Cooking Daddy: Meatballs-Meatballs-Meatballs

How to make Meatballs!

I love music. Now why am I telling you this in an article about making meatballs? I've always found it magical that a musician is capable of taking disparate notes and combining them into a beautiful melody. Sadly, an avid appreciation of music is all my genes have allowed me to have.

Cooking is akin to music in that ingredients are combined to create a flavourful dish and luckily for me, I have had better luck with cooking than making music. It helps a ton that I love cooking for my family. The only part of cooking that I abhor? Washing up. Anyone want to volunteer for that duty?

Anyway, meatballs. We decided to have spaghetti and we were too lazy to cook accompanying dishes so we wanted something that really went well together with spaghetti and most importantly, would pass the judges (my kids) table - so meatballs it was.

Ingredients used today:

• 1 packet of minced beef
• 1 packet of minced pork
• 1/2 cup of milk
• 1/2 cup of breadcrumbs
• 1 egg
• 1 tsp of salt
• A smattering of freshly ground black pepper
• 1/2 cup of Parmesan cheese
• 1/4 cup of minced parsley
• 1/2 cup of chopped onion
• 1 minced garlic clove

Instructions:

1. Combine the milk with the breadcrumbs so as to soggify (not a word I know) them.
2. Beat up the egg and once that is done, add in the salt, pepper, cheese and parsley.
3. Once your mixture is done, add it to the meat and make sure it's well mixed.
4. Add in the onions, garlic and soggy breadcrumbs. Make sure it's well mixed again.
5. Time to shape your meatballs!
6. Bake the meatballs (use a baking sheet) at 200°C for 30 minutes (your cooking time may vary if you are using a different mix of ground meats)

What I would have done differently?

• the only breadcrumbs I had on hand was a Parmesan cheese breadcrumb mix and together with the other cheese I added in, it definitely made for a cheesy meatballs. Next round I would go with regular breadcrumbs.

• Meatballs were oddly sized! Didn't bother me but it's still an area for improvement. I had roughly guaged the amount and obviously hadn't done too good a job. Will improve this in the future by shaping up the meatball mix into a huge rectangular slab on my cutting board and portioning it up before shaping them into meatballs.

• I might reduce the cooking time of the meatballs in the oven to about 25 minutes and finish them up on the stovetop, together with the spaghetti sauce for the last 5 minutes so that the meat absorbs the flavours from the sauce too.

Verdict - The kids and J loved them so this recipe is a keeper. It's a bonus too that it did not take too much work.

Breadcrumbs and milk

Oddly sized meatballs

31 meatballs in all

Only 6 left when dinner was done