For as long as I’ve had the ability to do so, I’ve cooked my meat balls in the fashion which my Italian family does. Being the second generation here in the US, I feel compelled to use their methods, as they result in tasty happiness.
So, I mix up the meat and such, then roll them into balls, and drop them into sauce that I already have simmering. The balls sit in there for however long- they are usually cooked through in about half an hour, depending on thickness, but sometimes I just let the sauce simmer a few hours. Then, I eat them. Happy ensues.
This method horrifies all of my friends, including my one Italian friend. Apparently, they think I’m trying to kill everyone, because EVERYONE KNOWS you fry them or cook them in the oven, THEN put the meat balls in the sauce.
What? We only fried meat balls if we weren’t simmering sauce for some reason.
So, what say you? How do you cook your meat balls? Am I a digusting failure of balled meats? I must know.
Oh, and by the way: everyone who eats them says I have the best meat balls they’ve ever had. Same goes for when my grandma cooks up batches for parties.
I don’t cook meatballs, and I’d say you’d get extra flavor out of frying them or baking (since you’d have more of a chance of browning, and browning == major flavor) but there’s no reason that you can’t cook them in the sauce.
A simmering sauce is perfectly capable of cooking meat since it’s 210-212 F and ground beef should be cooked to at least 160 F.
While I’m generally a fan of meat with a little crisp bite to it, I prefer my meat balls to the ones my friends make because theirs usually taste all dry and such. I think simmering in the sauce keeps everything all moist and delightful. Just my take on it, of course.
I’d imagine a good frying technique would keep things nice and moist, too- it just doesn’t always work out that way in application.
Oh I can understand that. Though maybe your friends just suck at frying meatballs!
But nope, no reason at all cooking them in the sauce would be dangerous. Unless you put like, arsenic in the sauce or something.
I don’t know where she got it from, my Irish grandmother could never cook much more than a grilled cheese sandwich, and my Polish grandfather was a baker by profession for awhile, but AFAIK, didn’t do much cooking of meals. Most of the neighboorhood was Polish, too, so I’m pretty sure she didn’t learn it from someone Italian.
For spaghetti sauce, that’s how I like them, too. I agree that the ones that are cooked before they go in the sauce are dry.
What a coincidence. I’m making meatballs for dinner today.
I brown them, finish them in the oven, make a sauce with whatever is left in the roasting pan, along with some stock, flour, and cream. Serve with whatever vegetables you feel like, maybe some lingonberry jam if you’ve got it.
The meatball itself is ground meat with onions, some spices, parsley, chopped anchovies, bread crumbs (or white bread), egg, and a bit of milk. The bread crumbs and milk are there to give the meatball some lightness and moisture.
The recipe I use came from an Italian family. Mix them up, brown them, remove and refrigerate. Make the marinara (incorporating the fond from the meatballs), which has to simmer for about 3-4 hours, then reintroduce the meatballs for the last 20 minutes. These things are killahs, my friends. I use them for meatball subs (along with a large amount of sauce and some mozzarella or provalone), and have the remainder of the sauce with pasta.
I grew up in almost the only WASPy family in a very Italian neighborhood. I didn’t learn to cook meatballs at mama’s knee. IN our house they were browned first then added to the sauce.
Then I worked as a mother’s helper for a neighbor and her mother (the kids’ grandmother) came to help her prepare for a big party. I helped her roll about 6000 meatbals and we plunked 'em into the sauce and let them simmer. I’ve done them that way ever since. (When meatballs and tomato sauce is called for, that is. For swedish or cocktail meatballs I still brown 'em forst.)
Must stop reading food threads right before dinner. Posted in a steak thread moments ago and thought I wanted that. Now I want meatballs. Still don’t want the chicken that’s actually awaiting me. Phooey.
I like to combine the two–fry 'em just a tiny bit in a super-hot skillet…just enough to get a little bit of browning on them, and then dump 'em in the sauce to simmer for hours.
They shouldn’t get crusty, just get some browned spots.
My Italian mother and Italian grandmother always did them like you do: plop them into the simmering sauce raw (along with sausages and chicken breasts and gizzards and whatever else is in the fridge) and simmer them for three or four hours. Heaven on earth!
One recipe I bake, but when just doing plain meatballs I boil them in water then add whatever sauce on top. (It’s not like a pot of sauce, just enough to cover the meatballs and mix in with the rice they are served with).
Simmering meatballs for hours just doesn’t make sense to me. The reason you simmer meats for many hours is to tenderize cheap cuts. Since I throw a pork steak and a chunk of cheap beef into my sauce, it needs a long time for it to break down. It seems to me that meatballs will just fall apart if they cook that long, or just be dried out lumps of meat. Also, if you use fresh herbs in them as I do, the flavor will be completely gone. Well, to each his own say I.
Since I usually make up a big batch of meatballs to freeze, I bake them in the oven. When I try browning them in a fry pan they tend to break apart. The oven browns them nicely with no tending issues.
I make mine with lean ground beef, chopped onion, panko crumbs, an egg, kosher salt, freshly ground pepper, garlic and a good dash of Italian herb/spice blend. Roll and bake in a covered dish. Love 'em hot or cold. Yum.
But I would really like your recipe for “sauce”! My usual spaghetti sauce already has browned ground beef or bison in it, so I can’t imagine it would be thin enough to plunk some meatballs in. However, I’d like to try your way. Share?
I don’t make meatballs, I just make meat sauce, which my husband loves.
My mother learned from my father’s mother to roast the meatballs, before putting them in the sauce. At this time, the American cookbooks were recommending that ketchup be used for tomato sauce in lasagna, so Grandma Bodoni had to teach Daddy’s new wife how to cook her son’s favorite Italian foods.
I’m sure there’s a “real” recipe for this somewhere but I sort of just wing it until it tastes delicious, never quite the same. All measurements are 100% accurate.
Sautee up a giant onion and once it’s almost ready, throw in three tons of garlic. Let that cook for a minute, then put in two of the big cans of tomato sauce (my grandma likes . . .Huntz? I think. Whatever, just the big fat, $1.29 cans of tomato sauce). We then throw in two of the giant cans of whole peeled tomatoes, but smash 'em with your hands as you throw them in there.
Turn the heat up, because the goal is for things to boil. At this point I throw in whatever spices are delicious and in the cupboard. I use: basil, parsley, oregano, kosher salt, TONS AND TONS of black pepper always and I sometimes use seasoning salt, red pepper flakes, more black pepper ;), garlic powder, onion powder, etc. Whatever sounds yummy. I use tons of it, too. It always comes out good.
Oh, this is also where I throw in a bunch of wine if I have some handy. Bring everything to a boil, stir, then turn the heat back down to a simmer and simmer for as long as you need. Add more pepper. I love pepper.
I’m with **Fenris **on this one… I fry them just long enough to get the outsides all browned and yummy, but then I finish cooking them in the sauce so that the insides stay nice and moist.
Unless the meatballs aren’t going in sauce, in which case I finish them in the oven after browning, because they cook more evenly that way.
