Homemade Italian Meatballs

Canning season has begun. Helen declared it on Tuesday with the authority of a woman who has been putting up food for forty years and considers the freezer a convenience and the Mason jar an institution. The tomatoes are coming in fast now — the big ones, the beefsteaks, the ones that are ugly and split and taste like summer concentrated into a single bite. We eat what we can fresh. The rest goes into jars.

I made tomato sauce. A full batch — twenty pounds of tomatoes, blanched, peeled, crushed, cooked down with garlic and basil and a pinch of sugar and the patience that good sauce demands. The kitchen was a hundred degrees. The windows fogged. The house smelled like an Italian grandmother's kitchen, which is a compliment I can give because my kitchen has never smelled Italian before and the comparison felt earned. Eight quarts of sauce, sealed and labeled and lined up on the counter like soldiers awaiting deployment to winter.

Helen canned the dill pickles on Thursday. Her recipe — garlic, dill, vinegar, salt, a shake of red pepper flakes. The cucumbers go into the jars whole and come out three weeks later as pickles, which is a transformation I've never fully understood despite having watched it happen forty times. Chemistry, Helen says. Magic, I say. Same thing, she says. She's probably right.

The blog post this week was about canning — the process, the purpose, the peculiar satisfaction of looking at a shelf of jars and knowing that the garden's abundance has been translated into winter's security. I wrote about my mother, who canned everything, who considered a full pantry the ultimate measure of preparedness, who would look at a row of Mason jars the way some people look at a savings account. Full pantry, full heart. She believed that. I believe it too.

David called. James has a new word: "no." He uses it for everything — food, bedtime, getting dressed, getting undressed, the question of whether he loves his parents. Karen says it's a phase. David says it's a personality. At two, it's hard to tell the difference. Either way, the boy knows his mind, which is more than I can say for most adults I've taught.

After a day that left my kitchen fogged with steam and smelling like something out of a Sicilian village — twenty pounds of tomatoes reduced to eight gleaming quarts of sauce — it felt wrong to let those jars sit without marking the occasion properly. You don’t make sauce like that and then open a box of pasta. You make meatballs. These are the kind Helen would approve of: simple, no shortcuts, the sort of thing my mother would have made to prove that a full pantry deserves a full table.

Prep Time: 20 minutes | Cook Time: 25 minutes | Total Time: 45 minutes | Servings: 6 (about 24 meatballs)

Ingredients

1 1/2 lbs ground beef (80/20 blend)
1/2 lb ground pork
3/4 cup Italian-seasoned breadcrumbs
1/2 cup whole milk
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese
4 cloves garlic, minced
1/4 cup fresh flat-leaf parsley, finely chopped
1 tsp dried oregano
1 tsp kosher salt
1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper
1/4 tsp red pepper flakes (optional)
2 tbsp olive oil, for browning

Instructions

Soak the breadcrumbs. In a large mixing bowl, combine the breadcrumbs and milk. Let sit for 5 minutes until the milk is fully absorbed and the mixture forms a soft paste.
Mix the meat. Add the ground beef, ground pork, eggs, Parmesan, garlic, parsley, oregano, salt, pepper, and red pepper flakes to the bowl. Using your hands, mix gently until just combined — do not overwork the meat or the meatballs will be tough.
Form the meatballs. Roll the mixture into balls roughly 1 1/2 inches in diameter (about the size of a golf ball), placing them on a parchment-lined baking sheet as you go. You should get approximately 24 meatballs.
Brown the meatballs. Heat olive oil in a large, heavy-bottomed skillet over medium-high heat. Working in batches, brown the meatballs on all sides, about 6–8 minutes per batch. Do not crowd the pan. Transfer browned meatballs to a plate.
Finish in sauce. Nestle the browned meatballs into your tomato sauce in a large pot or Dutch oven. Simmer over low heat, partially covered, for 15–20 minutes until cooked through. Alternatively, bake on a rimmed sheet pan at 400°F for 18–20 minutes.
Serve. Serve over pasta, in hoagie rolls, or simply with crusty bread. Top with additional Parmesan and fresh parsley.

Nutrition (per serving)

Homemade Italian Meatballs — Something Worthy of That Sauce