Baked Meatballs

Tonight I made baked meat balls.

Food is delicious, but presentation makes it a joy to eat. I decided I really should style this so you could feast with your eyes while I fill my tummy!

I was drawn to this recipe because I've made meatballs in the skillet before and it was a pain in the butt! Constantly rolling them around so you get even browning is no fun so I thought I'd give this method a try. Even better they're called "Jen's incredible baked meatballs," so I HAD to try them! I'd classify this as another easy recipe, but had some issues with the onions tonight. The original recipe can be found here:
http://cookwithhoney.blogspot.ca/2012/04/jens-incredible-baked-meatballs.html

They suggest "grating or mincing" the onions so I thought I could short cut it by tossing the onions into the magic bullet. I originally wanted to use the food processor but due to circumstances beyond my control it was out of commission (aka we forgot to run the dishwasher before we left and I was super hungry and didn't want to wash it by hand. Ok its not cause I was super hungry its because I hate doing dishes.). So lesson learned today if you put a white onion in a magic bullet you get frothed onion.

So aside from the frothy onion fiasco it was pretty smooth sailing. I doubled the recipe below because Matt likes to package our hamburger from Costco in 2 lb blocks and rather than having to come up with an idea for what to do with the other pound I just figured I'd double it. PLUS the original said they freeze well so we can have them later. By doubling the recipe I made 50 golf ball sized meatballs, and you can too!

Ingredients:
1 pound hamburger (90% lean)
2 eggs, beaten
1/2 cup grated Parmesan
1 cup panko or bread crumbs
1 small onion, minced or grated (1/2 a large onion) (DO NOT PUT IN MAGIC BULLET!)
2-3 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 teaspoon oregano (Or 1 tsp fresh)
1 teaspoon salt
freshly ground pepper to taste
1/4 cup chopped fresh basil

Mix all ingredients with hands. Form into golfball sized meatballs and place on parchment paper* on a cookie sheet. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes.

* If you do not use cooking parchment paper, you should! Its better than foil because it keeps the food from burning as badly and makes cleaning such a breeze (remember my hatred for doing dishes?). I use it when I bake cookies, meatballs, basically anything that needs to get baked, I put on parchment paper.

Here is the pictograph version:

2 lb hamburger- not bright red because it was frozen and thawed in the fridge over night

1 c shredded Parmesan cheese

4 beaten eggs (I was supposed to add milk, but forgot and they turned out great so I left it out)

2 c. panko bread crumbs + 5 cubes of garlic

Frothy plus chopped onions. Should have chopped finer, but not frothy. Next time I'll make my sous chef do this because he's good at mincing onions.

Chopped up fresh oregano

chopped up oregano and basil

Tray 1 showing 20 uncooked meatballs- See the pretty parchment paper???

Tray 2 showing 30 uncooked meat balls

Cooked meatballs! Delicious!

Close up of cooked meatball. Very little grease!

 So, in a total of 45 minutes you go from meat to meatballs and they were very delicious. They don't have really "big flavor." So you may want to add some Italian seasoning, some people like fennel. I'm not a fan myself, so I left them the way they were and let the flavorful tomato sauce do the talking while the meatballs added a nice subtle complement to the dish. Next time I probably will add a bit of hot pepper flakes because I think that could be really yummy. Also if you want a more flavorful ball you could toss in some chopped up sun dried tomatoes, but I think it could be too much if you're going to top with tomato sauce as well. Its up to you! Its your dinner and the best part is you get to be creative and have fun with it!
Happy Eating!