Drop Meatballs for Two

November 2024

Recipe from Cook's Country, October 2022.  

I have made meatballs a few times using several recipes, but none that I was happy with. It's not that they didn't taste good, but either they created a big mess on the stove with a lot of dirty oil to clean up or the meatballs fell apart. This simple recipe was appealing both because it is labelled as being "for two" and it promised a streamlined process to a delicious result.

I used 90% lean ground beef rather than 85% because that is what the supermarket had on hand. I had no ground fennel so I used a mortar and pestle and ground fennel seeds; ½ teaspoon of seeds provided ½ of ground fennel. As I often do, the quantity of red pepper flakes was reduced by half from that in the recipe.

A panade was made with saltines and milk. This was combined with ground beef, grated Parmesan cheese, salt, granulated garlic, ground oregano, and fennel. Six meatballs were made from this mixture using a #16 portion scoop. The simple sauce was made by cooking crushed garlic in olive oil. Pepper flakes were added and cooked until fragrant followed by a can of crushed tomatoes. The meatballs were nestled in the sauce and cooked for about 25 minutes. Total time was 65 minutes, not counting cooking the pasta.

This recipe "for two" provided three meals for us, served over spaghetti. It provided good, firm meatballs with little fuss and not a lot of time. The meatballs were a little bland, compared to fried meatballs, as I recall them, but without the mess that comes from frying. The blandness in this case may also have arisen from the relatively lean ground beef and it is also possible that they were overcooked. All in all, this is a good recipe to use for meatballs in a simple tomato sauce.