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The Basics: How to Make Italian Meatballs in Sauce
From the store to the kitchen to the table: We outline the steps that get you from raw ingredients to your dinner tonight, free of measurements and complicated techniques. It’s a method you’ll remember and whip out whenever you like. It is the most basic way to make the thing you’re making.
WHAT YOU’LL NEED:
- • a large saucepan with a lid
- • three thick slices of French or Italian bread (enough to make about 3 cups of bread cubes)
- • milk
- • 56 ounces of tomato sauce (about 2 1/2 big cans) or the equivalent amount homemade
- • two garlic cloves
- • a handful of Italian parsley
- • two eggs
- • a large handful of flour
- • 3/4 pound ground beef, very cold
- • 1/2 pound ground pork, very cold
- • a handful of freshly grated Parmesan cheese
I gotta try this recipe!!! I'm sure it will taste DELICIOUS either fried or baked! Thanks for sharing!
This past Saturday nite my girlfriend and I followed the recipe and we put them in BBQ sauce and they were some of the best meatballs. Great Recipe!!
I did both, half the recipe fried and the other half cooked in the sauce. Also used a package of spicy Italian sausage meat instead of pork and added fresh herbs. It was the best that I have ever had.
I stopped frying mine........drizzle with olive oil and bake at 450 for 35 minutes. They get nice and crunchy as if you fried them.
While the meatballs were nice and moist -and I liked not having to fry them first- I found them to be lacking in flavor. Will definitely make these again, but will add Italian seasoning as well as extra onion powder and black pepper to the mix.
I prefer to precook them, too, but when short on time, this is great in the crockpot.
i have had mixed results cooking raw meatballs in sauce. a couple times they just completely disintegrated. i ended up with meat sauce. which wasnt bad, just not what i was trying to make..
I always fry my meatballs- straight up beef, eggs, breadcrumbs, ,cheese, garlic, salt & pepper- in olive oil and then scrape up all the great stuff in the bottom of the pan and throw my tomatoes in to make my gravy. A sicilian twist is to add raisins. (Don't say yuck until you have tried it) I also have added tarragon after much debate and love the flavor it adds. The matriarchs of the family...+READ
I always fry my meatballs- straight up beef, eggs, breadcrumbs, ,cheese, garlic, salt & pepper- in olive oil and then scrape up all the great stuff in the bottom of the pan and throw my tomatoes in to make my gravy. A sicilian twist is to add raisins. (Don't say yuck until you have tried it) I also have added tarragon after much debate and love the flavor it adds. The matriarchs of the family want to disown me for this.-COLLAPSE
I personally do as my italian mother has done for years, and bake the meatballs before placing in the sauce. They don't need to be completely cooked through so I put them in an very high heat oven til they get nice and brown and yummy and that good 'browness' creates a richer sauce I think. I always add grated cheese to my meatballs and usually make them from veal, beef and pork *and sometimes...+READ
I personally do as my italian mother has done for years, and bake the meatballs before placing in the sauce. They don't need to be completely cooked through so I put them in an very high heat oven til they get nice and brown and yummy and that good 'browness' creates a richer sauce I think. I always add grated cheese to my meatballs and usually make them from veal, beef and pork *and sometimes add a bit of turkey too.-COLLAPSE
Ketchup I suppose that meatballs are a common dish expecially in most of the european countries so could be a Belgian dish as an Italian dish. Now as italian what I may say about the recipe is that this one is called "polpette al ragu' " here and it is an italian recipe for sure, obviously if you consider the ragu as the "ragù alla bolognese", but of course one thing is the italian recipe another...+READ
Ketchup I suppose that meatballs are a common dish expecially in most of the european countries so could be a Belgian dish as an Italian dish. Now as italian what I may say about the recipe is that this one is called "polpette al ragu' " here and it is an italian recipe for sure, obviously if you consider the ragu as the "ragù alla bolognese", but of course one thing is the italian recipe another thing is a recipe that simply explain how to do meatball with sauce.
My mother cook meatballs in the olive oil first than in the ragù and I do the same but just beacuse , I personally like the good crust, but as you may see from this italian link "http://www.universocucina.com/site/html/News,file-article,sid-215.html" the original recipe ask to cook them directly in the ragù.-COLLAPSE
gatzbo:
I disagree and I'm sorry you've had such results but they are not typical of this approach. For years, both my mother and her mother - when she was alive - panfried their beef, pork, veal meatballs in olive oil before placing them into the 'sauce' (please) but they did know of other methods from other family members such as baking and this direct braise approach. To be honest with you,...+READ
gatzbo:
I disagree and I'm sorry you've had such results but they are not typical of this approach. For years, both my mother and her mother - when she was alive - panfried their beef, pork, veal meatballs in olive oil before placing them into the 'sauce' (please) but they did know of other methods from other family members such as baking and this direct braise approach. To be honest with you, precooking produced a somewhat inconsistent meatball; sometimes very soft, sometimes very hard, sometimes just right, all with the same proportions of ingredients. But what are you going to do? Italians are stubborn.
They're also impulsive and quick to change horses midstream if it means the food'll will be all that better so a number of years ago, mom did two things on the advice of her mother's sister, my great aunt:
1. she switched to all ground turkey
2. no more prebrowning, the pulpette go straight into the tomato sauce.
Now, we've never had any of the meatballs fall apart in the tomato and honestly we don't (really) miss the other meats in favor of the turkey. But overall, the texture is much more consistent between sauce batches. Also, the milk+bread approach may be a more northern method because the southerners in our neck of Italy use straight breadcrumbs. What we will use is some of the juice from the canned peeled tomatoes we made the sauce from.-COLLAPSE
I have been making gravy for most of my life and find that by simply dropping the meat balls into the gravy just makes them fall apart. For good meatballs always sauté them first and make sure you get a good crust on all sides. This method pretty much insures that they won't just be a pile of loose meat in gravy.
Ol "ragu", in the larger sense (not all meat sauce is Bolognese)
Hahah true, the only Italian sauce I know with ground meat in it is Bolognese sauce.
Good question, Ketchup.
Meatballs and sauce isn't an Italian dish. Serving big balls of meat with spaghetti makes no sense at all according to Italian ideas of how pasta is eaten/served with!
What's Italian about this recipe? It looks traditional Belgian to me. Or is it by adding "Italian" parsley that it suddenly becomes italian?
This is how I've been making meatloaf and meatballs for years. The bread/milk mixture is called a panade (I've used stock too), and it's worked wonders in my various ground meat dishes. Although I've never rolled meatballs in flour and then dropped them in a pot of simmering sauce, I would try it. Usually I like the crispy, browned parts of meat from a pan sear or high-heat oven bake.
oldunc, I...+READ
This is how I've been making meatloaf and meatballs for years. The bread/milk mixture is called a panade (I've used stock too), and it's worked wonders in my various ground meat dishes. Although I've never rolled meatballs in flour and then dropped them in a pot of simmering sauce, I would try it. Usually I like the crispy, browned parts of meat from a pan sear or high-heat oven bake.
oldunc, I would definitely try grated cooked potato.-COLLAPSE
Grated cooked potato makes an excellent sub for bread- don't know about tradition behind this, other than the grand tradition of cooks using what they have. I like the idea of skipping egg whites, I'll try just yolks next time.