Unable to Save ArrayList of Objects in MySQL - Hibernate/Spring Boot

I'm having some issues with what I believe is my relational mapping in Hibernate. This is for an recipe keeping application.

Originally, the recipe class had a String ingredients field where all of the ingredients were stored. We realized that this didn't make sense for storing a list of ingredients in a recipe, so I'm in the process of refactoring it to be a list of a new type I created, Ingredient: List<Ingredient> ingredients. The ingredient form field is dynamically created by JS on the front end, and when submitted on a POST request, is transformed into an ArrayList of new Ingredients and then added into the Recipe model.

Whenever it reaches the line where it saves it into the database, I get this error:

Field 'ingredients' doesn't have a default value, which tells me that the field is null. However, when I use the debug tools, it shows me that newRecipe.ingredients is not null, its actually an ArrayList created from the data on the front end.

The Ingredient class looks like such:

@Entity
public class Ingredient extends AbstractEntity{

    @ManyToOne(targetEntity = Recipe.class,
            fetch = FetchType.LAZY,
            cascade = {CascadeType.MERGE, CascadeType.REMOVE})
    @NotNull(message = "Please include ingredients")
    private Recipe recipe;

    @Id
    @GeneratedValue
    private int id;

    private String ingredient;

    public Ingredient(String ingredient) {
        this.ingredient = ingredient;
    }

    public String getIngredient() {
        return ingredient;
    }

    public void setIngredient(String ingredient) {
        this.ingredient = ingredient;
    }

}

The Recipe Class is here:

@Entity
public class Recipe extends AbstractEntity {

   private String name;

   @OneToMany(mappedBy = "recipe")
   @NotNull(message = "Ingredients required")
   private List<Ingredient> ingredients = new ArrayList<Ingredient>();

   private String directions;

   @OneToMany(mappedBy = "recipe")
   private List<Instruction> instructions = new ArrayList<Instruction>();

   @NotNull(message = "Category required")
   private Category category;

   private Tag tag;

   private String img;

   @OneToMany(mappedBy = "recipe", cascade = {CascadeType.MERGE, CascadeType.REMOVE})
   @NotNull(message = "User is required")
   private List<UserRecipe> users = new ArrayList<>();

   public Recipe() {
   }

   public String getName() {
      return name;
   }

   public void setName(String name) {
      this.name = name;
   }


   public Category getCategory() {
      return category;
   }

   public void setCategory(Category category) {
      this.category = category;
   }

   public List<UserRecipe> getUsers() {
      return users;
   }

   public void setUsers(List<UserRecipe> users) {
      this.users = users;
   }

   public String getImg() {
      return img;
   }

   public void setImg(String img) {
      this.img = img;
   }


   public List<Ingredient> getIngredients() {
      return ingredients;
   }

   public void setIngredients(List<Ingredient> ingredients) {
      this.ingredients = ingredients;
   }

   public String getDirections() {
      return directions;
   }

   public void setDirections(String directions) {
      this.directions = directions;
   }

   public Tag getTag() {
      return tag;
   }

   public void setTag(Tag tag) {
      this.tag = tag;
   }

   public List<Instruction> getInstructions() {
      return instructions;
   }

   public void setInstructions(List<Instruction> instructions) {
      this.instructions = instructions;
   }
}

RecipeController is here:

@PostMapping("create")
   public String createRecipe(HttpServletRequest request, @ModelAttribute Recipe newRecipe,
                              @ModelAttribute @Valid String newCategory,
                              Errors errors, Model model, RedirectAttributes redirectAttrs) {

      if (errors.hasErrors()) {
         model.addAttribute("title", "Create Recipe");
         return "recipes/create";
      }

      String[] ingredients = request.getParameterValues("ingredient");

      List<Ingredient> ingredientsList = new ArrayList<Ingredient>();

      for (int i = 0; i < ingredients.length; i++) {
         Ingredient newIngredient = new Ingredient(ingredients[i]);
         ingredientsList.add(newIngredient);
      }
      newRecipe.setIngredients(ingredientsList);
      
      // THIS PRINTS AN ARRAY OF THE NUMBER OF INGREDIENTS ADDED
      System.out.println(ingredientsList.toString());

      // HERE IS WHERE MY ERROR HAPPENS
      Recipe recipe = recipeRepository.save(newRecipe);
      redirectAttrs.addAttribute("recipeId", recipe.getId());

      return "redirect:/recipes/display";
   }

My thought here is that I'm somehow not mapping the ingredients list correctly to the recipe, but I can't figure this one out and after 3 days of googling and troubleshooting here I am. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!