Meatballs
Spaghetti and meatballs. What do you think about when you think about spaghetti and meatballs? Classic Italian dish? Is really a classic Italian dish? I'm pretty sure in Italy they don't eat spaghetti and meatballs. I don't know, we'll have to Google it.
So how easy or hard is it to make meatballs? Well, it's pretty easy. Let me just start with a small batch. It would be nice if you have a mixer, but you could do it by hand or you can use the wooden spoon. You could do it any way you like it. I'm going to give you my recipe, ohh, if you have a recipe from your grandmother, mother, father, grandfather, uncle, sister, who knows. If somebody has a recipe use that recipe. If this is your first time, if you already did it probably wouldn't be reading this right now, here's my recipe. So, let's start with the ingredients.
Ingredients
- 1 LB ground beef
- One Cup fresh breadcrumbs
- one tablespoon parsley
- two cloves of pressed garlic
- one teaspoon garlic salt
- one teaspoon Adobo
- one egg large
- 1/2 cup milk half and half or heavy cream
Directions
Let's put the ground beef in the bowl. If you’re using a mixer, let's use the beater. If you're using a wooden spoon, let's just break the ground beef down so it will be easy to mix in all the ingredients, and if you're using your hands, you could leave it the way it is. Your hands will do a great job of mixing everything. OK, next let's put the breadcrumbs on top. If you don’t have fresh you can use store bought. It does make a difference though. Put the parsley in, put in the garlic salt, the Adobo, crack the egg on top of that. Let's take out two cloves of garlic and put it through the press. Or you could chop it up right? You could chop it up really fine, mince it. I like it that way, that's fine. It's just if you have people that really don't like to get a piece of garlic, a lot of people don't like that, you could smash it up with the press. Then take the half a cup of milk and pour on top. Did we put the egg in? I think we did. Yeah, eggs in there so everything's in there now let's mix it up. So, with using the mixer, very easy, let's put it on one. We're just going to mix it. We don't want to beat it to death. Using the spoon, just mix it. You just have to mix it until it looks even to you, right? That's really the only way to tell. And if you use your hands, you know, just smash it all. Get in there and smash it around. It's good because you're going to use your hands to make the meatballs anyway. It's gonna be good clean fun! Good clean fun I said! How do you know if the ingredients are right? How do you know if it needs more salt, more pepper? OK, I'll tell you. So, I'm going to show you. It's got, it's got to feel a certain way, it's got to look a certain way, it’s got to smell a certain way. You're going to use your nose, it always knows. Or you could, you know, fry a little piece. I used to do this, but after you get good at it you won’t have to. You just take a piece, a little piece, and then fry it and taste that. It's OK, that's good, I'm good with that, and then you know, fry the rest. But in the meantime, we have you all whether you're going to take some in your hand, and you know, we're going to think about how big a meatball should be. If you sit down and you're going to eat a meatball, how big should that be? If you like a giant meatball, make a giant meatball. You like a small meatball? Make a small meatball. but whatever you do, make them all similar in size. It'll be easier to cook them consistently. If you want to eat fried meatballs versus, I'm just going to throw them all into the tomato sauce and they’ll finish cooking in there. now you do have so light brown on half the batch this is only 1 LB but usually I do 2 lbs a light brown 1 LB maybe a little bit more drop down right into sauce let it finish in there and then I want to fry the rest where I could just you know put them on a fork and eat them off the fork that I lost my train of thought OK so we have our pan we put our olive oil I like to fry everything in olive oil ohh just covered it bottom so we should render some fat from the meatballs if you use the very lean meat you add some olive oil right uh and you wanna fight until they're brown you know you gotta move them so fried spirit fried spirit fried spinner maybe 10 minutes it depends on the sides so up to you now how big did you make it list small meatballs or a giant meatballs how long should I cook the meatballs uh you could do it like this you watch me and then get the feel for that and do whatever you are but uh like everything else you'll figure it out after you do it a few times right Eric Oh my God that's funny OK so we made the balls start dropping them into the oil they fired up they sizzle down it's switching the brown watching the brown drop them in the sauce so we could just fry them all for fried meatballs right everybody fork put them on the table there you get their old meatball but those who like to fight a lot more when you get a much much darker round once you're back it's not black but it's it's dark black would be burned so we don't want that anyway that's it you are golden and hopefully your meatballs are also golden brown and delicious now take this recipe and make it your own it's some of this it's something that it's something else I don't know leave something out now you own it make your own thing well thanks for being here see you around.