SPAGHETTI and meatballs

Spaghetti and meatballs

This is the ultimate recipe! Once you make this you will never want canned sauce again! With a little planning you can prep this in 45 min and then stick it in a low oven for hours and then in how long it takes to boil pasta you are ready for dinner!!

Tips and tricks:

If you cant find ground veal or you have an aversion to it just use extra pork (same goes if you don’t like pork).
If you do not like spicy food then lower the amount of Calabrian chilies you add.
If you have a cookie scooper use it to get evenly sized meatballs.

Ingredients

1/2 lbs each 80-20 ground beef, ground pork, & ground veal

1 large bulb fennel

2 carrots

2 sweet peppers (or bell peppers)

2 onions

1 leek

Calabrian chillies

Basil (fresh and dried)

Dried oregano

Pecorino Romano cheese

2 tbsp tomato paste

2 16 oz cans chopped tomatoes

3 eggs

1 cup bread crumbs

Garlic

1/4 cup chopped parsley

Salt and pepper

Method:

To begin we need to make a Sofrito. This is a fancy way of saying we need to dice as finely as possible all of the vegetables. So the best way to do this is with a food processor. So begin by cleaning and rough chopping your leeks, onions, carrots, peppers, fennel and garlic. Then blitz until a homogeneous mixture has formed and the individual pieces of vegetables are the same size as a grain of rice. Then preheat a large oven proof pot on high heat and set the oven to 300 F.

Add 2-3 tablespoons of oil to the pot and sauté the Sofrito until the liquid has come out of the vegetables and has been cooked out. Reserve 2 cups of the Sofrito in a large mixing bowl. Then add the tomatoes as well as 1 can full of water. Bring to a simmer cover and then work on your meatballs.

Make sure your Sofrito isn’t hot, lukewarm is ok, and add your meat to the bowl. Now add your eggs, minced cove of garlic, parsley, breadcrumbs and 1/2 cup grated pecorino Romano. Here is when you should add the Calabrian chillies, they are very hot so be careful, finely dice the chillies and add to the bowl, I recommend 1-2. Using your hands combine the meat with the other ingredients until a homogeneous mixture has formed. Then in a pan fry a test patty and taste it. Add salt and pepper as well as more chillies if desired.

After the seasoning is where you want it you can either scoop and pan sear your meatballs or you can place them in a 450 F oven for 5-10 min or untill the outside of the meatball has set. Then add them to the sauce. Remove the pot from the heat and place in a 300 F oven. Place a lid on the pot resting it off center so that there is a small gap. Allow to slow cook for anywhere from 3-5 hours. As a minimum it needs to cook for 1 hour so that the meatballs cook through.

For service cook pasta; remove the meatballs from the sauce and serve them on the side. Toss the pasta with the sauce and top with some additional pecorino and some pepper. Serve with garlic bread and a salad and enjoy!!