I love the convenience of meatballs. I make up a huge batch and then freeze them in baggies. Whenever I need a quick meal, I can dump in a few meatballs. Macaroni and cheese, soup, frozen mixed veggies, tomato sauce- all are improved with a quick shake of tasty balls. Here is my recipe, for your convenience.
Oh- I have a meatball scoop- a small round 2 tsp scoop that has a sliding mechanism like an old fashioned ice cream scoop. This makes it a very fast proposition to make several dozen meatballs.
Ingredients: 1 kg/2 lbs of ground meat, one medium onion, 2 or 3 cloves of garlic, bread crumbs, 2 eggs, milk and assorted spices
Finely chop the onion and brown it in a frying pan. This is the secret ingredient of my friend Julia’s amazing meatloaf. Cooking the onion makes them sweet and gentle. It packs in the flavour.
Into a bowl combine lean ground meat, the cooked onions, crushed garlic cloves, 2 eggs, and 1/2 – 2/3 cup of milk. Add spices- generally lots of seasoning salt, pepper, occasionally marjoram, parsley, cinnamon, cardamon, curry, chives, basil, oregano- it depends on the meat you choose, and what else you like to eat with meatballs. If you are thinking Italian- go with ground beef, oregano and basil, extra garlic and pepper. If you’re thinking Middle Eastern, go with lamb, cardamon and cinnamon. You get the picture.
Add bread crumbs (about a cup or so) and mix. The consistency should be quite moist, but not goopy.
Pre-heat your oven to 400 F. Get out your largest cookie sheet. Using you handy dandy mini scoop, fill the cookie sheet. No need to grease it. Each meatball can be up against the next- they shrink when they cook. I end up with something like a hundred balls on a 12X18 pan.
Put the balls into the hot oven, and bake (convection if you have it) for 20 mins or so. They come out evenly browned! Put into large freezer bags, but set them in fridge to cool before you put them in the freezer. After they’ve been in the freezer an hour or so, give the baggies a shake so they don’t stick together.
PS. I once talked with a beef farmer who thought that any ‘filler’ ingredients declared that the cook was too cheap to buy enough meat for the meal! Not so– the milk, eggs and bread crumbs bind flavour and moisture into the meatballs. These are much tastier than meat pellets that results from ‘meat only balls.’
Shawn L. Bird 
meatballs forever! March 21, 2011
Tags: postaday2011
I love the convenience of meatballs. I make up a huge batch and then freeze them in baggies. Whenever I need a quick meal, I can dump in a few meatballs. Macaroni and cheese, soup, frozen mixed veggies, tomato sauce- all are improved with a quick shake of tasty balls. Here is my recipe, for your convenience.
Oh- I have a meatball scoop- a small round 2 tsp scoop that has a sliding mechanism like an old fashioned ice cream scoop. This makes it a very fast proposition to make several dozen meatballs.
Ingredients: 1 kg/2 lbs of ground meat, one medium onion, 2 or 3 cloves of garlic, bread crumbs, 2 eggs, milk and assorted spices
Finely chop the onion and brown it in a frying pan. This is the secret ingredient of my friend Julia’s amazing meatloaf. Cooking the onion makes them sweet and gentle. It packs in the flavour.
Into a bowl combine lean ground meat, the cooked onions, crushed garlic cloves, 2 eggs, and 1/2 – 2/3 cup of milk. Add spices- generally lots of seasoning salt, pepper, occasionally marjoram, parsley, cinnamon, cardamon, curry, chives, basil, oregano- it depends on the meat you choose, and what else you like to eat with meatballs. If you are thinking Italian- go with ground beef, oregano and basil, extra garlic and pepper. If you’re thinking Middle Eastern, go with lamb, cardamon and cinnamon. You get the picture.
Add bread crumbs (about a cup or so) and mix. The consistency should be quite moist, but not goopy.
Pre-heat your oven to 400 F. Get out your largest cookie sheet. Using you handy dandy mini scoop, fill the cookie sheet. No need to grease it. Each meatball can be up against the next- they shrink when they cook. I end up with something like a hundred balls on a 12X18 pan.
Put the balls into the hot oven, and bake (convection if you have it) for 20 mins or so. They come out evenly browned! Put into large freezer bags, but set them in fridge to cool before you put them in the freezer. After they’ve been in the freezer an hour or so, give the baggies a shake so they don’t stick together.
PS. I once talked with a beef farmer who thought that any ‘filler’ ingredients declared that the cook was too cheap to buy enough meat for the meal! Not so– the milk, eggs and bread crumbs bind flavour and moisture into the meatballs. These are much tastier than meat pellets that results from ‘meat only balls.’
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