How to Make Meatballs

So we’re going to do some meatballs tonight. Someday we’re going to make a little quick Sunday gravy. We have some pork right there that’s from the pork loin end. I like the end better because it’s darker. It’s got more fat and it’s way tastier than the white middle loin part. And then we’ve got veal. A blade chop, it’s got a bone in there so we’ll cut that out. And then we have a chuck steak. So, you know all three of these is from about four pounds in change. They’re pretty much $6 or $6.50 in meat, definitely cheaper than you would buy the three meat ground packed already so. We’re going to butcher, trim this up, take the bones out and then run it through the old KitchenAid meat grinder. So we took the bones out of them and that’s your veal, so I cut them up into strips so it’ll fit into the food processor. I trimmed most of the fat off. I did leave some because this meat balls will cook for a few hours in the sauce and some of that fat will come right out, sort of melt out in the sauce and will flavor the sauce. I took of all the thick hard fat out. Make sure all gets ground just right. And what I do is I just mix in, alternate, veal, pork, beef, and it kind of blends it all up right in the bowl. A little beef and some pork and a little veal goes in. You know, for the extra few minutes it takes to grind, you’re definitely getting a fresher product, much safer. There you have it. And then one thing at the end when you’re done grinding you can run a piece of bread through your grinder and that’ll help grab any of the remaining loose pieces of meat in there, just make it easier to clean when you’re done. Now we’re going to make our meat balls. So we got our chopped meat in here and basically this is going to be a basic meat ball. You do add on different things in whatever you want to add in. Just some breadcrumbs, some Romano cheese, a little dried parsley, a little dried basil and some garlic powder. You can use fresh garlic, you want to run it through a garlic press but I’m just using some garlic powder this time and three eggs and little nutmeg. I know it takes me to run a few scoops and we’re having the cheese kind of lightens it all up I realized that we rarely do that because I only decided I think that were good to open. That’s it so it’s such a pretty basic recipe, nothing to fancy about it. So we’re just going to add in our cheese and it’s probably three-quarters to a cup of cheese, and then we’re going to add in our breadcrumbs. Don’t add in a ton of breadcrumbs. You really don want that in the making of meat ball. It’s kind of a feel for it as you go. And that is probably less than a cup of breadcrumbs. So we’re going to add in our parsley, basil, and our garlic powder and we’ve got our eggs. Put a little beat and drizzle that on in there. And give it a couple of turns of nutmeg and this is a really cool nutmeg dispenser. I think I got it a William Sonoma but you put the whole nutmeg right in the bottom there and it grinds it really nice, so it’s a great job. It’s definitely easier than using it with a micro blender and getting this all whole. Work up with that, and then just a few scoops of rhubarb there right now and a little olive oil. Got to have some I like, useful to mix this but you really got to dig in with the pots, you need the greasy pans, get in there and mix it all up. So that’s what we’re going to do. I’m going to probably pack about half of this up till I fry them because I love fried meat balls. Fried meatballs are the best especially since, don’t worry about my mother counting them. My mother mix the meatballs and then count them, so she could see how many are gone, but what was good is because in the old days, I used to get home at four in the morning, five in the morning, and she’d be up by seven making meatballs. You know she’ll rounded up in our room for a second and I’d wake up in and I stoop, go upstairs, grab two or three of them and then head back downstairs and then, of course my father will get the blame for having eaten three fried meatballs because it’s assumed I was still passed out asleep. But still did that every so often I would stop over there into the blue moon, and mom’s making an actual sauce with meatballs that had come out of the freezer and where she gets these endless supply of meatballs from the freezer. I don’t know when she makes them originally but I certainly don’t see them anymore, but every so often I get over there and see some on the counter when they’re at church or something and grab out a few and head out the door, just because I know I’m not an aggravator in case she counted wrong. So, that’s the mixture all mixed up, everything’s well incorporated and I’m going to wash my hands real quick. So we’re going to sample this few down here today, it’s a day later. Next day, we’re going to form up a little and there’s something else, what am I missing? Got everything in there and salt. The reason you add in salt, just now is because some little dude here that’s yapping away grabbed the salt and dumped it into my cheese. So, I’m not exactly sure how much salt we got, let me try, plenty of salt. This is going to make our meatballs. Just grab a handful, and roll them out. Sometimes I go to restaurants and you see like softball size meatballs. I don’t know, I think it’s like a gimmick. Meatballs should be a normal size. I mean it’s bigger than a golf ball and smaller than a baseball. So, maybe this is probably a little bigger than I normally do. Alright now it’s hot enough for my liking. Adding those in. I always space them out and then I end up running out of room. So pretty much close together as you can or you can do them in two batches. I am not going to do that today so. Alright, so I started turning some of them. This is like any meat when you’re cooking it. When it’s done, it’ll release from the pan. So, that’s what I did, I turned some if you will make her and that and it won’t ready to turn yet so, but this one’s in the middle will definitely ready to turn, you can see that they’re nice and brown and what’s great about that is it just gives you a nice level of flavor and then when you put them in the sauce, they will soften up some and it just adds nice complexity to the flavor of the meatball but like I said a lot of this are going to get eaten just fried because that’s the way I like them.