Wednesday 15 July 2009

cooking with ikea meatballs

It was reading Suze's post and then Trisha's post that I finally resolved to pull out the bag of Ikea meatballs from the freezer and actually give them a go. Mum had bought the bag when she and dad were on an Ikea phase and kept making trips to Rhodes to pick up bits and pieces and they'd been eating the breakfasts and meals at the Ikea restaurant. Apparently they both like the meatballs at Ikea and hence the kilo bag they brought back home. For me, I had my first taste of Ikea meatballs when I cooked this pasta on the weekend.

Ikea meatballs with Pasta Italia Macaroni & Napoletana Sauce (from the Good Food & Wine Show). I'm a big fan of Pasta Italia - fresh pasta is the way to go!
It took me no more than 15 minutes to cook up this batch of pasta. I used about a quarter of a bag of meatballs, microwaved them for 3 minutes and then pan fried in the saucepan for a minute. Added the Napoletana sauce and heated through.
The instructions on the box of pasta say that the pasta takes about 3-4 minutes to cook. It took me about double the about of time to get it al dente.
Toss the pasta with the meatballs and sauce.
Serve with parmesan.

Ikea meatballs aren't bad at all! With pasta, they make for a satisfying meal and I reckon I could just microwave them and eat them by themselves with tomato sauce as a snack. It's great that they don't take long to reheat (there is the option of heating in the oven which takes about 15 minutes) but 3 minutes in the microwave cooked these meatballs just fine.

I wouldn't exactly call Ikea meatballs gourmet but they were great for cooking up a quick meal. Been busy lately, have no idea where my time goes so it's great that I can whip up something to eat in a flash!

5 comments:

Bean Sprout's Cafe said...

haven't tried food in IKEA yet but just realized that your pictures in the blog is bigger now.. yeah ! haha

Trisha said...

Pasta with meatballs!! Why didn't I think of that?! *facepalm* hahaha! Btw, just passing on the Kreative Blogger award to you! You and your blog are such a darl! :)

panda said...

beansprout - i've had breakfast at ikea and it's quite cheap; generally it's not too bad. lol...the pictures are now bigger courtesy of chocolate suze who kept getting me to make them bigger :P

trisha - if you've still got more ikea meatballs, try making pasta with meatballs; it's so easy, it's filling and tastes great. thanks for the award!! glad to hear you like my blog!

Anonymous said...

Oh yum! I love Pasta Italia pasta too :) Good idea using the Ikea meatballs to make a 10 minutes pasta and meatballs! :D

panda said...

nqn - i probably could eat myself broke buying fresh pasta :P