Meatballs and sauce - best recipe?

[Disenchanted3]

Fancied this but Im really crap at cooking fresh, I need step by step guide

(expect alot of this as I am trying to cook more 'proper' meals from here onwards)

I love Nigella Lawsons recipes for meatballs so here's a link I've found for it. HTH!

www.channel4.com/food/recipes/chefs/nigella-lawson/pasta-with-meatballs-in-tomato-sau ce-recipep1.html

ok, do you want to use beef mince or pork mince?
(Or even turkey mince?)

Get mince. Grate in a crust of stale bread. Add salt and pepper. Pinch of mixed herbs and I add a squirt of tomato ketchup. but this is optional. Get in with your (clean) hands and squidge it together really well. with a little beaten egg (To bind it, but you can omit this)

Wet your hands and roll into small balls.

Gently fry in a little olive oil.

Meanwhile, open tin of tomatoes. Finely chop an onion.
Add half teaspoon sugar, bit of salt and pepper, and chilli if you like it. Or not, if you don't! Simmer til onion is soft. Add meatballs, bake in oven with some grated cheese on top.
Cook some pasta, drain and serve with meatballs and sauce.

NB: If you like olives, add two or three black olives to the tom sauce. Ditto garlic. Ditto splash of red wine....

Mine!

Mince- about half a kilo,
handful of breadcrumbs
egg
parsley/salt/pepper
handful grated cheese

Whack together, make into walnut size balls, brown in pan, add glug of red wine and evaporate it off, add tin of tomatoes/passata and a beef stock cube...cook for a l--on----g time.
Serve with tagliatelle or suchlike.

ooooh, never baked them before....will try that as well this week!

Lean mince (about 1.5 lbs), parsley, basil (fresh or dried), parmesan, egg, fresh breadcrumbs, s & p. Mix well using wooden spoon and hands. Form into golfball sized balls and bake for about 30 mins in a roasting tin or big pyrex dish at 350 F. To make sauce: saute several finely chopped garlic cloves briefly in a little oil, add a nice splash of red wine, then about 4-6 ozs tomato paste and enough water to make a sauce of medium consistency. Or you could use a nice big tin of crushed tomatoes. Add basil/oregano (dried is fine) or both and a little s & p. Heat sauce and simmer. Take meatballs from oven and add to sauce. Simmer for a while. DCs like the meatballs browned and they hate tomato 'bits', hence the paste.

I love the one in Nigella Bites, although I use soy milk and skip the parmesan to avoid dairy stuff. I've made it 3 times in the past month!

Best of all, you don't even have to fry the mince balls....you just gently chuck them into the tomato sauce and resist the urge to stir for about 20 mins until they've started to set. Winner

Oh thankyou,

have all the ingrediants so will let you know how it goes for tea tomorrow,

Sounds lovely thankyou

Baking the meatballs stops them from falling to bits on the pan as you turn them and you don't have to watch them as they cook.

I have made Delia's Meatballs lots of times now and they are lovely and tasty - they are better fried than oven baked, but may try cooking in the sauce next time.

Hi, our whole family loves Annabel Karmels 'meatballs with sweet and sour sauce' from 1 year old to 50 year old!!
Its really easy to make - mix 450g mince, 1 onion, 1 apple, 50g fresh breadcrumbs, 1 tbsp parsley, 1 chicken stock cube, 2 tbsp water + salt and pepper ina processor - then divide into meatballs and fry. sauce is 1 tbsp soy sauce mixed with 1/2 tbsp cornflour, 1 tbsp veg oil, 1 onion, 50g red pepper, 400g tin toms, 1 tbsp malt vinegar, 1 tsp brown sugar, black pepper - fry onion, add pepper, toms vinegar, sugar simmer for 10 mins add soy sauce mixture and cook for 2 minutes, blend and pour over meat balls, cover and simmer until cooked through - i add extra water to the sauce to cover the meatballs in an ovenproof dish and cook on about 160 degrees for an hour - then its really tender and the kids love it.

Not got a meatballs recipie but can I suggest a sauce that my DCs love and goes with loads of things, including meatballs? One of my friends told it to me.

It's a tomato type sauce. Red onion, garlic, olive oil, mushrooms, sweet pepper, butternut squash, sweet potatoes, carrot, courgettes, sweat with herbes de provence and two bay leaves, until squash is cooked then add 1 jar sugo casa or half tube of tomato puree, sugar, 2 cans chppoed tomatoes, salt & pepper, slurp balsamic vinegar. Reudce for a bit until cooked then whizz it all to a thick sauce 9take bay leaves out first of course). It's yummy and I freeze it in bags to bake with DH's home made meatballs, or mince forspag bol, or into cottage pies etc.

My vote is with Nigella's recipe - so easy and very tasty.

Can I make the meatballs now and pop them in the fridge till about 4:30?

yes....although looking at the time of your last post this isn't a particularly useful answer now !

When I make meatballs, I make loads and then freeze lots so I have some ready on evenings when I am not sure what to do for dinner!

Well they went down a storm!

DS who is fussy eater number 1 cleared his plate!

fab
thanks!

I too made Nigellas last night and they were delicious and very easy.

All had clean plates in this house.

Thank you

I love jamie Oliver's recipe for them and his tomato sauce is fab. It is in one of the earlier books, will try and find a link.

Disenchanted - yay! Delighted that it was worth all the effort (clean plates are always such a relief, aren't they?)

I also usually make double or triple quantities and freeze them, but then, I do that for absolutely everything!! (This is why I have a fridge freezer in the kitchen, another one in the garage and snapped up my mum's old full size freezer when she redecorated her kitchen, which is also in my garage!!)

Oops . Apologies for rather overdoing it on the exclamation marks in my previous post...