# Meatball Appetizers



## tenspeed (Oct 23, 2016)

Yesterday our daughter had a first birthday party for our grandson.  It was a mid-afternoon party, and I helped out by making appetizers.  I decided to make meatballs as one of them.  I've never made meatball appetizers before, but thought how hard can this be?  I searched for recipes, and settled on this one:

Barbecued Meatballs Recipe - Allrecipes.com

  I took the suggestions from the comments and used Italian style bread crumbs and Sweet Baby Ray's BBQ sauce.  I baked them on a foil lined cookie sheet for 30 minutes, and finished them off in a slow cooker on low for 2 hours to coincide with the start of the party.  Kenji at seriouseats cautioned against overcooking meatballs, as they will dry out like any other meat.

  They got rave reviews.  I thought they came out pretty good, but not as good as the comments I heard.  Then it registered with me.  Many of the recipes I looked at called for using bags of frozen meatballs.  My hand made, not overcooked meatballs made with 85% ground beef were most likely compared against mysterymeatballs from the frozen food case, which I'll guess that most milennials are used to.  That's a pretty low bar to have to top.

  It wasn't all that much work to make them.  I scaled up the recipe to 3 lbs. of ground beef, which I guessed was the capacity of my 4.5 qt. KA stand mixer (it was).  It took about 20 minutes to shape 60 - 65 meatballs, which was about 2/3 capacity of a 6 qt. slow cooker.

  The moral of the story: some shortcuts aren't worth taking.


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## GotGarlic (Oct 23, 2016)

Absolutely agree. I bought frozen meatballs once - once  - because I keep some kind of super-easy dinner in the freezer that DH can make for when I run out of spoons. But they were tough and flavorless and I didn't enjoy them at all. So that's one food I won't take from the store on.


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## Andy M. (Oct 23, 2016)

Good stuff, tenspeed.

It's easy to wow people with home made meatballs when all they get are store bought.


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## dragnlaw (Oct 24, 2016)

I had never had store bought meatballs, have always felt why would one want to spend extra for cheap hamburger meat and some seasonings?

Last Christmas, being extra busy, I did think I would take a shortcut, and with a good sauce maybe people wouldn't know or mind.  The store was having samples and the cashiers were all raving about how good they were.  They certainly smelled good!  

tried a sample and discovered they were absolute garbage! sort of made me gag.  Chewy chunks of cardboard in a sauce I could not possibly explain!

*Good on for you Tenspeed! *

I stop reading immediately on recipes as soon as they call for cans soups or premade this - usually the main ingredient.   (there are always exceptions of course)


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## Kaneohegirlinaz (Oct 25, 2016)

How funny, I was thinking about meatballs the other day to have available when guests show up at our new home, which we move into during the holiday season.
Rather than buying pre-made store bought meatballs (one item from Trader Joe's we DID NOT care for btw  ), I'd like to have homemade-fully cooked meatballs in the freezer for a quick appy.


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## msmofet (Oct 26, 2016)

Kaneohegirlinaz said:


> How funny, I was thinking about meatballs the other day to have available when guests show up at our new home, which we move into during the holiday season.
> Rather than buying pre-made store bought meatballs (one item from Trader Joe's we DID NOT care for btw  ), I'd like to have homemade-fully cooked meatballs in the freezer for a quick appy.



We didn't care for the TJ meatballs either.


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## strmanglr scott (Dec 5, 2019)

Made a lot of frozen meatball appetizers for banquets. That's what the owner bought to be used. I'm not advocating using frozen. 

These were the pre-cooked kind. 

I found the finished product tasted much better if I warmed up the meatballs on a sheet pan than if I just put them in a pot with the sauce and heated them up. When they are preheated on the sheet pan they leave a lot of the grease/oil behind and it doesn't get in the sauce. 

The difference in taste was substantial.


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## jennyema (Dec 6, 2019)

My Swedish meatballs are always the star of the Party!!

And my regular Italian meatballs are very tasty.  They are so easy to make....

I don't understand eating gross frozen meatballs


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## Chief Longwind Of The North (Dec 7, 2019)

Another good meatball recipe: Ingredients
1/2 lb. each ground beef, and Italian sausage.
1/2 tbs rubbed sage
1/2 tsp. Dried oregano
1/2 tsp dried margeram
1 tsp. Dried sweet basil
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. black pepper
1 finely minced yellow onion
1 chopped red bell pepper
1/2cup panko bread crumbs
 Extra large egg
1/4 cup milk
Combine all ingredients in a mixing bowl.  Shape into 1 inch meatballs and place on a parchment paper-lined roasting pan, or sheet.  Roast at 370 deg. F. for 30 minutes.  Add to marinara sauce and simmer for 30 min.  Serve with pasta, or in a meatball sub.

You can also take this mixture and place it on a cookie sheet, shaping it like a volcano.  When it is nearly cooked through (internal temp of 150' F.) Pour marinara sauce into the crater, letting it overflow down the sides, like lava.  Place string of string cheese into the lava rivulets to complete the scene.  Continue roasting to an internal temp. of 165' F.

You can also add finely grated hard Italian cheese, such as Parmesano-Regiano, or Romano, or Asiago to this meat mixture.  Hope this gives you something tastier than store-bought meatballs.  Oh, change the meat to ground beef, and chorizo,  season with cilantro, Mexican oregano, cumin, and coriader.  Use hotter peppers of choice.  Use a good salsa, or mole sauce with this version, and serve with refried beans and tortilla chjps, with Monteray Jack cheese shreds.  Chipotle peppers are great in this version, as is smoked paprica.

