Spaghetti and Meatballs

I don't think I ever made my spaghetti and meatballs for you.

I break all the rules when making this dish and it's wonderful every time. The Nudge tells me to never change the meatball recipe. That's good enough for me.

Broken Rule #1: I don't bake or fry my meatballs.
Broken Rule #2: I never add sugar to my sauce.
Broken Rule #3: I work meatball mixture to death.
Broken Rule #4: I use all beef, no pork, no veal, no meatball mix.
Broken Rule #5: I never use red wine in my sauce, only a good white.
Broken Rule #6: Scratch sauce and meatballs...1 hour from start to table.

Some cooking techniques should remain the same, never change them, just won't work. But a Sunday gravy with meatballs is an Italian Mamma's right to make it her way. There are no rights and wrongs, only happy eaters. I don't think I have ever had a bad tomato gravy just some that were not that flavorful and mostly because they use jarred sauces. Homemade can never be bad. It also doesn't have to take you all day to make.

Meatballs
* 1 pound of 80% ground beef
* 1 small onion, diced
* 3 cloves garlic, minced
* 1 beaten egg
* 1/4 cup ketchup
* 1 1/2 tbls brown mustard
* 1 cup dried flavored bread crumbs
* salt & pepper to taste
* 1/4 cup grated cheese

Mix all together. Roll into golf-sized balls and drop into sauce.

Quick and Easy Scratch Marinara Sauce
* 1 small onion, diced
* 3 cloves garlic, sliced
* 1 tbls tomato paste
* 1 cup water
* 1 cup white wine
* 1 tbls Italian Seasoning
* 1 28oz can crushed tomatoes, or whole hand crushed with juice
* 1 bay leaf
* Red Pepper Flakes
* salt & pepper to taste
* Chopped basil & parsley at the end.

Saute onions, then garlic until browned. Add tomato paste, red pepper flakes and caramelize. Add white wine and reduce down. Add water, seasonings, bay leaf and then tomatoes. Simmer for 30 minutes while you make the meatballs.
Put meatballs into sauce, cover and simmer additional 30 minutes while water comes to a boil and spaghetti cooks.
Bim, bam, boom !! Call everyone to the table.


Next time I make a huge pot of gravy for canning I will give you that recipe. That is done in a large crock pot overnight.

With Spaghetti and Meatballs you have to have bread, so I made ciabatta dough.
It is a very wet dough with the moisture ratio to flour at 50%. Usually it is 20-25%. I saw in a test kitchen show that used milk to make the holes in the bread smaller and more consistant. I cut the dough in half and froze one half, making 2 loaves out of the other half. They are small but great for dunking in the gravy. And when there's only 2, small loaves is good. The one we don't eat will be great for meatball paninis. But that's another day.


I got this recipe from The Fresh Loaf. All I changed was the addition of milk. I also did the conversion to ounces so the bread flour was 12.5 and the semolina was 5.3 the rest was the same. I like that I can do this in my Kitchen Aid. If I had to knead the old way, I would not bake a loaf of bread.