Bagel Meatballs with Cream Cheese Gravy

Your favorite flavors team up for dinner with these Bagel Meatballs and Cream Cheese Gravy! 

I know this might sound a little unconventional but let’s be honest…look who yer dealin’ with. If you have been a friend of this blog for awhile, you know gosh darn well I am cut from a different cloth so when I dream up something a bit weird, I roll with it. And that’s what happened with this meal here.

I pulled some ground beef out of the fridge, knowing I had just a few days to use it up. I was sort of uninspired and thinking it might be a really basic ground-beef-in-a-pan sort of situation when out of the corner of my eye I spotted Balanced Bites Bagel Spices on my counter. “I wonder what that would taste like in some meatballs,” I thought and then BAM, idea explosion. 

Bagel Meatballs, hmmmm. And what about that lactose-free cream cheese in the fridge I just bought. Could that make a cream sauce gravy sort of something or other? Yep. It sure can. And it did. 

Basically imagine all your favorite savory bagel flavors with meat and rice and saucy goodness and that’s what happened in my kitchen tonight. Scoff, turn up your nose, and roll your eyes if you must, but nothing will take away the delicious experience that happened here, as weird as it may be. Oh and guess what? The family love it to so who’s the winner now?

Bagel Meatballs with Cream Cheese Gravy

• Author: Jennifer Robins

Ingredients

For the Meatballs:

• A few tablespoons avocado oil
• 2 pounds ground beef
• 1 egg
• 1/4 cup cassava flour
• 2 tablespoons Balanced Bites Bagel Spices
• 1 teaspoon onion powder

For the Cream Cheese “Gravy”:

• 8 ounces lactose free cream cheese, dairy free cream cheese (like Kite Hill), or homemade dairy free cream cheese from The New Yiddish Kitchen
• 8 ounces beef bone broth
• 1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1 tablespoon cassava flour

Instructions

1. To make the meatballs, preheat your oven to 375F and heat avocado oil over medium heat in a cast iron skillet
2. Combine the rest of the meatball ingredients in a bowl and combine by hand
3. Form meatballs by hand and place them in the skillet, one by one, browning on all sides for around 5 minutes total
4. Place the entire skillet carefully minding the hot oil, into the preheated oven and allow the meatballs to bake for around 20 additional minutes or until they are no longer pink inside
5. As the meatballs bake, combine all the gravy ingredients in a sauce pan over medium heat, stirring them and bringing them to a low simmer
6. Make a slurry with a few tablespoons of the gravy and the tablespoon of cassava flour in a small bowl and then reintroduce the slurry into the gravy to thicken it
7. Whisk until desired thickness is met
8. Remove the meatballs and serve them over cauli rice, basmati rice, or broccoli with the cream cheese gravy ladled over and a little extra sprinkle of bagel seasoning