Chilli Noodle Bowl Meatballs With Red Peppers and Onions

This chilli noodle bowl meatballs recipe is something I pulled together in the microwave from freezer food – but it’s flexible and can be made with fresh, or even vegetarian if you wish!  It makes a good sized portion of meatballs and noodles and uses 3 items from your five a day requirements (although each isn’t quite a full day’s portion).

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Ingredients:

• 6-8 meatballs, already cooked (leftovers, or you can buy ready cooked meatballs)
• One small packet of dried noodles
• 1/4 red onion, sliced thinly
• 1/4 red pepper, sliced thinly
• Small handful of peas
• 2 teaspoons Chilli powder

Method: 

1. You can use any meatballs, but they should be already cooked as this cooking method won’t give them long enough to cook.  You can make your meatballs first, or buy ready made meatballs, frozen meatballs, or even vegetarian meatballs – or make your own microwave meatballs.  How many you use is preference – I used 8 today as that was how many I had and I didn’t want to leave two  frozen meatballs in the freezer!  You can start by cooking your meatballs from raw meat if you wish – you can cook meatballs in the microwave in just 4-5 minutes.
2. I used frozen red peppers and frozen red onions – both I’d frozen in the last month or so. You can use fresh if you wish.
3. Defrost any items that are frozen, I microwaved mine for 2 minutes in a microwave safe bowl.
4. Boil a kettle and add boiling water to the dried packet noodles and let them sit in the boiling water for 5 minutes or so softening up.  Do not add the flavour sachet, you don’t need this. Turn/stir them a few times.  If you use fresh noodles you can skip this part.
5. Combine the meatballs, red peppers, red onions, soft noodles and chilli powder and give them a good mix through.
6. Microwave on high power for 2 minutes. Stir. Microwave for a further 2 minutes. Stir. Add the defrosted peas and mix them through. Microwave everything for 1 minute.  Serve!

Menu Cost: 

You can buy packs of noodles from 20p, or buy sheets of dried noodles which cost less.  Ready cooked meatballs can be bought in packs of 40 at supermarkets for about £1.60, making them 4p each, so 6 would cost 24p.  Peppers can be bought for about 30p when on cheap weekends, using about 7p in this recipe.  All done, this probably costs under 60p and was in excess of 500 grams in weight.