Meatballs are one of our go to dishes when we know that we will receive guests in a time that we might not have enough time to create a full meal.
It is so easy to prepare beforehand and then store in the freezer for when we need it.
We used to be able to buy nice quality mincemeat in Israel at a reasonable price but those days have long since passed so we had to come up with an alternative.
When we shop we always look for cuts of meat that are good quality but at a reasonable price. When we find those we purchase it and keep it in the freezer to use when we need it.
When we want to make meatballs we normally use these cuts of meat and grind them up ourselves.
What you need
- Ground beef
- Onion
- Eggs
- Quick fine Oats
Some spices that we like to mix with the meat
- Cinnamon
- Salt
- Flippen lekker spice, Worcester sauce flavour (from South Africa)
- Origanum
- Sugar
- Ina Parman’s meat spice (from South Africa)
What you need for the glaze
I will not give any exact amounts because I cannot – I never use any measuring system when making a dressing.
We like to make our own combination of glaze and it can include any or all of the following. It depends on the flavour that you wish to have.
- BBQ sauce
- Chutney
- Sweet Chilli
- Tomato Sauce
- Mustard
When we grind our meat we usually grind up the onion together with the meat to make sure that it is nicely combined. If you are using ground beef, you can add chopped onions to it.
With our meat ground we add our spices – now here is where it gets exciting – adding the spices
We find meatballs to be very forgiving when it comes to flavouring. We have literally tried almost any spice when making meatballs at is has never come short in taste
The important thing of course is to make sure that you have enough salt in the mixture.
Like I said basically anything works – it depends on the flavour that you are looking for.
Then we add some eggs and also oats to make sure the meat binds together when we make the balls – the oats also helps to absorb some of the moisture that cooks out of the meat.
Now all that is left is rolling the balls and packing them in the baking dish.
We like to weigh our balls on the scale to make sure each one is the same size. We have found that 50 grams is a good size for us to fill up a foil pan nice and snugly. We put 24 meatballs neatly line up in 6 rows which is also a great size for our tables. Each person can then get at least 3 to 4 meatballs.
We normally bake the meatballs covered with foil in the oven for at least 30 minutes. After 30 minutes we take them out and remove any extra meat protein and drain the extra meat juices from the baking dish.
We often take the meat juices from the meatballs and add it to our glaze to make it a bit easier to apply.
Then we coat the meatballs using a food brush – again so many different things work.
Once the meatballs are coated we put them back into the oven (uncovered) for a while so that the sauce can brown the meatballs.
Now is when you want to make sure that you do not have them in the oven for two longs to prevent them from becoming dry.
