Tear-inducing meatballs.

A few years ago, the spousal unit informed me she wanted meatballs for dinner and supplied me with this recipe from For the Love of Cooking blog.

I don't exactly remember why, but I glanced at it and somehow randomly decided that I would add panko and Italian sausage to the recipe and substituted Parmesan cheese with the more economical Pecorino.

The spousal unit declared that the meatballs were tear-inducing good, and then proceeded to ration them. So I think they must be pretty good. Over the years I sort of simplified the recipe, and the recipe can be thrown together in about 30 minutes + about 60 minutes of unsupervised cooking time.

Meatball Ingredients:

1 & 1/2 pounds of ground beef.

1 & 1/2 pounds of Spicy Italian Sausage.

1 large sweet onion (finely diced).

1/2 cup of panko.

1/4 cup of grated Pecorino.

2 cloves of garlic.

2 eggs.

1 tablespoons of dried basil.

2 tsp of fennel seeds.

salt and pepper to your personal preference.

Sauce Ingredients:

1 large sweet onion (chopped).

2 jars of your generic budget Mariana sauce (if you don't do budget Mariana sauce - why are you even reading this? Sod off. I only cook food for the proletariat).

salt and pepper to your personal preference.

Meatball Making Protocol:
1. Remove the Spicy Italian Sausage from their casings, and mix the sausage meat with the ground beef. Throw in all the ingredients and literally hand mix the mixture until all the ingredients are well integrated. If you have sensitive hands or suffer from mysophobia, I suppose you could put on a pair of gloves (although if you suffer from mysophobia, you probably shouldn't eat or breathe, so I recommend sticking your head in a plastic bag).

Punch it as if it were your worst enemy! 

2. Shape the balls. I don't put too much effort into this, because no one should care about the shape of your balls (with the exception of maybe your PCP).

3. Place meatballs in baking tray. I use a roasting pan with a rack so that the underside of the balls get an opportunity to experience convection and the meatballs don't sit in a puddle of fat. I sort of help them brown a little by spraying the meatballs with a butter based baking spray. Put them in an oven preheated to 350°F for 30 minutes.

This time I rough chopped my onions because I was lazy.
No adverse impact  to the texture or flavor of the meatballs.

4. While the meatballs are in the oven, chop the other onion, toss it in a large pot and saute in olive oil with some salt & pepper. When the onions begin to soften and yellow, pour in your two jars of Mariana sauce.

5. After the meatballs have been in the oven for 30 minutes, dump them into the sauce for another 30 minutes. Thereafter, serve on your carbohydrate of choice. I ate them on linguini. Leftovers were consumed on yummy sour-dough rolls.

Misshapen but yummy.