For Epic Meat Weekend I made two half-batches of chicken Parmesan meatballs, as planned. I made two discoveries.
First, when Wegmans is out of the good Purdue ground chicken, don’t buy their store brand organic stuff. Not only is it ground way, way too thin, it’s much slimier and stickier. I had to throw out an entire batch because it just wasn’t coming together, and make a last-minute run out to Price Chopper for the good chicken. I still have another pound of the crap chicken I have no idea what to do with.
Second, I found out that almond flour works just as well as pork rinds when it comes to a binding agent in place of bread crumbs. Which is to say, it’s crap. Parmesan and mozzarella leaked all over compared to my control batch. I’m not giving up, however. The problem may be that a strict 1:1 substitution by volume is not appropriate. I did add a teaspoon of Italian seasoning, since I was replacing Italian bread crumbs, but I used the exact same amount of almond flour as I would bread crumbs. Maybe this was a mistake. Instead of 1/3 cup for a half batch, maybe I should up it to ½ cup next time.
This was my first time cooking with almond flour. I almost wonder if it’s not dry enough, either, and would benefit from some kind of pre-toasting. It has a consistency much more like wet sand than I would like. Maybe some people who are more familiar with it could give me a heads-up on what I need to do to make it work.
