Step 1. Starting the sauce. Gather garlic and mince into tiny pieces, chop onion into small squares. In a heavy sauce pot heat on medium about 2 Table spoons of regular olive oil until hot. Sautee 1/2 of chopped onions and 1 teaspoon of salt for two minutes, after two minutes add 1/2 of minced garlic and sautee just until garlic becomes fragrant. When garlic is fragrant immediately pour 1/2 C of beef stock into pot and stir. Turn down to low/simmer and add bay leaves, both cans of crushed tomato. If you have a dry red wine hanging out 1/4-1/2 C will do wonderfully in the sauce, feel free to add! If the sauce is too water or light add a teaspoon of tomato paste at a time until desired thickness is reached. Let simmer on low covered, stirring occasionally.
Once the sauce is going its time to make the meatballs. Tear apart into small pieces and soak crusty Italian Bread and put on the side for later. In a large bowl mix together meatloaf mixture, remaining beef stock, remaining onions, remaining garlic, 1/2 of a hand full chopped basil, 1/2 of a handful chopped parsley, bread crumbs and cheese. Mix together with clean hands until all ingredients have been evenly distributed into meatball mixture. Squeeze water out of crusty Italian Bread and add bread to the meatball mixture. Once again mix together with your hands until bread is evenly distributed. If mixture seems too dry add a few table spoons of water at a time and mix. Once mixed create meatballs by spooning desired amount into hands and rolling into balls.
Once meat balls are rolled you have two options, you may either place meatballs directly into sauce for a tender and melt in your mouth meat ball taste, or enhance their flavor even more by browning them in a skillet with vegetable oil on medium for about 5-7 minutes per batch then placing them into sauce to finish cooking. While this does make them taste amazing it also ups the unhealthy fat content and may create a mess due to oil splattering and also adds much more time to the prep. The method you use to cook the meatballs also affects the cooking time. Meatballs cooked in sauce will usually take about 3 hours to fully cook on medium low temperature. Meatballs browned first will take anywhere from 45 minutes to 1 1/2 hours to finish cooking in the sauce.
Once you have chosen your cooking method for the meatballs you will either simmer for 3 hours for raw meatballs or about an hour for browned meatballs. During the last hour of the sauces cook time add the remaining chopped parsley and basil. Always check meatballs before serving, this can easily be done by sacrificing a lucky tester meatball to be split in half and checked for pinkness in the middle,possibly taste tested too if all pinkness is gone. The meatballs and sauce are finished when no pink remains.
Serving
Suggestions
Over pasta, on a hoagie, by themselves, these are GREAT!
Originally Submitted
1/13/2015
0 Out of 5 from
0 reviews
You can add this Not Your Mother Meatballs and Sauce recipe to your own private DesktopCookbook.