Seeeeya; Chief Longwind of the North


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## Sir_Loin_of_Beef (Dec 7, 2019)

My recipe for meatballs is:

2 lb ground beef
1 lb ground pork
1 lb ground veal
3 cups bread crumbs
3 eggs
¾ cup milk 
2 tsp dried basil
2 tsp dried oregano
1 tsp dried rosemary
2 tsp dried parsley
1 tsp dried thyme
¼ tsp red chili flakes
½ small brown onion, diced and sautéed 
salt & pepper to taste


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## Termy (Aug 6, 2021)

I scanned and only noticed one person saying anything about size. I probably missed a few but...

The 1" idea is half the circumference/diameter of my normal ones. Which come out to one ounce each. That does not mean they are ½ the mass, it means they are ¼ the mass. So a pound of meat should make like 30-40 of them. (48) 

My comment here is mainly that I agree with smaller balls. Make them one bite, that they they do not drip stuff all over the floor. Also if you can find something other than toothpicks that would be great. 

I would also put out both marinara and some kind of cheese sauce. Even BBQ though it is not my favorite thing. To me BBQ is always too sweet. But I do know enough to whip up a decent sauce, though it be dry. (not sweet) And all sauces thick, you get less drips. 

Anyway, that's how I would do it. Do as thou wilt. 

T


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## Ksm (Aug 6, 2021)

My husband and I just had an incident involving frozen meatballs.  There is a new Italian restaurant in town so we decided to try it for lunch. We try new restaurants for lunch and get small items to see how   It is going to be. After we asked the waitress if the meatballs were homemade, she assured us they were, we ordered a side order. As soon as we cut into them we know they were frozen meatballs.  So easy to tell the difference . After questioning the manager, she admitted they were frozen. Needless to say we will not be returning for any meals.. I have a problem with an Italian restaurant that can’t even make meatballs.


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## taxlady (Aug 6, 2021)

If you have spherical meatball and double the diameter, it will increase in volume to eight times as much. Four times as much is for the area of two dimensional objects - that works for the surface area of pizza.


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## Termy (Aug 6, 2021)

"If you have spherical meatball and double the diameter, it will increase in volume to eight times as much"

I stand corrected. (I knew but didn't...whatever)

T


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## skilletlicker (Aug 6, 2021)

A little off-topic and might get misinterpreted as sarcasm but I mean it honestly. Hats off to Termy for mining DC's archives. Keep it up buddy.


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## Cooking Goddess (Aug 6, 2021)

Aw, I miss tenspeed. It's almost two years since he visited - right before their European river cruise. Maybe he and Mrs. Ten stayed in Europe...


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## skilletlicker (Aug 6, 2021)

Chief Longwind Of The North said:


> ...
> You can also take this mixture and place it on a cookie sheet, shaping it like a volcano.  When it is nearly cooked through (internal temp of 150' F.) Pour marinara sauce into the crater, letting it overflow down the sides, like lava.  Place string of string cheese into the lava rivulets to complete the scene.  Continue roasting to an internal temp. of 165' F.
> ...
> Seeeeya; Chief Longwind of the North



Classic.


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## larry_stewart (Aug 6, 2021)

taxlady said:


> If you have spherical meatball and double the diameter, it will increase in volume to eight times as much. Four times as much is for the area of two dimensional objects - that works for the surface area of pizza.



And I always thought I'd never use Geometry/ Calculus again 

Good Job Taxlady!

I once was watching " Cooking for a Village", and the recipe looked so good, but had to significantly downsize it ( from a village to 2 people).  Watched the video and guesstimated on how big some of thee ground down spices they made into a ball were ( Baseball sized vs softball sized ...).  After getting that info, I had to look up the volume of each object, then  convert the volume into Tbs so I then could size it down.   Still made a lot more than I wanted, but was able to use applied math.

The meatballs I make have to be fried on each ' side' too develop and outer crust prior to putting them into a sauce to further cooking.  After doing that , my meatballs turn into meat 'squares' or cubes, making the math much easier to calculate.


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## GotGarlic (Aug 6, 2021)

larry_stewart said:


> And I always thought I'd never use Geometry/ Calculus again [emoji38]
> 
> Good Job Taxlady!
> 
> I once was watching " Cooking for a Village", and the recipe looked so good, but had to significantly downsize it ( from a village to 2 people).  Watched the video and guesstimated on how big some of thee ground down spices they made into a ball were ( Baseball sized vs softball sized ...).  After getting that info, I had to look up the volume of each object, then  convert the volume into Tbs so I then could size it down.   Still made a lot more than I wanted, but was able to use applied math.


If I had to do that kind of math to make something, I'd pick something else  Not my strong suit at all [emoji16]


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## skilletlicker (Aug 6, 2021)

An argument for weight over volume.


larry_stewart said:


> And I always thought I'd never use Geometry/ Calculus again
> 
> Good Job Taxlady!
> 
> ...


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## Termy (Aug 7, 2021)

skilletlicker said:


> A little off-topic and might get misinterpreted as sarcasm but I mean it honestly. Hats off to Termy for mining DC's archives. Keep it up buddy.



I like books etc. I have read all kinds of law books, but of course some not all the way - like each word. 

I remember Ma giving me a very old cookbook, but not for long. I avoided the pastry side of it for the meat and whatever side. 

People were different, and meat cost more. 

Anyway, just a blast from the past. 

T


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