Easy Spaghetti Meatballs Recipe - GF Cooks Video

What's not to like about this easy spaghetti meatballs recipe? Bake the meatballs, cook the pan sauce, add pasta and eat. Simple and easy to do, and you could use this recipe to make meatballs sandwiches as well. Nice.

Our simple recipe uses meatloaf mix and a bunch of italian seasonings. We buy about 1.5 pounds of meatloaf mix, which around us is half pork and half ground beef. The beef I bought for this project was 90% lean, and I'd rather have it around 80% lean. You could toss in a few tablespoons of bacon drippings or butter to amp this up a bit. It all works.

A key thing here is to not over mix the meat mixture, it will make the meatballs tough. You can use your hands or a spoon to mix it all up, use what you got. Be sure to wash your hands after handling meat.

This is different than in the video, but I have found out that I like the cheese to be coarse grated with the large holes of a box grater instead of the fine grating of the microplane. It just tastes better, and i think the cheese stands out more, you run across pieces of cheese in the meatballs, which I like.

Easy Spaghetti Meatballs Recipe

1.5 pounds of meatloaf mix, preferably 80% lean beef and pork

4 tablespoons Italian seasoning herb mix

3 ounces of tomato paste, half a small can

1- 28 oz can of crushed or pureed tomatoes, buy a good quality brand.

1 large yellow or sweet onion chopped up

2-3  cloves of garlic

2 slices of bread toasted and ground up in a mini chopper or similar gizmo

½ cup milk

2 eggs

2 cups coarsely grated pecorino romano cheese

Preheat the oven to 375F

Boil up a pound of your favorite pasta.

Put the onion in a large pan or pot with good slick of oil on the bottom of the pan. Its best to slow cook these onions, but do what you can. Golden color on the onions is best for flavor. Chop up the garlic and add in to toast for a few minutes at the end of the cooking.

Add half the onion to a bowl with the meatloaf mix, 2 tablespoons Italian seasonings, eggs, ground up toast, milk, cheese, some salt and pepper.

Add the can of tomatoes and paste and seasoning to the pan with the cooking onions and simmer the sauce while we make the meatballs. Halfway through the simmer, at about 15 min, add a half cup of water and some sugar to taste.

Mix the meatball ingredients together, don't overmix the meat!

Roll the meatballs into about  1.5" diameter balls and put in a baking pan or sheet. Put in the oven for about 20 minutes, check with a thermometer, 145F is done.

In a perfect world, this all comes together at about the same time, so you an assemble the dish and sit down, but you can cover the meatballs with foil while prepping the other stuff.