Basic Meat Balls

Meat Balls

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 Pounds Ground Beef
• 1/2 Pound Ground Pork
• 1 Medium Yellow Onion, very finely minced, or pulsed in a food processor
• 1 Clove Garlic, very finely minced or pulsed in food processor with the onion
• Dash Salt and Pepper each
• 1 Teaspoon Onion Powder
• 1 Teaspoon Parsley, Finely Chopped
• 1 Egg, lightly beaten
• about 1/2 cup dry Bread Crumbs

Instructions:

1. Preheat the oven to 375°F
2. Prepare a large baking sheet by lining it with tin foil.
3. In a large bowl combine all the ingredients and using a kind of kneading motion inside the bowl mix thoroughly with your hands until it is all evenly distributed.  
4. The meat mixture should have a nice even consistency and when it is rolled into a ball it keeps it shape. 
5. If your mixture is still too runny and sticky add in more bread crumbs until balls can be formed.
6. Once the mixture is evenly mixed and at the right consistency, begin rolling the meat into balls that are about 1 inch in diameter and placing them on a large baking sheet covered with tin foil.  
7. Space the balls just far enough apart that none of them are touching each other.  
8. When all the balls are rolled and placed on the baking sheet place the baking sheet in the oven and bake for about 20 minutes.  
9. At 20 minutes check the temperature of the meatballs with a meat thermometer or by breaking one apart and  making sure it is cooked through.
10. The meat balls are now ready to eat, you can serve them plain or with a sauce of your choosing
11.  If serving them in a sauce I would recommend allowing them to stew in the sauce in a pot for about 15-20 minutes before eating just to make sure the sauce flavor gets into meat balls.

Enjoy!

Notes:

Meat balls are one of the most universally useful things you can make when you have a bit of ground beef on hand.  You can use them with spaghetti and tomato sauce, with a gravy, with sweet and sour sauce, or Swedish gravy or goodness gracious  stick a tooth pick in the top and serve them on a nice try with a dipping sauce and you have a very pleasing appetizer.  I like to add a bit of ground pork in with my ground beef just to add a little extra flavor to the final meat ball, but I have my own meat grinder so getting just a little bit of ground pork is a pretty easy task for me.  These meat balls will be moist and tasty if you use only ground beef or a mixture of beef and pork.  I haven't tried this recipe with ground chicken, but I don't think it would work as well since there is a lot less fat in ground poultry and I think they might dry out during the oven baking process.