Meatballs from Cuisine at Home

These are a family favorite, and the good news is they are not challenging to make, it's a lot like making cookies! This recipe can be easily scaled up to fit your crowd, or your freezer, because they freeze quite nicely too! Nothing like homemade meatballs in your freezer ready to be pulled for any weeknight dinner! My experiment with this recipe was substituting wheat bran for 1/3 of the bread crumbs and nonfat milk rather than whole. Result: no impact on flavor, but I'm guessing there must be some improvement on the nutritional information. These are great with pasta, in submarine sandwiches and in soups!

Recipe for basic meatballs from the 2002 Sep/Oct issue of Cusine at Home

Ingredients:

• 1 cup unseasoned bread crumbs
• 3/4 cup Romano or Parmesan cheese, finely grated
• 1/2 cup whole milk
• 1/2 cup low sodium beef broth
• 1/2 cup chopped fresh parsley
• 3 eggs, beaten
• 2 tbsp dried oregano
• 1 tbsp garlic minced
• 1 tbsp kosher salt
• 1 tbsp ground black pepper
• 2 tsp dried basil
• 1 tsp crushed red pepper flakes
• pinch nutmeg
• 2 lb. ground chuck
• 1 cup low sodium beef broth

Instructions

1. Stir together all ingredients through the nutmeg, in a big mixing bowl (really big if you double the recipe!)
2. Add in the ground chuck and mix gently but thoroughly. Coat a baking sheet with nonstick spray, shape meatballs either with your hands (a little water on your hands helps to keep the mixture from sticking to you) or two spoons, although you can make these any size you want try to make them uniform, the recipe recommends a 2 inch diameter. Don't crowd these on the tray.
3. Cover the bottom of the pan with some beef broth, if you have a large enough pan for the whole batch the 1 cup at the end is for this, I had three baking trays worth and just a little so it covers the bottom of the pan works as well.Bake for 25 minutes or until they are cooked through.
4. The juices leftover in the pan taste great in your spagetti sauce, and if you are interested in freezing the extras, allow thm to cool a few minutes then place the whole tray in your freezer for 10-15 minutes until they are firm and chilled before relocating them to containers or Ziplocs in the freezer!