Spaghetti & Meatballs

How many of you buy those frozen premade meatballs (chock full of chemicals and fillers--ick!!) at the grocery store? Or even the premade raw ones in the meat department? Making homemade meatballs is too simple to spend all that money on premade ones! You can make homemade meatballs using ingredients you already have at home. I'm going to tell you how I did it (so you can do it too!), in 30 minutes, tops.

There was a big spread in Bon Appetit magazine this month on meatballs, so I took their recipe for meatballs and adjusted it a little bit (since I didn't have bacon or red peppers on hand).

Meatballs:
1 lb ground beef (I used 20% fat)
1 large garlic clove, peeled & crushed (or finely minced if you don't have a garlic crusher)
1/3 cup panko breadcrumbs (you can find them in the breadcrumb section of Publix)
1 egg
1/4 cup grated onion (just use a cheese grater)
1/4 cup Parmesan cheese
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
1 tsp crushed red pepper (these are spicy, so tone this down if you are spice-sensitive)

Mix all ingredients together. Make sure you don't over-mix, because that will make your meatballs tough.

Using a tablespoon and wet hand, form into 1 1/2" meatballs.

Brown the meatballs in a frying pan, making sure all the sides are browned (Ryan did this part for me!).

For the sauce, I cheated and used canned sauce, Classico's Tomato & Basil. Whenever I use canned sauce, I always jazz it up a little, to give it more of a homemade taste. I chopped up the unused part of the onion from the meatballs, some garlic cloves, and sauteed both with some olive oil and crushed red pepper. (If you put crushed red pepper (or any herbs) in with the oil over heat, it'll infuse and you'll get more flavor from them--a tip if you ever want to make infused oils for gifts!) After the onions and garlic were softened, I added the jar of sauce. I also added some Italian seasoning (the only premade seasoning I use, but when I run out, I'll make some from scratch), salt, and pepper, then let the sauce simmer while the meatballs were browning. Doesn't it look good? I'm getting hungry just writing this post!

Once the meatballs are done browning, add them to the simmering sauce, and let cook for 10-15 minutes, so the inside of the meatballs get cooked through, and the flavors get to meld. We also added the pan-drippings (read as: fat) from the frying pan to the sauce, to add more flavor. Fat=Flavor!

Cook up your favorite pasta (while the sauce is simmering) and voila--homemade spaghetti & meatballs!