spiced up meat balls
recipe for juicy meatballs in a tomato sauce served with ricotta, peperoncino Calabrese paste, and fresh basil 🍅
Key points:
Add panade to your meatballs.
Panade is a mix of starches, such as bread (fresh or stale) or breadcrumbs, soaked in dairy and mashed into a paste. It makes the texture of meatballs more tender. If you want to go gluten-free, use overcooked rice instead.
Don’t overmix the meatball mixture - the more you knead the meat the tougher it gets. Stop mixing once your meatball mixture looks cohesive.
1:1 ratio of meat - I use a combination of meat, such as pork for a juicer texture and beef for a more savoury taste.
Carmelize the exterior of your meatballs on the pan for extra flavour.
Add a binder: an egg so that your meatballs retain their shape.
I added anchovy fillets into the meat mix for an even bolder savoury punch.
Meatballs in tomato sauce recipe
Serve: 4 (3 meatballs per portion)
Ingredients:
Meatballs:
150g minced pork
150g minced beef
half white onion
2 garlic cloves
20g carrot
20g fresh basil
30g ricotta
10g parmigiano reggiano
1 egg
2 anchovy fillets
1 teaspoon of peperoncino Calabrese paste
35g breadcrumbs
35g double cream
35g whole milk
a pinch of nutmeg
40 turns of a black pepper mill
5g sea salt
Tomato sauce:
quarter of white onion
half carrot
1 garlic clove
1 teaspoon of peperoncino Calabrese paste
400g tinned fine tomato pulp
fresh basil (around 4 leaves)
a splash of white wine
sea salt
black pepper
white sugar
extra virgin olive oil
Garnish:
basil leaves
parmigiano reggiano
ricotta
peperoncino Calabrese paste
extra virgin olive oil
black pepper
sea salt
Method:
Meatballs:
Start with panade - in a medium bowl combine breadcrumbs, milk, and double cream. Mix it well and let the breadcrumbs absorb the liquid.
Thinly dice an onion, mince garlic, and grate a carrot on a box grater. Chop basil leaves and the stems (leave some leaves for the sauce and the garnish).
Using a fork, mash anchovy fillets on a chopping board until they become paste-like.
Grate parmigiano reggiano.
In a medium bowl, combine minced pork, beef and anchovy fillets and mix with your hand gently. Add panade and the rest of the ingredients, and season with sea salt, freshly ground pepper and nutmeg, and combine not too vigorously. Don’t overmix the mixture, otherwise, the meat becomes compact and meatballs turn out dense.
Divide the meat into 12 even parts, and form the meatballs by rolling them gently to shape a small bowl. If the mix sticks to your hand wet the hands with water or vegetable oil.
Heat the olive oil in a pan and pan-fry the meatballs over medium-high heat. Make sure the oil is hot before placing the meat - it should sizzle once you start putting the meat on. Cook the meatballs until they are browned, caramelising the meatballs' top and bottom sides. Lower the heat once browned, take them off the heat and set aside. The meatballs are only partially cooked (not ready to eat) at this point.
Make the tomato sauce and finish cooking meatballs:
Finely chop onion and carrots, and mince garlic.
In the same pan in which meatballs were cooked, heat olive oil over medium heat and sauté onion and carrot until onion is translucent, stirring frequently for around 10 minutes. Add a splash of water if your veggies start to brown, and lower the heat. Add garlic and cook until soft and fragrant. Stir in peperoncino Calabrese paste, mix, and deglaze the pan with white wine - we want to dissolve what has stuck to the pan after cooking. Mix in tinned fine tomato pulp. Add a pinch of sugar to cut the acidity of the tomatoes. Season with salt and freshly ground pepper, and simmer for around 20 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add torn basil at the end to make the sauce more aromatic.
Once your sauce is ready, add the meatballs to the tomato sauce and cook thoroughly for around 15 minutes over low to medium heat. Stir occasionally and very gently to retain the shape of the meatballs by slowly folding them. While meatballs are cooking, whip some ricotta by simply whisking it and season it with a pinch of salt.
Serve:
Drizzle the meatballs with olive oil, and top with dollops of whipped ricotta, peperoncino Calabrese paste, and garnish with fresh basil leaves. If you want to go cheesier, grate more parmigiano reggiano on top.
