Spaghetti & Meatballs

On this particular evening in February it was a little chilly and perfect for inviting friends over so I decided to make some spaghetti and meatballs! (It may have also been the first Carolina/Duke game but I won't mention that part.) Patrick and I kind of made these an experiment and merged a couple different recipes. So I'll just summarize what we did because I wasn't really happy with the way the sauce turned out. Do you have an amazing spaghetti and meatballs recipe? If so please share!

First, here's our merger recipe cookbook outpost. We would reference our Williams & Sonoma Food Made Fast Pasta book with America's Test Kitchen New Best Recipe

1. Make meatballs. I loosely followed what I do for regular meatloaf which is basically 1 lb of meatloaf mix mixed with chopped onion, breadcrumbs, egg, and seasonings. On this particular evening we roughly chopped 2-3 pieces of whole wheat bread, soaked them in milk, and then added this to the meat mixture for breadcrumbs. Mix together and then form into balls! You may choose to bake them or fry in a little oil.

Master Meatball Man

We chose the later option (next time we'll probably bake). Using a large dutch oven we warmed canola oil and fried the meatballs in a few batches. Once the meatballs were cooked we were able to start making the tomato sauce right in the same pan. 

Here I am working on the sauce!
To begin the sauce I sauteed a chopped onion in evoo in the dutch oven until it had softened then added some chopped garlic. I then added two large (28oz cans) of tomatoes. This is where I made a mistake! I accidentally bought tomatoes that had green peppers and those flavors threw off the sauce. Anyway I think I used a can of chopped tomatoes and whole tomatoes. Then I used my immersion blender to make the sauce. 

After the sauce was sauce-y I added back in the meatballs and simmered for 10-15 minutes.

Richard volunteered to fix the bread! He sliced the french loaf and then placed a small slice of butter with some garlic powder so we could pull it apart at the table!

Don't forget to make the spaghetti! Then have a serve yourself spaghetti bar. 

1 comment:

  1. Hello Richard! I can not contribute a good recipe for sauce. I have made your bolognese recipe (wonderful) and I have used Prego from the jar, too (many times!)

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