Shrinking Chef's Internationally Famous Meatballs

I might've mentioned one or two ... hundred ... times that I live in an onion-free zone. When I was in college, I was also not much of an onion lover. My then-fiance didn't eat onions, and two of my best friends (one of whom I lived with for a year) are allergic. Thus, I was always on the hunt for a good onionless recipe. I figured I would just never be able to make meatballs. But then I found it, written right there on the Rosetta Stone. Or maybe it was allrecipes.com, who knows. At any rate, I tinkered with it until it was perfect.

As for the international fame, it's totally legit. One of my BFFs is from England, and he loves them.

One last note before we jump right in: In this recipe, I'm preparing a DOUBLE BATCH. I like to make up a metric crap-load of bawls and freeze them while still raw. When you're ready to eat them, you just toss them in a pot of spaghetti sauce, bring to a boil, cover, and let simmer. Simmer an hour from frozen, or 40 minutes from thawed. Or you could put the frozen bawls in a crockpot on low before you go to work, and voila! Yummy meatballs when you return.

Let's see what we've got here.

Breadcrumbs, parsley flakes, black pepper, garlic powder, parmesan cheese, eggs, ground pork, lean ground beef. Pretend the salt's not there, that was a mistake.

Note: I hate ground pork, and for years I made this stuff with just ground beef. It was awesome in the all-beef form, but once I had to use up some ground pork I had laying around, so I tried a 50/50 mix just for funsies. I'm not too proud to admit that I was wrong, wrong, wrong about the pork. It takes the meatballs to a nirvana-like state of being. They're not too porky, I promise. But if you don't have any dead pig laying around, it'll be great with just cow.


Anyway, throw a pound each of your dead, ground-up animal muscle in a big mixing bowl.



Scramble 2 eggs. Preferably in a fancy little bowl.

I'll give you three guesses what you're gonna do with the eggs.



You always guess!! No fair.



Oh, crucially important step coming up. If you are wearing rings, watches, or bracelets ... REMOVE THEM. Otherwise you wind up picking bits of gristle out from between your prongs.

After you take care of your bling, mix up the egg/meat combo.

You could use a spoon, I suppose, but don't bother. Your hands are going to be all over this stuff before it's done anyway, and vice versa. They're going to get really nasty. It's kind of gross, and that's exactly why I make so many of these at a time!


When it's mixed, it'll look like this.



Awesome. Now add:
2 cups of plain breadcrumbs



a good handful of Parmesan cheese



1/2 tsp of black pepper



a tablespoon(ish) of garlic powder



a big hunk of parsley (2 tablespoons, at least)


4 calling birds, 3 French hens, 2 turtle doves, and a partridge in a pear tree. Just kidding. Freakin' Christmas carols start earlier every year, don't they?


Aaaaanywho, now your meatballs look something like this ....

... only with parsley. I forgot mine and had to add it at the end; don't tell the Pork Police. Oh, if you're doing all-beef meatballs, you should add a few shakes of salt here. Pork/beef meatballs don't need it.


Now take all the dry ingredients sitting atop the dead animal, and smear them around until they're mixed.

We could've mixed the dry stuff in a separate bowl first, but why dirty another dish??


When it's done, it'll look like so.




Now ...... ATTACK!



Squeeze and knead and squish the stuff until it mixes together. Make sure to flip it over and get the crumbs from the bottom of the bowl.




Keep going until it looks like this.

Now give it a taste, and tinker with the spi..... just kidding! You're going to have to trust me on this one.

Pour some spaghetti sauce in a pot. (Doesn't have to be a stockpot, but it does have to be big!)


Just enough to cover the bottom.




Now, make the balls! PLM took these pictures, since my hands were a little busy. And slimy.


First things first. Turn on some appropriate music. (Tip for Daddio -- right-click it and select "open in new tab" or "open in new window", and it won't take you away from this page.)


Then pinch off some meat.


And roll it between your hands...

just like you used to with Play-Doh!


Ta-da!!!

Kids love making shit like this, so why not put them to work? If you can't boss them around and use them for menial labor, you're just the tallest person living there. Unless you're Auntie P, and then you don't even have that to fall back on.


As you finish the meatballs, go ahead and put them in your pot.



Let's talk for a moment about size, because regardless of what anyone tells you, it really does matter. I personally prefer big balls for spaghetti, medium-sized balls for hoagies, and small ones for soups (although I've never tried these meatballs in a soup, anyway). The ones in the pot are for meatball hoagies. But it's really all about personal preference. So think really hard about how big you like em.


Let's get saucy.

You might need more than one jar, depending.


Crank up the heat until they boil,



then put a lid on em

... and turn the heat down to low.


On the left, I have hoagie meatballs. On the right, big balls for spaghetti.

I had 16 in the pot plus the ones above, so that makes a total of 32 medium-sized meatballs and 12 bigger meatballs from 2 pounds of meats. Not too shabby!

Let them simmer for 40 minutes, giving them the stir every now and then. Be gentle -- save the ball-busting for some other occasion!

Enjoy!!