Paleo 'Meat Muffins'

This recipe was specifically designed  for some friends who are following the Paleo Diet - eating only meats, seafood, vegetables, fruits, eggs and nuts (and herbs and spices). If you want to know more, visit this website.

I think, on this diet, that breakfast is the most challenging meal of the day to come up with something relatively quick, tasty and high-protein to eat. When you remove carbohydrates from the breakfast equation - breakfast cereal, porridge, muesli, toast, muffins, pancakes - and also remove dairy products - milk,  yogurt, cheese, cream etc - there are not too many 'traditional' breakfast foods left. Certainly you could eat eggs, but that gets a bit monotonous after a while.

So the challenge was to make something high-protein, quick to heat-up and eat in the madness of morning, filling and of course tasty. My first attempt to meet the challenge was some egg muffins - basically beaten egg, some herbs and seasoning, poured into a greased muffin tin, then some pork mince sprinkled into each one. Bake in the oven for 15 minutes. Not too bad. But I thought I could do better.

Second go was these 'meat muffins' which is not the best name, but I figure it is more about the taste and the look, rather than the name. These muffins took 5 minutes to put together, then 20 minutes in the oven. I made  a batch the night before, stored in the fridge, then reheated in the morning. These ticked all the boxes for the challenge. And man-of-the-house says this is the 'breakfast of champions.' Maybe we'll change the name to 'champion muffins.' Sounds better already.

What you'll need

Made 10 medium-sized muffins

400g mince - I used a mixture of pork and beef mince
2 eggs, beaten
1 cup grated zucchini
4 mushrooms, finely chopped
1 teaspoon each of dried basil and oregano
1 onion, finely chopped or grated
Salt and pepper

Vegetable oil for greasing the muffin tin

Cherry tomatoes and fresh basil for the topping

What to do

Add all ingredients in a bowl and mix well with clean hands. Season well.

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius. Grease the muffin tin with the vegetable oil. Using your hands or a spoon, scoop the meat mixture into each muffin tin, dividing equally between each.

You will end up with about 10 muffins depending on how much mixture you place in each. Remember these won't rise at all, so what you put in will be the final size of the cooked muffins.

Place in the oven and cook for 20 minutes or until brown on top.

Remove from the oven and cool in the tin. Once cool, remove to a plate or storage container. Sprinkle over the chopped cherry tomatoes and some fresh-chopped basil.

The serve, heat for 20 seconds in the microwave until warm. You could make a small side salad of avocado, tomato and nuts if you like and have time or just eat them on the way out the door. These would also be good for the lunchbox.