Easy Food
Classic Meatballs
Now, I've never made meatballs before so my neighbour Jason who is a professional chef came over and showed me how. Not only did I learn how to make meatballs, I learnt a few tricks of the trade which I'm going to share with this recipe :)
We are going to make the meatballs and the sauce seperately.
First the meatballs, I used about a kilo of mince meat. Start by frying a finely chopped large onion and 3-4 finely chopped cloves of garlic in a little oil until soft.
Set aside to cool once done.
Throw the meat into a large mixing bowl along with
- 3 egg yolks.
- handful of fine bread crumbs ( I blended about a 1/3 of a small white bagette that had gone hard, alternative you can harden some bread on low heat in the oven ).
- the fried onions and garlic.
- about a teaspoon of salt and pepper to taste
At this stage you can throw in anything you like - cheese, spinach, spices, grated carrot or grated potatoes - anything you think will hold together.
Mix everything up with your hands and shape into small balls.
Chef's tip 1: The trick to making sure the balls don't fall apart is to throw the balls repeatedly between your hands just hard enough not to break them. This takes the air out of them and you get a nice compact meatball.
Next we're going to roll the meatballs in seasoned plain flour, fry them lightly and then stick them into the oven on medium.
Put a handful of flour in a large plate and season with salt and pepper and roll the meatballs around one at a time shaking off excess flour by again passing the balls gently between your hands.
Fry a few meatballs at a time for around 10 minutes on medium heat. Turn to make sure they brown all around; add oil as necessary.
Now they're ready to go into the oven for around 20 minutes to make sure they cook through.
While the meatballs are in the oven we're going to make the tomato sauce.
You can make the sauce however you like, I made a very basic one with red peppers and spring onions.
Fry a finely chopped onion, season and when soft, add a can of chopped tomatoes and mug of water.
Cook for around 15 minutes.
Chef's Tip 2: Another great tip from Jason is to take the bitter edge off the tomatoes throw in a tablespoon of brown sugar, this gives the sauce a great rounded flavour.
The next tip is to blend the sauce to get it consistent. So blend and throw it back into the pan and carry on cooking.
At this point I threw in a chopped pepper and a couple of chopped spring onions. Cook for a further 5 minutes and you're done.
The meatballs should be done by this time so cook some spaghetti and enjoy with a little parmesan.
