Enchilada Meatballs

 This is a really unique, and fun recipe that I got from allrecipes, my favoritest website in the whole world, after lolcats of course. It's meatballs with a Mexican flair, great for parties or just a fun dinner.
 My version, of course, is gluten free and everything is made from scratch. I made the cornbread, and enchilada sauce from scratch. Cornbread is the coolest part of this recipe. The cornbread is the bread crumbs! Genius!
 You can eat this as a snack, appetizer, or dinner- just jazz it up with taco fixings and make meatball tacos in corn tortillas. Those meatball tacos were tasty. This time around I didn't put any cheese in my mixture and the meatballs fell apart really easily. The taste was spot on, but they weren't very pretty.
 So, the first thing you want to do is make the cornbread, adding some taco seasoning in with it. They say a packet, but I make my own taco seasoning, so about two tablespoons worth. This taco seasoning is fabulous. The cornbread recipe I use is here.

Before baking

After baking. And looking great I must say

 Let your cornbread cool. Then make bread crumbs. It's super easy, just look...

yep I used my mixer to make bread crumbs, pure genius

 Cornbread is a more crumbly type of bread so you can just put it in your mixer and let it go to town.
 While the cornbread was baking I made the enchilada sauce. I doubled that recipe for the meatballs. You'll want extra to pour over the meatballs.

this is what it looks like before reducing

 Now that you have your breadcrumbs and enchilada sauce, you can finally make your meatballs! Just combine the enchilada sauce, slightly cooled of course, and breadcrumbs with your mixer. Then add the ground meat, and cheese if you're feeling cheesy. I let my mixer do all the work, maybe that's why my meatballs fell apart, but I'd rather my mixer get yucky than my hands.

Oh yes I did, no yucky hands for me

 Then you want to form the meat mixture into balls. I like to use my ice cream scoop for this. It makes them each the same exact size and it's really fast.

and of course this scoop broke right after this picture. fail

 After you bake the meatballs, you can put them in another pan and pour your extra enchilada sauce on them. Or if you're like me and don't want to dirty another pan, you can put them in your enchilada sauce that's still in the pot, hoping your meatballs won't fall apart stirring them. Good luck and have fun!

another attempt at being artsy

Ingredients

• 2 cups crumbled cornbread
• 20 enchilada sauce, divided
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 tablespoons taco seasoning
• 1 1/2 pounds ground beef
• 1 cup shredded Mexican cheese blend, divided (optional-see note)

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
2. In a large bowl, combine the cornbread, 10 oz of the enchilada sauce, half of the cheese if using, salt, and taco seasonging. Crumble the beef into the mixture, and blend well. Shape meat into 1 inch balls, and place on a 10x15 inch jellyroll pan, or any cookie sheet with sides to catch the grease.
3. Bake for 18 to 22 minutes in the preheated oven, until the meat is cooked through.
4. While the meatballs are cooking, warm remaining enchilada sauce in a saucepan. Remove the meatballs from the pan using a slotted spoon, and place in a serving dish. Pour the heated sauce over them, and sprinkle the rest of the cheese on top. Provide toothpicks for serving.