna get right at it I got a a large saute pan nonstick with about 1/4 inch of olive oil heating up and we’re going to make the Greek meatball mix what I got in here is 2 pounds of ground lamb which just came in about an hour ago nice fresh ground and to this we’re gonna add a little black pepper about 1/2 a tablespoon of salt half ounce of grated Parmesan cheese two eggs basically we’re making a lamb meatball here or a meatloaf type of filling you can do this recipe with an Italian style uh meatball as well I got about a tablespoon of fresh garlic I got about a quarter cup of chopped shallots got about a half a cup of fresh mint that I just picked up at the farm this morning and then I’ve got some chopped up Italian parsley not the curly that has more flavor with a little bit of green onions cilantro and dill in there quarter cup of the Pomodoro sauce which is this the straight tomato sauce we’re gonna add one ounce of lemon juice fresh squeezed which we just squeezed about an hour ago as well I’ve got a cup of milk here and I’m gonna use about a cup of bread crumbs and what this is called a panade this is what brings moisture to your meatloaf or meatballs you soak the the bread crumbs these are fresh bread crumbs not dry and that panade see how it’s just nice and soaked up there all right we’ve got all our seasonings our onions our garlic our herbs a little bit of lemon juice some tomato couple eggs milk bread and now we’re going to mix this you can do this in a mixer if you want with a paddle what’s nice about these keftedes is um if you don’t wanna go through the process of making a gyros meat and then cooking it and then letting it sit a day and then slicing it and sauteing it which is a process these Greek meatballs will give you that same lamb fix that you may be looking for and it’s something that you can make right away and you can see just squeezing this all together now and there we go now I’ll take my dad liked them small about a 1 ounce scoop a little bite size nuggets you get these into an all purpose flour no seasoning just straight flour why do you do the flour coating because it it puts a little bit of a uh skin on it for a lack of a better term gives it a nice a nice finish so yeah I pat these in like ovals and get most of that flour off this is not something you really can do a day ahead of time if you if you made the filling a day ahead of time that salt would turn your lamb really pink and you don’t want these to look pink when you bite into them so this is something that you do the day of this is where you get the kids to help you pat these patties out or your guests have them put on gloves and make these now after you’ve made these and you’ve fried them they can sit and then you can pop them in the oven to heat them up so you can make them ahead of time if you want what would the reheat method be for that uh an oven 3:50 10 minutes it’s just like heating up a meatball again yes make it warm exactly but these you know when we made these at home my mother would just fry them and pile them on a platter and we would eat them as she made them but they’re great room temperature we’re gonna make another four here and then we’ll get to uh pan frying these like I said you could use a Swedish meatball recipe or an Italian meatball recipe but uh what you have to have in these keftedes is you have to have fresh mint my mother had fresh mint growing outside the house and uh she used it always in her keftedes and it’s one of those flavorings that needs to be in this recipe so you want at least parsley and mint there we go we got these and we’ll push these down just a little bit yeah I check my oil by sprinkling a little flour in there and we want to pan fry these on like a medium heat you don’t want to go too hot on them because the outside will get crusted and and beautiful but the inside won’t have time to cook so I mean it’s okay if you made them medium but this kefta recipe is for a piece of you know cooked all the way through so excited to I’m doing this recipe finally because there are a lot of people out there that want to know how to make these they always requested them at the restaurant but they were difficult to do because you had to make them to order um you know I could cook them ahead of time but they’re just not as juicy uh as they are when they’re fresh and we like to cook to order at the restaurant so we’ve got a nice medium heat going here they’ll take about 4 or 5 minutes per side now to serve these very similar to gyros onions and tomatoes you can serve these keftedes uh with pita bread and make kind of like a falafel you can open up a pocket pita and you know with falafel you put tomato and lettuce and sesame tahini sauce and tzatziki and falafel balls and crumbled feta remember when we’re chopping or slicing with our knife we we angle the knife out just a bit and we’re basically holding the food with our left hand and as you get to the end you just slow down okay don’t go real fast and get that all cut up we’ll break this onion up nice and we’ll make a couple of different style plates but like I said you can fill these into a pita bread and make a sandwich out of it as well these are the homegrown farm tomatoes which have never seen a refrigerator get these tomatoes nice sliced you know when they’re room temperature like this they eat so so lovely spread these tomatoes on the plate we put a little bit of our chopped herbs now for a different look