My Lime Green Kitchen

Posts Tagged ‘Meatballs’

There are as many ways to make meatballs as there are most anything else you might want to do.

For this recipe, there are no specific amounts.  I never measure for meatballs.  I’m just going to tell you step by step what I do and you can take it from there.

When I make meatballs, I make LOTS of meatballs and freeze them.  In the summer, when tomatoes are plentiful, I make and can my spaghetti sauce.  We have spaghetti and meatballs almost every Sunday.  It’s so simple to open a couple of jars of spaghetti sauce, throw in some meatballs and let it all simmer and with little effort, we have a yummy meal.

For this batch of meatballs, I used two bowls and exactly the same ingredients are in each bowl.  I don’t have a bowl large enough to mix up this size batch so that’s why I used two bowls.

Start with bread crumbs (in the lighter blue bowl).  When I see marked down sour dough bread at Wal-Mart, I buy it.  I either cut it into chunks and freeze it for bread pudding or I put it in the food processor and make bread crumbs and put those in the freezer.  These particular bread crumbs came from the freezer.  Pour milk over the bread crumbs til they’re moist — no milk standing but the crumbs are very moist.

The white bowl in front on the left is onions/garlic.  I put that through the food processor and it’s soupy.  That’s how I want it.

In each dark bowl I have 3 pounds of ground beef and 1 pound of ground pork.

To the meat bowl, dump half of each:

• the soaked bread crumbs
• the onion mixture
• 3 eggs

Chop the parsley and add half to each meat mixture bowl.  Season with salt, pepper, basil and oregano.

Add about 1/2 cup grated parmesan cheese to each bowl.  Mix thoroughly.

Start out by browning one little patty in hot oil.

This little patty is for you to taste and make sure the seasonings are correct.  If it needs more of anything, fix it up, then cook another little patty and taste it to be sure it’s right.

Once you’re happy with the seasonings, shape the meatballs and brown them.  I don’t cook mine all the way through but just kinda brown them on the outside so they hold their shape and then drop them into simmering sauce to continue cooking.

When freezing them, my preferred method is to flash freeze them (lay them out on a cookie sheet and freeze them, then place them in ziplock bags.  You can then take out as many as you need without them being all stuck together.) but my freezers are so full, I didn’t have room to flash freeze these.

I put 16 meatballs in a vacuum seal type bag, barely vacuum it (too much vacuuming will smash them all flat), seal the bag and freeze them.

From this batch, I got 7 bags, each with 16 meatballs.  When we have spaghetti and meatballs on Sunday, we have meatball sandwiches for lunch on Monday or Tuesday . . that’s why I put 16 meatballs in each bag.

Since my meatballs are mostly frozen ahead of time, I start out by browning spicy Italian sausage. Then I either make the sauce or pour in the jars of sauce that I’ve already canned. If making fresh sauce, I let it simmer most of a day. If using canned sauce, I’ll add a jar of tomatoes since I put the sauce up in concentrated form. Once the sauce is reay, I put in the frozen meatballs and simmer very slowly for an hour or more.

And here’s a post about how I freeze the meatballs.

I don’t measure anything for meatballs but next time I make them, I’ll try to pay more attention to measurements. The proportions of everything can be adjusted to suit your own tastes. Basically, here’s what I do:

Start with bread crumbs. I make my own using whatever bread we have. Sourdough makes great breadcrumbs and around here, we can get it as day old bread at Wal-Mart. Any dense bread will do. Put it through the food processor to make crumbs. Pour milk over it and stir while the crumbs absorb the milk. You want the crumbs to be . . not pasty thick and no runny . . kinda in between. Got that?

Add the bread crumb mixture to:

5 – 6 pounds ground beef (can substitute ground pork or turkey for some of the ground beef)
1 onion grated
chopped garlic – I use the chopped garlic you buy in a big plastic container and I use probably 4 tablespoons
Salt – maybe 2 tsp.
Black pepper – maybe 1 tsp.
2 or 3 eggs
1/2 c. grated parmesan cheese
ground dried oregano — maybe 1/4 cup
basil – if using fresh, maybe 1/4 c. chopped. If using dried, maybe 2 tablespoons
Fennel seeds – maybe 1 or 2 tablespoons

Shape into balls and fry.