Baked Meatballs and Spaghetti

Good morning Crushers!

As promised, here is the recipe for baked meatballs. You could use these on a sandwich with a little melted cheese and green peppers, as an appetizer with some BBQ sauce, or with spaghetti noodles like we did on Sunday night. They were so easy to make and it made for delicious leftovers to take to lunch the next day!

This is going to be a short post because I know you'll definitely want to run out and make these! No time to waste reading when you could be enjoying these, right?

Baked Meatballs
Ingredients:
1 lb ground beef, thawed (you could use ground pork, turkey, chicken or a combination)
1/2 cup bread crumbs (I used Italian seasoned ones since that was in the pantry)
1/4 cup Parmesan cheese, grated
1 egg, beaten
2-3 cloves of garlic, finely chopped (I used a garlic press)
1 tbsp milk (optional)
1 tsp Italian Seasoning (I ran out mid teaspoon, so I gave it an oomph with some oregano, but wished I had parsley)
Salt and Pepper - just a dash of each, but no more than 1/8 tsp.
Optional add ins: spinach, finely diced mushrooms, finely diced onions - I added these to the sauce instead of the meatballs.

Directions:
Preheat your oven to 350 degrees and have the following items on hand: a baking sheet, a cooking/cooling rack, canola oil spray (or your favorite kind) and a large bowl.

Mix Everything except the meat in a large bowl so it has the consistency of a paste. If you did use the milk, it'll be a bit creamier than if you didn't.

I have no idea why there is a halo-ish light in the bowl.
It's either a reflection or the ingredients are ready for meatball heaven.

Before you get your hands all dirty, set the rack on the baking sheet and give it a quick layer of cooking spray. All of the grease from the meat will drip off on to the baking sheet. If you REALLY hate cleaning up grease, you could line it with aluminum foil, too. Then you just toss it out when it's cooled.

Break up the ground beef into crumbles. As you know, I'm a big fan of using ground beef that is at least 80/20. Anything less than 80 is too greasy! Back to the crumbles, add them into the mixture and make sure that it all gets well mixed so that you don't have lumps of bread crumbs in your meatballs. In order to make sure that everything was really squished together, I just took off my rings and used my hands. It feels squishy, but it's really the easiest way to do it. Form the mixture into golf-ball sized meatballs and place on the rack. They will shrink a bit, so don't worry if they are too close to each other.

Ready for the oven!

After you've washed your hands, put the meatballs in the oven for 30-35 minutes or until they're no longer pink. The internal temperature should be at least 160. Remove from the rack and place on paper towels to get rid of any remaining grease, but there won't be much!

Fresh from the oven, these meatballs are just waiting for a sandwich or some pasta!

Like I said before, there are many ways to serve up meatballs in sandwiches, with pasta or just alone with a dipping sauce (if you make them with pork or chicken, try it with a nice sweet and sour sauce - SO GOOD!). We went with traditional spaghetti noodles and a jar of pasta sauce that I added lots of veggies to to ramp up the vitamins! I hope you enjoy them as much as we did!

Where's my fork?