Easy Meatballs (for spaghetti)

If you don't like to get your hands dirty, this recipe is not for you. The binders in this recipe are bread crumbs, milk, and egg. If you are gluten-free or vegan, this recipe really isn't for you either. I don't have and am not willing to create a vegan "meat" ball recipe. Get your inner carnivore on because we're going to play with meat in this recipe.

I have seen all sorts of meat ratios for this recipe. Sure, you could probably combine equal amounts of ground pork and ground beef, heck toss in some lamb or veal as well; but by then the cost of the meat will exceed your entire spaghetti recipe and that's not good for anyone's food budget.

Note to future self: use lean ground beef. I used 80% meat/20% fat ground beef for this attempt, and well, the meatballs exuded a lot of oil when cooking. 

Ingredients

1 lb lean ground beef (93% lean should work)
1/2 c milk
1/2 c fine breadcrumbs
1/2 c Parmesan cheese, grated
1/4 c fresh Italian parsley, leaves only, finely chopped
1 large egg
1 tsp salt
1 garlic clove, minced
freshly ground black pepper

Easiest way is to add all the ingredients to a large bowl and mix by hand. Stirring it together with a fork will only get you so far.

Use a tablespoon to scoop out some of the meat and form it into a ball with your hands. Set it on a plate and repeat until the plate is full.

Directions - in sauce

If you have just made a pot of spaghetti sauce, transfer some of the sauce sans meat to a skillet and add the meatballs in a single layer. Cook for about 20 minutes then transfer everything back to the pot that has the spaghetti sauce and simmer for an additional 10 minutes or so.

Directions - oven baked 

Preheat oven to 400F.

On a lipped baking tray, arrange meat balls in a single layer and bake for 25-30 minutes. Check on the meatballs to make sure they don't burn. If they burn, none of them will come off the tray without a spatula scraping them off.

Chuck all the cooked meat balls into the spaghetti sauce. Or set onto paper towels to drain the oil. Can also store these into a quart-size bag and freeze for later.

Yes, I really did two batches of meatballs, one cooked in a sauce and baked the other, then tossed both batches into the already-completed spaghetti sauce.