Grilled Turkey Meatballs

Phil Anderson: Hi, I am Chef Phil Anderson, the Executive Chef for Harris Teeter. And today, we are going to be grilling Turkey Meatballs. Awesome. What we chef call mis en place that's prep we had to do some stuff in the kitchen and this is what we did. Well first we took a pound of ground turkey and a pound of turkey sausage and then we took a clove of garlic and diced it up and then we took one tablespoon of Pesto, one tablespoon, a little bit more of the sun-dried tomato, then a tablespoon of parmesan cheese, panko, it's a Japanese breadcrumb, that was about a half cup and then half a cup of extra virgin olive oil, a half of teaspoon of pepper and a teaspoon of salt. So we mixed all that up and then we portion it out in about four to five ounce balls. Okay now, when you're grilling, you have two sources of heat. You have direct heat, which is on and then you have indirect, I don't have these on, they are off. Okay, so we're going to put start these off on the direct heat, spray these down, a little pan spray. Let's hear that sizzle, that's wonderful to hear. Okay, we will just go and let these mark themselves and what's going on is the proteins are cleaning onto the bars of the grill and what we want to do is we want it to get up to the point where they're relaxing and when they relax, we're going to be able to turn them over. The balls that went on first, were the ones I am going to turn first obviously. It will be a couple of minutes. Just staying on. So I am not going to mess with them if they don't come easily off the bars and they are still sticking and we're not ready to relax and give it away. We're just marking these to get the grill flavor, then we're going to move them over to the indirect heat and cover them and you want to cook poultry to 165 degrees. So, we want to make sure they're done.

Now there is no heat underneath when I close this, the ambient heat is going to cook these. I've got down about 350 degrees. So, it's going to be about 10 minutes, 10-12 minutes, so we'll come back in 10-12 minutes to check these meatballs. Okay, and remember, because we finished them off on the indirect heat, they kept their moisture. There you have it. Turkey Meatballs grilled. Enjoy!