Chipotle Meatballs with Guacamole

Okay, I made these over a month ago, and I even went through all the pics and edited my faves.  However, I completely forgot to blog about them!  Maybe it's just me, but eating Paleo has seriously increased my intake of meatballs.  For instance, Swedish meatballs and chicken meatballs and my fave so far, Greek style meatballs with fennel stew!  Well, today you get the promised Chipotle Meatballs with Guacamole!

I know that's a lot of meatball recipes, but each one was so different from the others that it never seemed redundant.  Today's recipe comes from health-bent, which is a great resource for Paleo recipes!  I tweaked some things, so you can go over to health-bent or follow my recipe below!

Key in this recipe are canned chilis in adobo sauce.  The adobo sauce goes in the meatballs, and the chipotle chilis (plus more sauce) go in the chipotle sauce.  Almond meal is used rather than flour, along with some sea salt and fresh marjoram (aka sweet oregano).

I was so proud of myself for planning ahead and thawing some venison burger prior to making this recipe.  Then I unwrapped it and realized it was a venison roast!  So I started out with a straight-from-the-freezer brick of venison burger.

Ugh.  So much for planning ahead.  So it was a little extra work to thaw that so I could mix it with the egg mixture, plus some shredded carrots.

The meat mixture, when formed into 1.5-in meatballs, got baked for 15 min at 400*F.

Meanwhile, I prepped the sauce and brought it to a simmer on the stove.

I added some hot sauce to the guac, which made it a little off-color, but super tasty!

A delicious bowl of meatballs topped with chipotle sauce and served with guacamole!  Look at that steam...

Original recipe, and I highly recommend exploring the site for other recipe ideas.

Chipotle Meatballs:

• 1 lb ground venison
• 3/4 c shredded carrots (~2 carrots)
• 1/4 c almond flour
• 2 eggs
• 1 tbs chipotle adobo sauce
• 2 tbs chopped fresh marjoram
• 1 tsp onion powder
• 1 tsp garlic powder
• sea salt

Chipotle Sauce

• 1 c chicken stock
• 15 oz can tomato sauce + small can of tomato paste
• 3 finely diced chipotle peppers in adobo sauce
• 1/2 chopped red bell pepper
• 2 tsp dried oregano
• 2 tsp onion powder
• 1 tsp garlic powder
• salt

Guacamole (you can tweak this any way you want; I never measure anything when making guac)

• 1 large or 2 small avocadoes
• 2 roma tomatoes
• 1 bunch of green onions
• 2 tbs lime juice + dash of lime zest
• 1 tsp garlic powder
• chopped cilantro if you have it on hand
• hot sauce to taste