Easy beef meatballs in sauce
A classic and very delicious recipe for beef meatballs in sauce. I like to use a food processor to blend the meat - I find it creates the most wonderful, soft texture! Truly melt in your mouth. Makes approximately 55 meatballs.
Servings: 4 people
Ingredients
For the meatballs
- 80 g of kind of old bread but truly it doesn’t need to be properly stale - I use the inside of a good loaf of bread and discard the crusts - cut into cubes
- 80 ml whole milk
- 50 g red onion roughly 1/2 of a small onion, diced
- 10 g parsley roughly 4 stems
- 500 g beef mince
- 1 tsp salt
- Black pepper to taste
- 1 tsp dried oregano
- 25 g parmigiano reggiano grated
For the sauce
- I like to use my classic pomodoro sauce here - just check the tartness of your tomatoes and decide whether or not you need to add a bit of sugar! I’ve recently been enjoying using soft brown sugar over white sugar in my tomato sauce.
- 4-5 tablespoons of good quality extra virgin olive oil
- 2-3 garlic cloves whole and lightly smashed
- A couple of sprigs of fresh basil
- 2 x 400g cans whole and peeled San Marzano tomatoes
- Salt to taste
To serve (a suggestion)
- Pasta of choice for 4 serves - I used one batch of my master dough and made tagliatelle ruvida
- Parmigiano reggiano
Instructions
Meatballs
- Start by soaking the bread in milk for 5 minutes.
- Meanwhile add the onion and parsley to a food processor and blitz until very finely chopped.
- Add the soaked bread and blitz again to create a sort of paste.
- Next, add the beef mince along with the salt, pepper, oregano and parmigiano and blitz again until just combined and starting to ball in the machine - it’s important not to over-blend the mince mixture.
- If you don’t have a food processor, you can knead the mince mixture by hand. Thoroughly squeeze the mixture with your hand until the meat becomes more paste-like.
- Set aside in the fridge for 20 minutes.
Sauce
- Meanwhile you can make the pomodoro sauce.
- Heat the olive oil and throw in the garlic cloves and the basil - gently allow them to infuse the oil over a couple of minutes.
- Once fragrant, remove the garlic and discard (you can also discard the basil, but I often keep it in), then add the San Marzano tomatoes, crushing them in with your hands - being careful as they’ll splutter aggressively once they make contact with the hot oil. Fill one of the cans with water and add this to the pot. Reduce to a gentle simmer and cover partially.
- Allow this to cook gently over the course of about 40 minutes, until the tomatoes have fallen in on themselves. You can add salt to taste here, and check whether you feel the need to add some sugar - I usually sprinkle in about 1/2 tbsp if my tomatoes are tasting a little tart.
- While that’s bubbling away, bring the meat mixture out of the fridge and use a 1/2 tbsp measure to portion out and roll your meatballs, placing each one on a baking tray.
- Bake in a very hot oven for 4-5 minutes until the meatballs are browned - I like to go as hot as 240c fan-forced with the grill setting.
- Remove from the oven and drop the meatballs into your sauce, and allow this to bubble away over a gentle heat for another 10-20 minutes. If the tomato sauce seems to be drying out at all, you can add a splash of water to reinvigorate. You want the sauce to reduce, but still have some movement and liquidity to it.
- Serve with your favourite pasta, and a smattering of grated parmigiano reggiano.
