Healthy Swedish Meatballs with Cauliflower Rice Pilaf
on Jul 18, 2016, Updated Jan 12, 2025
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These Healthy Swedish Meatballs with Cauliflower Rice Pilaf are an undated version of a recipe I grew up on. You won’t find any canned condensed soups with weird ingredients in here! Made with real ingredients that you can feel good about serving your family and putting in your body!
These Healthy Swedish Meatballs with Cauliflower Rice Pilaf are my updated version of a dinner my mom used to make when I was a kid. It was one of my favorite comfort foods and why wouldn’t it be? Meatballs, a creamy sauce, all served on top of rice pilaf. The problem was, it had a certain ingredient in it that wasn’t exactly the best choice when you’re making a healthy dinner.
The offender, the canned condensed cream of mushroom soup. We’ve all used it and it’s a great time saver, but boy does it have a lot of unnecessary ingredients! After looking at the label I wasn’t even sure what half of the ingredients were. Also, the suction, gloopy sound it makes when it falls out of the can kind of grosses me out.
To update my mom’s recipe into one that I could eat every week as well as one that would leave me feeling energized the next morning on my run, I eliminated the canned soup. Instead of soup I made a delicious homemade white sauce using Almond Breeze Unsweetened Original Almondmilk. The almond milk adds a nice nuttiness to the sauce and keeps it light since there are only 30 calories per cup. This year, Blue Diamond is an official sponsor of the USA Volleyball team. Both professional and amateur athletes are very conscious about what they put into their bodies because it can affect how they preform. When you eliminate canned soup and make a version with real ingredients, you don’t have to worry about how those questionable ingredients in the canned version may or may not affect you throughout the day.
Back to those Swedish meatballs! The recipe for the meatballs is one I found in my grandma’s old recipe box. I stuck to her recipe with the exception of using ground turkey instead of beef, panko instead of saltines and Almond Breeze Almondmilk instead of regular milk. The meatballs are moist and full of the flavors you expect in the Swedish version. My mom always served the meatballs over rice, but to change things up and get some veggies into the meal I decided to serve it over cauliflower rice pilaf. The flavor difference between the cauliflower rice and regular rice is almost undetectable with the meatballs and creamy sauce on top. If you’re looking for a hearty meal to power up with before your next athletic event or one that you can feel good about serving your family, then look no further than these Healthy Swedish Meatballs with Cauliflower Rice Pilaf!
Thanks to Blue Diamond Almond Breeze Almondmilk for sponsoring this post. As always all opinions are my own. Almond Breeze believes in the best. That’s why they only use Blue Diamond Almonds to make their almondmilk and why they’re proud to be an official sponsor of USA Volleyball. Visit www.serveupyourbest.com for a chance to win $5,000 for the ultimate beach day, learn fun volleyball moves, get Almond Breeze coupons and smoothie recipes!
Healthy Swedish Meatballs with Cauliflower Rice Pilaf
Ingredients
Meatballs
- 1 pound lean ground turkey
- 1/4 cup panko
- 1/4 cup unsweetened almond milk, or milk of choice
- 1 egg
- 1 tablespoon dried parsley
- 1 1/2 teaspoons dried onion flakes
- 1 teaspoon dried dill
- 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
- 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
- 1/4 teaspoon ground allspice
White Sauce
- 1 1/2 tablespoons olive oil
- 1/3 cup minced shallot or onion
- 2 tablespoon flour
- 1 cup low sodium chicken broth
- 1 cup unsweetened almond milk
- 1 teaspoon fresh thyme, minced
- 1 teaspoon worcestershire
- Kosher salt and black pepper to taste
- 1/2 cup plain Greek yogurt
- 2 tablespoon fresh flat leaf parsley, chopped
Cauliflower Rice Pilaf
- 1 head cauliflower, cut into florets
- 1/2 cup diced yellow onion
- 2 tablespoon low sodium chicken broth
- 1 tablespoon chopped fresh flat leaf parsley
Instructions
Cauliflower Rice Pilaf
- Place the cauliflower florets in a food processor with the blade in place and pulse until they resemble rice.
- Heat a large skillet over medium-high heat and generously spray with cooking spray or add a couple teaspoons of olive oil. Sauté the yellow onion for approximately 2-3 minutes or until it starts to soften.
- Add in the cauliflower and stir together with the onion. Add in the chicken broth and continue to stir until the broth is absorbed. Season with kosher salt, black pepper and the parsley.
- Sauté the cauliflower rice for approximately 4-5 minutes. Remove from the heat and serve with the meatballs and white sauce.
Swedish Meatballs
- In a large bowl combine the panko, almond milk, egg, and spices and whisk together. Add in the ground turkey and use your hands to combine, be careful not to overwork the meat or the meatballs will be tough.
- Heat a large skillet over medium-high heat and spray generously with cooking spray or add 1-2 tablespoons of olive oil.
- Use a 1 1/2 tablespoon cookie scoop or eyeball the amount and form approximately 20 meatballs. Place the meatballs into the heated skillet and brown on all sides until they are cooked through, about 8 minutes.
- Remove the cooked meatballs from the skillet onto a plate and cover with foil to keep warm.
White Sauce
- In the same skillet that the meatballs were cooked in, heat the olive oil over medium heat. Add in the minced shallot and sauté for 1-2 minutes or until softened.
- Whisk in the flour until smooth and cook for 1 minute. Slowly pour in the chicken broth and almond milk whisking the entire time. Season with salt, pepper, worcestershire and fresh thyme.
- Bring the mixture to a simmer whisking the entire time until it thickens. Once the sauce has thickened remove it from the heat and slowly add in the Greek yogurt whisking until smooth. Whisk in half of the fresh chopped flat leaf parsley.
- Add the meatballs back into the sauce and top with the remaining chopped parsley. Serve the meatballs and sauce over the cauliflower rice pilaf.
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
Also, I am Swedish and these taste close enough to the real thing (;