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- Course: Main Course
- Skill Level: Moderate
- Cost: Moderate
- Favorited: 193 Times
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Mama’s Meatballs
Cookbook
My mother is known better for these meatballs than she ever could have imagined. In Italy, meatballs, or polpette, are usually a lot smaller and, weird as it may seem, never eaten with pasta. They are served alone or in soup. In the United States, they became a lot bigger and are eaten alone, on heros, with spaghetti, and even on pizza. There are a lot of meatballs out there, folks, and I’m sure you have tasted your fair share, but I believe these are the best meatballs in the world. I can’t, to this day, pinpoint what it is that makes them so phenomenal; I think it is largely the fact that she mixes and rolls them by hand. They are not dense like many meatballs, but they also don’t fall apart in tomato sauce. It’s not.just my bias speaking here; everyone loves them. People who hate pork love them; people who never go near veal can’t get enough. Vegetarians make exceptions for them. I encourage you to make these meatballs your own. Your kids will love something you make by hand, too.
Yield : 20 meatballs
Ingredients
- 1/3 cup chicken stock
- ¼ yellow onion
- 1 clove garlic, peeled
- ¼ cup fresh italian flat-leaf parsley, chopped fine
- ½ pound ground beef
- ½ pound ground pork
- ½ pound ground veal
- 1/3 cup plain bread crumbs
- 2 eggs
- ¼ cup grated Parmigiano-Reggiano
- 1 teaspoon red pepper flakes
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 3 to 6 cups Mama’s Marinara
- ¼ cup extra-virgin olive oil
Directions
1. Place the chicken stock, garlic, and onions in a blender or food processor and purée.
2. In a large bowl, combine the puréed stock mix, meat, bread crumbs, eggs, Parmigiano-Reggiano, red pepper flakes, and salt. Combine with both hands until the mixture is uniform. Do not overmix.
3. Put a little olive oil on your hands and form the mixture into balls a little larger than golf balls. They should be about ¼ cup each, though if you prefer bigger or smaller, it will only affect the browning time.
4. Pour about ½ inch of extra-virgin olive oil into a straight-sided, 10-inch-wide sauté pan and heat over a medium-high flame. Add the meatballs to the pan (working in batches, if necessary) and brown the meatballs well on all sides. This will take about 10-15 minutes.
5. While the meatballs are browning, heat the marinara sauce in a stockpot over medium heat. Lift the meatballs out of the sauté pan with a slotted spoon and put them in the marinara sauce. Stir gently. Simmer for one hour.
6. Serve with a little extra Parmigiano-Reggiano sprinkled on top.
© 2004 Spirit Media, LLC
Nutritional Information
Nutrients per serving
Nutritional information is based on a serving size of 1 meatball.
Nutritional information does not include Mama’s Marinara. For nutritional information on Mama’s Marinara, please follow the link above.
116 kcal
3 % daily value
2 % daily value
1 % daily value
125 mg
10 mg
8 g
0 g
0 g
2 g
47 mg
185 mg
3 g
9 g
4 % daily value
