So the other night as I was once again looking at the clock as it hit 4 pm, realizing I had no idea what to make for dinner. First step? Prepped the last fresh veggie I had in the pantry cabinet - a perfectly ripe butternut squash and got it going in the oven. Quick peek in the fridge showed I had a pound of ground beef but what to do with it... Next step? Pinterest! First page showed a classic Italian meatball recipe but that called for a bunch of ingredients I didn't have so I did a quick search "Easy meatball recipe" and found this one on Lauren Greutman's blog, and as easy and delicious as it turned out I'll be back to check out her other recipes because these turned out amazing!
I've included Lauren's recipe below exactly as it appears on her blog, however in my directions I'll go over a couple things I did differently.
For starters, the ground beef I had on hand is from Aldi and was 90/10 - the biggest difference I've seen with using this meat is that because it's so lean it usually requires more oil when frying. I did follow Lauren's suggestion of mixing the non-meat ingredients first and it did make for a quick mix with the meat - however since we have some gluten sensitivities in our house I tried grinding some GF liveGfree quick oats to use instead of the bread crumbs. It got a little overly smooth than what was probably needed but that did not affect flavor as far as I could tell. Since I had it on hand, I used fresh parmesan cheese tho I'll be making this again with the ground variety just to see how that works for dinner in a pinch.
In order to prevent over working the ground beef I would recommend washing your hands and mixing the ground beef into the rest of the ingredients by hand - it goes very quickly and makes the next step of portioning out and rounding out the meatballs that much easier. I made each one about an inch and half in diameter for consistency which netted us 12 meatballs. After browning them all in some light virgin olive oil, I let them rest a minute then served with some garlic spaghetti sauce for dipping. Kids and grownups all loved it and wanted more so next round I will likely have to double the recipe!
Easiest Meatballs
Click here for printable version
- 1 lb 80/20 ground beef
- 1/2 cup Parmesan cheese
- 1/3 cup breadcrumbs
- 3 cloves of garlic, pressed or minced
- 1 Tbsp dried basil
- 2 Tbsp dried parsley
- 1 tsp salt
- 1/2 tsp black pepper
- 1 egg
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