“I am proud of all my recipes, but especially of the canonically classic ones,” says Alison Roman. “It’s not that I’ve reinvented them (as I said, they remain canon), but rather that I’ve configured each one to suit my platonic ideal, tailored to my specific criteria, tweaked to meet my often ridiculously high standards. Buttermilk biscuits. Matzo ball soup. Pie crust. Meatballs. I am particular, and so are these recipes.
Perhaps more than other classics, meatball recipes tend to have a lot of ‘secrets’: The bread for the crumbs has to be from a five-day-old loaf, the crumbs must be soaked in whole milk, there should be a scant teaspoon of Top Secret Thing, they should be seared first or, wait, no, dropped straight into the sauce . . . so on and so forth. If you’re interested in making wonderful meatballs, I’m sure you’ve heard one or more of these things before. Through trial and error, eating many subpar and excellent meatballs, and texting my Aunt Liz in New Jersey, I arrived at my own recipe, though tragically devoid of ‘secrets’.
These are your basic, very good meatballs in the style of Italian American red-sauce joints, and to me, they are perfect: a mixture of beef and pork, with panko breadcrumbs (I love an all-purpose crumb) that are softened in ricotta with eggs to bind. There are plenty of alliums (raw onion and garlic), lots of fresh parsley and a good amount of hard, salty Parmesan. They’re seared in the pot before building the sauce because I do not think a meatball browned in the oven is brown enough. It’s admittedly more work to do them stovetop, sure, but you reap the rewards in the form of rendered fat, toasted bits and browned, delicious meat that flavours your sauce.”
Ingredients
For the meatballs
- 225 g (8 oz/1 cup) whole-milk ricotta
- 30 g (1 oz/½ cup) finely chopped parsley
- 30 g (1 oz/½ cup) grated Parmesan cheese
- 20 g (3/4 oz/⅓ cup) panko breadcrumbs
- 2 large eggs
- 2 or 3 garlic cloves, finely grated or chopped
- ½ medium yellow or red onion, very finely chopped (you’ll use the other half of the onion for the sauce)
- 2 teaspoons kosher salt, plus more to taste
- freshly ground black pepper and/or chilli flakes
- 450 g (1 lb) minced (ground) beef
- 450 g (1 lb) minced (ground) pork (or more beef if you don’t eat pork)
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
For the sauce
- 1½ medium yellow or red onions, finely chopped
- 6 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
- kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
- 2 tablespoons tomato purée (paste)
- a few anchovies or couple of dashes of fish sauce (optional)
- 4 x 400 g (14 oz) tins crushed tomatoes and/or whole peeled tomatoes, crushed by hand
Method
- Make the meatballs: Mix the ricotta, parsley, Parmesan, breadcrumbs, eggs, garlic and onion in a medium bowl. Season with salt, pepper and chilli flakes (if you like), and let sit for 10 minutes or so. (This hydrates the breadcrumbs, which leads to very juicy meatballs – do not skip or rush this step.)
- Add the beef, pork and remaining 2 teaspoons (Diamond Crystal) kosher salt (1 teaspoon if using Morton salt). Using your hands (I have never had good luck using a spoon), mix everything together well – it should look like sausage, evenly flecked with bits here and there, but not paste-like. Once it is well mixed, roll one tiny sacrificial meatball to cook.
- Heat the olive oil in a large pot over a medium heat. Add the sacrificial meatball and cook until it’s well browned on all sides and cooked through. Take it out of the pot and eat it. Does it taste amazing? Salty? Meaty? Tender and juicy without falling apart? Do you want it spicier? Go ahead and adjust the seasoning as needed.
- Roll the rest of the mixture into balls 3–5 cm (1½–2 inches) in diameter. This is my preference, so if you enjoy a LARGER meatball, then be my beautiful guest. I get roughly 24 meatballs from this mixture, more or less.
- Working in batches, brown the meatballs on all sides, 4–6 minutes per batch. They will not be cooked through – that’s fine; they will finish cooking in the sauce. It’s important to remember that this isn’t a round meatball contest; it’s a brown meatball contest (not the time or place to sacrifice deliciousness for aesthetics).
- Once the meatballs are properly browned, transfer them to a large plate or bowl and continue with the rest of the meat. Once they are all browned, congratulate yourself on a job well done and let them hang out while you make the sauce.
- Make the sauce: Without wiping out the pot, add the onions and garlic and season with salt and pepper. Cook, stirring occasionally, until they’re translucent and tender but not yet browned, 8–10 minutes. Add the tomato purée and anchovies (if using) and stir until the anchovies are melted and the tomato purée has begun to caramelise and turn a darker shade of red, 2–3 minutes.
- Add the tinned tomatoes. Fill one of the empty tins halfway with water and swirl to get all the tomato bits out, then pour the liquid into the pot. Season with salt and pepper.
- Bring to a simmer and adjust for salt, knowing the sauce will reduce and become a bit saltier while it cooks with the meatballs. Add your meatballs and all the juices that have collected at the bottom of the plate.
- Reduce the heat to low and simmer the meatballs in the sauce, uncovered, until the sauce is thickened and impossibly delicious and the meatballs are cooked through and perfectly tender, 30–40 minutes.
Note:
I first made these meatballs after a not-so-tragic breakup. For better or for worse, the name stuck.
Do ahead:
The raw meatball mixture freezes well, so you could always make half and freeze the rest for later.
Eat with:
Meatballs really need no suggestions, but I will say that beyond the bowl of spaghetti or platter of rigatoni, they are excellent over soft, cheesy polenta or simply on their own with some garlic bread with which to dunk.
This is an edited extract from Something from Nothing by Alison Roman, published by Quadrille. Available in stores nationally including at great independent retailers such as Readings, Hill of Content and Books for Cooks. Photography by Chris Bernabeo.