My homemade Meatballs & tomato sauce recipe

Succulent juicy meatballs with a rich tomato sauce recipe served with tagliatelle pasta.

Welcome to my winter meal recipes I'm sharing with you on this winter season.

Here you can find the full list of ingredients and method to making this succulent juicy meatballs with a rich tomato sauce recipe.

Serves: 4 Preparation Time: 20 Minutes Cooking Time: 40 Minutes

Ingredients

Meatballs:

Beef Mince 500g

Pork Mince 500g

Fresh Parsley

Fresh Thyme

Garlic Cloves, 3

Tomato Paste, 1 tablespoon

Breadcrumbs, 4 tablespoons

1 Egg

1 Onion, diced finely

Olive Oil, 1 tablespoon

Salt & Pepper to taste

Tomato Sauce:

Chicken Stock 100ml

Red Wine, 1 Glass

Tin of Plum Tomatoes (plum tinned tomatoes are always better quality than chopped tinned tomatoes)

Tomato passata, 1 tub

Tomato Paste, 1 tablespoon

Balsamic Vinegar, 1 tablespoon

Brown Sugar, 1 tablespoon

Fresh Basil

Olive Oil, 1 tablespoon

Salt & Pepper to taste

Cheddar Cheese grated

Method

We begin with making our meatballs, remove the fresh thyme from the stalk and chop up the fresh parsley and fresh thyme, you want 3 tablespoons worth of fresh parsley and 2 tablespoons worth of fresh thyme, mince your 3 cloves of garlic finely chopped and dice your onion finely chopped, then grab a large bowl and add all the meatball ingredients to the bowl, beef mince 500g, pork mince 500g, fresh parsley 3 tablespoons, fresh thyme 2 tablespoons, garlic 3 cloves minced, tomato paste 1 tablespoon, breadcrumbs 4 tablespoons, 1 egg, 1 onion finely diced, olive oil 1 tablespoon and finally salt and pepper to taste. We then want to mix all the ingredients together, it's best to use our hands here so get stuck in! Once everything is fully combined we then want to start forming our meatballs, best way is to make our hands a little bit wet when forming our meatballs with our hands as this will stop the mixture sticking to our hands. Grab whatever amount of mixture you'd like, depending if you want large or small meatballs and begin forming them in your hand one by one. Once complete with the entire mixture, set the meatballs on a plate and place them in the fridge for at least 1 hour, this will allow our meatballs to firm up so they don't fall apart when searing them.

Grab a large pot and place on the hob to begin heating up on a medium heat, once heated add 1 tablespoon of olive oil and once the oil is hot, remove our meatballs from the fridge and add our meatballs to the pot and begin searing them on all sides, this browning will give a beefy flavour to our sauce. Once the meatballs are seared and have good colour, remove them from the pot and place them on a new plate and set aside. We then want to remove the access fat from our pot, so pour this away in a grease safe pot. Do not remove the bits at the bottom of the pan as all that is flavour and will help make our sauce even better.

We then want 1 tablespoon of olive oil and 1 tablespoon of tomato paste to the pot, cook off the tomato paste for a bit and then add 1 glass of red wine to our pot, with our spatula scrap off all the bits off the bottom of the pan to gather up that flavour and cook off the red wine until the alcohol, evaporates and we can no longer smell the alcohol, then we add our 100ml of chicken stock, followed by our tin of plum tomatoes and our tomato passata tub. Then add 1 tablespoon of balsamic vinegar then add 1 tablespoon of brown sugar this will help curve the acidity of the tomatoes and then add salt and pepper to taste.

Then we want to return our meatballs to the sauce, bring our sauce to the boil and then turn it down to a low simmer, pop the lid onto the pot leaving a gap to allow the sauce to reduce and leave to cook for 30 minutes on a low simmer. 10 minutes before our meatballs and sauce is done we want to then pop on a pot of boiling salted water for our pasta, cook the pasta to the packets instructions. We want our pasta al dente. Once the pasta is cooked, we then want to save a bit of the pasta water and drain our pasta, then add our pasta back to the pot we just cooked it in, add some of our tomato sauce and a tiny bit of our pasta water and cover our pasta in our sauce allowing the pasta to soak up our sauce.

And finally the best bit, serving time! Break up some fresh basil a handfuls worth and put it in our sauce, serve up the pasta on plates, followed by the meatballs on top, then cover in our rich sauce, then sprinkle the grated cheddar cheese on top and finally some fresh basil on top for garnish and tuck in!

Be sure to check out my other winter meals recipes, all will give you a hug this winter.

Please leave me any comments or reviews of the recipes as I would love to know how you got on and any thoughts on the dish.

Much love,

Dylan