Italian meatballs with pasta
This recipe needs advance preparation!
A quick and easy meatball recipe. Serve with buttered pasta and a tomato sauce. It's ideal for freezing, make double the quantity and freeze in small batches for extra quick meals.
This has to be a cheat because it's so simple to make.
Ingredients
Ingredients
Printable 🖨 shopping 🛒 list & 👩🍳 method for this recipe
- 500g (18 oz) lean minced beef
- 1 tablespoon freshly chopped oregano - see variations
- 1 small onion, finely chopped
- 2 Cloves of garlic, peeled and crushed
- zest of 1 lemon, finely chopped
- 15 g (1/2 oz) fresh breadcrumbs
- sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
- Pinch of grated nutmeg
- 1 egg, beaten
for frying
to serve
- Buttered spaghetti or buttered egg noodles
- Parmesan cheese - shaved with a speed peeler or freshly grated
Method
- In a large bowl, mix all of the ingredients with clean hands until nicely combined.
- Cover and refrigerate for 3 or 4 hours if possible for the flavours to mix.
- Divide the mixture into about 20 balls, roughly the size of a golf ball.
- Gently shallow fry in a little olive oil until browned on the outside and cooked to your liking. About 5 to 7 minutes, turning regularly - scrape from the pan with a spatula to prevent them breaking up.
Serving suggestions
Serve on a pile of buttered pasta or egg noodles and one of these tomato sauces
Garnish with shavings of Parmesan cheese.
Variations
Try an Alfredo sauce instead of a tomato based sauce.
Use fresh basil as an alternative, or a mixture of basil and oregano (or marjoram), if using dried oregano, use 1 teaspoon. Don't bother with dried basil.
Chef's notes
I forgot to buy the lemon for this recipe, so used slightly less than a quarter of the rind (flesh discarded) from one of my preserved lemons, finely chopped.