you can cut this tomato in thirds so you’ve got these nice chunks and we can sprinkle these around the plate like so a little bit of herbage parsley cilantro fresh dill got some green onions in there this time our keftedes here they’re cooking up really nicely you know someone had asked earlier about why do you flour it because now it’s got this little crust on it you know it’s a texture thing you could fry these without flour you could use a cassava flour which is gluten free well what that flour does it gives us a nice crunch well not a crunchy coating but something that has a little bit of texture and you know notice how we’re we’re not pan frying these really hard we’re just letting this meatball cook all the way through we’ll go another four to five minutes and we’ll let that go we made some fresh tzatziki sauce today look at that I taught my daughter Zania how to make this green onions mint cilantro dill salt pepper a little bit of lemon juice a little bit of garlic not too much tzatziki sauce is something that you want to be not heavily seasoned and like a lot of Greek food you need to have the ability to squeeze lemon on the lamb which makes it just it takes it that extra level okay well let’s sprinkle a little black pepper around the plate because you know people might want to take their keftedes in I’m liking this we’re gonna take one out one of the things that I I haven’t mentioned is is when you make this get a small saute pan and test a Patty to check it for salt I’ve made this recipe so often that I didn’t need to do that but it might be a good idea if you took a small saute pan pan fried a couple of these ahead of time just to check for salt look at that it’s just a little bit raw inside but still safe enough to eat because it’s lamb it’s not pork we got we’re good on salt we got nice moisture it’s nice and juicy look at that if you make these ahead of time you might lose a little bit of that juice but because we added the panade to this mixture they’re still gonna be moist we’re gonna give these one more turn cause I don’t want them to be medium I want them to be cooked all the way through you notice how that flour crust on the kefta is it’s starting to get a nice color and that’s what we’re looking for we’re looking for something that has a little bit of a crispy crispy coating we’ll just give this another minute what I like to do is I like to set them on a paper towel or kitchen towel to absorb some of that extra grease so these come out of here if you didn’t have that flour on there you wouldn’t have that nice coating on these and they would still be delicious but that coating you know I mean we eat so much with texture as well as flavor and it gives you a nice texture in your mouth you’ve got the the moist soft filling you’ve got a little bit of that nice crispy coating and you go ahead and you fry your next batch we just put these keftedes right on the platter like so and this is how I’m going to be serving them this Friday for a dinner that I’m doing that’ll go to the table like that now if you were doing an individual order I always like to do odd numbers so it’s either 3 or five I’m going with five because they’re about 3/4 of an ounce to an ounce and you got a nice appetizer there for two people now what you must do I’m not gonna use the lemons that I put on the platter because I still have to take a photo but you have to squeeze lemon on these keftedes that is a must it will not be as good if it’s without the lemon juice and you make sure you get each one with lemon juice give it a little dusting of salt or cheese the mizithra cheese works really good for this that’s the the hard Greek cheese and that’s Greek keftedes you know these would be great like I said in a pita bread to make a sandwich take a little bit of tzatziki you gotta have the lemon I gotta do it again I’m sorry you could make these with ground beef but they’re not going to be as authentic is a Greek keftather Greek keftathers are made with ground lamb you could use beef you could use veal you could use beef and veal you could make these with ground chicken you can use a Swedish meatball recipe an Italian meatball recipe but this is the way my mother made them and she would make at least 50 or 60 of them because we would just snack on them all night this is a great dish for movie night put a platter of these on the table with tzatziki and everybody can help themselves people went crazy for these and I don’t see why not because it is a delicious appetizer light entree it’s a perfect summer entree with a glass of crisp white wine a good loaf of crusty sesame bread you will be getting your Greek on and that’s what we wanna do quick and easy Greek pan fried meatballs or keftedes make sure your lamb is fresh cut fresh herbs you could use grated onion instead of the shallots I like the shallots fresh garlic you can use mizithra or Parmesan a couple of eggs a good fresh bread crumb not the dry ones the fresh ones soak up more milk and they give you a better moisture so use fresh bread crumbs take a couple slices of bread and run them through the robot coupe or chop it up and put it in the blender but make a fresh bread crumb I mean these are fresh I just made the bread today I mean you want the you want some moisture in these bread crumbs and you can leave the crust on no big deal we love the followers thank you so much for supporting me and I hope you try this recipe we’ll see you next week