My Amazing Covid Meatballs

Written by Pamela Kay Conoly

From scratch! Don’t worry; I just call them that for the simplicity and ease of this popular recipe at my house that I even use for company! It’s surprisingly delicious and simple.

Don’t be alarmed! Covid is NOT one of the ingredients. But, with everything that’s going on, it seems to be harder to get certain staples we used to think of as in abundance or taken for granted like, flour, sugar, salt, and even ground black pepper being as scarce as toilet paper, hand soap and hand sanitizer.

This versatile little recipe is my go-to because you can serve them alone or on any pasta, you like as with a lot of sauces and other meatball recipes out there. But, this one is a little different, a little simpler than most. There’s not a lot of ingredients, and most of the spices you need are already in the sauce that you don’t even have to make. Providing you can find the kind of sauce you like. After all, there are a lot of different pasta sauces out there.

RECIPE for the Meatballs

1 lb ground meat, you can also use ground turkey

1 cup finely diced yellow onion

1 egg

1 or 2 tbsp of desired pasta sauce. I usually use Ragu’

You are going to want to make your meatballs first and foremost before cooking any pasta because this will take about 20 minutes or so for mixing and rolling the meatballs.

• *This recipe is for simplicity rather than quickness.

PREPARATION for the Meatballs

Have your meat properly thawed beforehand. In a large mixing bowl, add your ground meat, crumbled up. Add the finely diced yellow onion, egg, and pasta sauce. Mix this mixture really well.

Roll meatballs with your hands by first grabbing the meat with your fingertips to have enough meat mixture to fit in the middle of the palm of your hand, about 2 inches in diameter for each meatball.

In a shallow roasting or baking pan, dark metal is best, but, glassworks too, place the meatballs from one side, working your way down to the other side of the pan across in rows. Please do not be tempted to pour the rest of the sauce over the meatballs to cook them. You will wind up with a burnt mess.

Preheat your oven at 350 degrees for 10 minutes. Place the meatballs in the oven and bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour.

Use the extra sauce now to heat on the stove and when your meatballs are done, you can either add them to your sauce or serve them with the sauce on the side. You can also mix everything together, sauce, meatballs, pasta for a simple, hardy meal.

Be sure you drain your cooked meatballs or place them on paper towels, if you have any, before mixing them into your sauce.

**I used to make my own pasta sauce until ingredients and certain staples I had come to rely on started disappearing from the shelves, so I improvised

You can also serve this with a simple lettuce and tomato salad and maybe some garlic bread.

**This recipe is also published on Vocal.media.