Paleo Kotletki

My mom makes a Russian dish called "kotletki" they are basically oval meat patties that are that are fried. she adds onions and bread to them and rolls them in bread crumbs, then fries them. they are a great meal and a great brown bag lunch.It is one of my favorite "mommy" dishes.I decided to put a paleo twist on them. instead of bread I used minced onions, carrots and chopped spinach.

Ingredients:

• 1-2 lbs ground meat (I used 1 lb of ground turkey and 1/2 lb lean ground beef) you can experiment with different meats and meat combos for different tastes!
• 4 small onions finely minced
• 2 carrots finely shredded
• 1 bag of chopped spinach
• Canola oil
• 1 egg
• salt / pepper to taste

Directions:

Sweat the onions and carrots in canola oil, set aside in a large bowl to cool. add the spinach to the skillet to dry it out a bit an cook for about 10 min. add to the bowl of onions and carrots. Once the veggies are cooled add the ground meat and egg, salt pepper. my mom puts the mixture through a meat grinder to create a very fine texture, but I did not. Mix by hand. this is the important part: while mixing scoop and fold the mixture by hand 100 times to aerate the mixture and make fluffy. Heat canola oil in non-stick pan. Wet hands (I kept a small bowl of water next to me) shape the mixture into an oval by hand, place in pan and flatten a bit. looks like thick oval burger patties. Cook on both sides until browned. I flipped them over twice.I have varied the veggie content several times. I really like the onions, carrots and zucchini combo.