Saturday, September 4, 2010

Cloudy with a chance of meatball cookies.

So I made meatballs this afternoon. I don't know what it is about them, but I just love the little things, and having a supply in the freezer makes it so easy to pull together a meal when you barely have the energy to take your shoes off. And then you get to eat them! I wanted to give you a quick (hah!) overview of how this all works, not necessarily the specific recipe, but more the technique. I ended up with 12 meal sized portions of cooked meatballs, and what I want you all to see is that it really isn't any harder than making a big batch of cookies. In fact the parallels are significant.



You need a sous-chef. Discourage him from eating the "cookie dough".





There's the beef! This is about 7 pounds, remember it's $1.49 at Haggar's til Tuesday!



This is important; once you do your egg, bread crumb, onion and whatever the heck else you want treatment, you'll want to check the seasoning before you commit. I just made little bitty patties from both batches of meat, fried them up really quick, and tried them out. Perfect!

This is a meatballer (I made that name up, just go with it), much like a cookie scoop but it shapes all sides of the meatball. If you are making big batches, or even small batches, I recommend you drop a few bucks on one. It won't make perfect meatballs, you'll still have to shape them a bit, but it will give you a good start and ensure a uniform size.

I never fry meatballs, because the attention they require and mess that they make causes me extreme irritability. I bake them at 350 for about 15 minutes, and they keep their shape so much better, and don't splatter grease everywhere. Don't they look like greasy drop cookies? No?

By the time you get to the bottom of the bowl(s), your thumbs will be tired!

The end result. My 7 pounds of ground yielded 12 meal sized portions of cooked meatballs, which are now nestled into the freezer, waiting to be further crafted into spagetti, meatball sandwiches, pizza toppers, Swedish meatballs, and certainly many other yummy things. I know you guys are busy, so I want you to know that I timed this whole process, and even with breaks to dance with my sous-chef while singing "Carry on my Wayward Son", it took me almost exactly one hour, done and dusted! Hilarious side note; in the above picture, my crap camera advised me "a subject has blinked", and even highlighted the offending meatball with a little yellow box. Much like small children, it's very difficult to get your meatballs to cooperate for a picture.

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