Easy beef meatballs in sauce
It’s really about time that I’ve written up a good old easy meatball recipe. Meatballs are something I have always made rather intuitively, just playing around with whatever I have had on hand, but always roughly following the same process - some bread (whether dried or fresh), some dairy (whether milk or ricotta), some herbs (mostly always parsley, because I adore it), and pantry spices (salt, oregano, pepper). When I’m cooking at home - meaning to say when I’m not specifically developing something to share here - I like to just cook off the cuff, and enjoy every second of it, without feeling the need to film it or think about what looks good in which lighting. And that’s great, and incredibly enjoyable, but it does mean that our most-loved family recipes are just sort of stuck in my mind and at risk of being lost one day, something I worry about frequently. After all that’s how we lost my yiayia’s recipes after she developed Alzheimer’s - stuck in her mind, never to be passed down.
So I’ve been making it a bit of a personal mission at the moment, to start writing down some of these recipes, to be able to pass onto my daughter one day. Things like my mum’s chicken casserole, Sunday morning pancakes, a blueberry and lemon cake we seem to make frequently and of course these easy beef meatballs in sauce.
The below recipe does call for briefly blending the mince meat with the other ingredients, something I would usually do when making kofte because it creates the most incredibly soft and silky texture. I am a huge fan of this process, but if you don’t have a food processor that’s ok - you can knead by hand and I’ll pop some details on that below.
What I love about meatballs in sauce is just the diversity of it! Serve it on rice, polenta, mash potatoes, pasta - truly it works with everything, however of course serving it with pasta is my go-to. I have been really enjoying making pasta ruvida for all ribbon cut shapes lately - the texture is phenomenal! You can find out more about this technique here in my complete guide to making fresh pasta at home: Pasta, from scratch.
Easy beef meatballs in sauce
Serves 4-5 / makes approx 55 small meatballs
Ingredients
For the meatballs
80g of kind of old bread, but truly it doesn’t need to be properly stale - I use the inside of a good loaf of bread and discard the crusts - cut into cubes
80ml whole milk
50g red onion (roughly 1/2 of a small onion), diced
10g parsley (roughly 4 stems)
500g beef mince
1 tsp salt
Black pepper to taste
1 tsp dried oregano
25g parmigiano reggiano, grated
For the sauce
I like to use my classic pomodoro sauce here - just check the tartness of your tomatoes and decide whether or not you need to add a bit of sugar! I’ve recently been enjoying using soft brown sugar over white sugar in my tomato sauce.
4-5 tablespoons of good quality extra virgin olive oil
2-3 garlic cloves, whole and lightly smashed
A couple of sprigs of fresh basil
2x 400g cans whole and peeled San Marzano tomatoes
Salt to taste
To serve (a suggestion)
Pasta of choice for 4 serves - I used one batch of my master dough and made tagliatelle ruvida
Parmigiano reggiano
Method
Start by soaking the bread in milk for 5 minutes.
Meanwhile add the onion and parsley to a food processor and blitz until very finely chopped.
Add the soaked bread and blitz again to create a sort of paste.
Next, add the beef mince along with the salt, pepper, oregano and parmigiano and blitz again until just combined and starting to ball in the machine - it’s important not to over-blend the mince mixture.
If you don’t have a food processor, you can knead the mince mixture by hand. Thoroughly squeeze the mixture with your hand until the meat becomes more paste-like.
Set aside in the fridge for 20 minutes.
Meanwhile you can make the pomodoro sauce.
Heat the olive oil and throw in the garlic cloves and the basil - gently allow them to infuse the oil over a couple of minutes.
Once fragrant, remove the garlic and discard (you can also discard the basil, but I often keep it in), then add the San Marzano tomatoes, crushing them in with your hands - being careful as they’ll splutter aggressively once they make contact with the hot oil. Fill one of the cans with water and add this to the pot. Reduce to a gentle simmer and cover partially.
Allow this to cook gently over the course of about 40 minutes, until the tomatoes have fallen in on themselves. You can add salt to taste here, and check whether you feel the need to add some sugar - I usually sprinkle in about 1/2 tbsp if my tomatoes are tasting a little tart.
While that’s bubbling away, bring the meat mixture out of the fridge and use a 1/2 tbsp measure to portion out and roll your meatballs, placing each one on a baking tray.
Bake in a very hot oven for 4-5 minutes until the meatballs are browned - I like to go as hot as 240c fan-forced with the grill setting.
Remove from the oven and drop the meatballs into your sauce, and allow this to bubble away over a gentle heat for another 10-20 minutes. If the tomato sauce seems to be drying out at all, you can add a splash of water to reinvigorate. You want the sauce to reduce, but still have some movement and liquidity to it.
Serve with your favourite pasta, and a smattering of grated parmigiano reggiano.
