This recipe is probably better than whatever meatball recipe you’ve been using. It seems to be pretty common for meatball recipes to call for two or three times as much seasoning/spices as are really necessary, and the meatballs end up being gross as a result. Don’t fall into that trap. Let the natural deliciousness of the meat do the trick.
I originally made this recipe with 50% beef and 50% pork, but I’ve found years later that I now prefer to just use 100% beef.
Preheat your oven to 400 F.
Ingredients:
- 1 lb ground beef, around 10% fat content, OR 1/2 lb ground beef and 1/2 lb ground pork
- 1/2 tsp onion powder
- 1/2 tsp garlic powder
- 1/2 tsp “Italian seasoning”
- 1/4 tsp oregano
- 1/2 tsp red pepper flakes, or maybe 1/4 tsp cayenne – omit this line if you can’t handle spicy food
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1 Tbsp Worcestershire sauce
- 1/3 cup whole milk or half-and-half
- 1/4 cup parmesan, shredded or grated
- 1/2 cup Italian-seasoned breadcrumbs
- Tabasco, Frank’s Buffalo, or similar hot sauce (optional) – throw a few dashes of that on top for good measure, if you like spicy food.
Get out a baking pan and cover it with foil. Spray it with some Pam, or rub it with butter on a paper towel, whatever. Or you can use olive oil. Whatever. Make sure the cooking surface is thoroughly greasy before you put any meatballs on it.
Put half of the meat into a big mixing bowl. Pour the milk in there, too. Add all of the spices, and half of the breadcrumbs. Use your hands to mix it all together. It’s going to be cold and gross. Deal with it. Then add the rest of the meat, and the rest of the breadcrumbs. Mash it up with your hands. Now you have a meat paste, which should be pretty well-mixed. Watch out for large pockets of dry spices/crumbs hiding out. You want all of that stuff thoroughly mixed in with the meat, but don’t go so far overboard that you knead the meat paste into an overly-tough wad of dough.
Form the meat paste into meatballs, about an inch and a half diameter. Lay them out on your baking pan. They don’t expand like cookies, so you can pack them pretty close to each other.
Bake at 400 F for 25 minutes.