Tender and tasty meatballs
For the past couple of weeks, I have been thinking about making homemade meatballs. I made them a few of years ago for the first time and they worked out really nicely, full of flavour and were a great addition to a pasta dish. This time around, I wanted to use them to make meatball sandwiches for a dinner guest my partner and I had over the weekend. We also had quite a bit of provolone cheese in our fridge, and decided it would be the perfect way to use it up.
In this article, I’ll give you a step-by-step tutorial for how to make homemade meatballs, and, hopefully, you’ll want to try them out sometime!
First, be sure your ingredients are top notch – we buy our meats from local butcher shops to ensure we are getting high quality meats to work with, they just taste so much better. I always mix ground beef and ground pork when I am making meatballs. I find the fattiness of the pork gives the right kind of tenderness to the meatballs. Let’s begin. First, mince a medium-sized onion and add it into a large mixing bowl. Next, mince three cloves of garlic, and add it into the mixing bowl, along with a few sprigs of freshly chopped oregano and parsley. Once you have added these flavour makers, add in half a tub of ricotta cheese, one egg, and a quarter cup of breadcrumbs.
Then, take a minute before your hands get messy and get out a large baking dish, or sheet, and preheat your oven to 350 degrees. It’s important to do this first, because, once you add the meat and begin mixing, you may not want to touch your stove!
While the oven is preheating, add the ground beef and ground pork, generously add freshly ground pepper, and a sprinkle of kosher salt, then you are ready to get mixing! Mix all of these ingredients together and really allow them to come together. Once you feel everything that been mixed in, it is time to start packing them into meatballs. I found it extremely helpful here to take a break, wash my hands, and then pour a little olive oil on my hands and coat them with a layer of oil. This made the rolling of the meatballs so much easier, as the meat was not sticking to my hands. I would highly recommend it!
I ended up being able to make 16 to 20 medium-sized meatballs out of this amount of mixture.
One by one, I placed the meatballs in the baking dish. Once I was finished rolling, and the oven was preheated, I added them in to cook them for 20 minutes total – I cooked them for 10 minutes, took them out and flipped them, then put them back in.
I spent the in-between time preparing a homemade marinara sauce, and heating up my slow cooker. I put a base layer of sauce in the crock pot, then placed the meatballs on top, and then poured the rest of the sauce over and allowed them to cook for three to four hours on high, before turning them on warm until we were ready for dinner.
It is up to you how you want to use these meatballs – they are great served with pasta, on their own with melted provolone, or on a nice kaiser topped with provolone and parmesan. If you do choose to make a sandwich, I recommend putting a couple of pieces of provolone on the bun before putting any sauce or meatballs – this just helps to keep the bread from getting soggy – trust me, I’ll help you make a much more satisfying sandwich!
Shopping list:
– 1 lb ground pork
– 1 lb ground beef
– ricotta
– oregano
– parsley
– salt-and-pepper
– garlic
– onion
– eggs
– breadcrumbs