Pasta with meatballs

Information

• 🍳 Cook time: 2 hours
• 🍽 Serving size: 3-4 portions

Ingredients

Meatballs

• 500g ground beef or mixture of beef and pork
• ~90g breadcrumbs
• ~60ml milk
• 50g Parmigiano Reggiano (optional)
• 1 egg
• 3-4 cloves of minced garlic
• parsley
• some grated onion
• salt (generously) and pepper
• olive oil for frying (~20g)
• 350g spaghetti
• one small spoon of mustard and one small spoon of paprika

Tomato Sauce

• 400g peeled whole tomatoes (fresh, blanched, or high quality canned)
• 1 minced garlic clove (optional)
• salt and pepper
• basil (optional)

Instructions

1. Prepare peeled tomatoes, cut shallow X on the bottom of each tomato through the skin, drop into boiling water for half a minute, or until the skin starts to curl. Transfter to cold water for 1-2 minutes. Peel off beginning from the X. Remove hard core.
2. Mix the breadcrumbs and milk, let it sit for 5 minutes, mince the garlic cloves, grate the onion
3. Mix the meat, breadcrumb mixture, garlic, onion, egg, parsley, salt and pepper
4. Form into 40g balls (4-5cm diameter), should get ~12-14 meatballs
5. Set aside for 10 mins and wait
6. Heat a pan with the olive oil, temp should be at 180C. Brown the meatballs for 6-8 minutes, turning them regularly, do not let them stick to the pan, but DO NOT TOUCH for the first 2 minutes. Remove and set aside.
7. Add the crushed, peeled tomatoes into the pan, stir immediately to prevent scorching, mantain temp at ~140C, 30 seconds. Reduce heat if bubbling aggressively.
8. Reduce heat to 100C, add back the meatballs, let it simmer for ~15 minutes.

NOTE: if meat mixture has too many brown patches and crumbles, add a tablespon of water