Earl Cooks Angel Hair & Meatballs

I recently heard on a TV cooking show that spaghetti and meatballs have all but disappeared from menus, both home and restaurant. Let's be clear this is an AMERICAN dish, not Italian, even though I was sure as a kid that it was Italian, and one of the few Italian restaurants I  knew about (The Italian Village) had it on the menu way back then. Times change and tastes change. Now the meatballs are served on a bun from a fast food window (in fairness, you can add meatballs to your pasta bowl at Olive Garden®, so maybe we will see a comeback). With all that said, I had never made meatballs, and my wife, "Turkey", thinks pasta is just paste (well it is, but delicious paste)! That results in our almost never eating pasta. I can sneak it in but only if I use Angel Hair rather than spaghetti, which is thin enough for her, I guess because she is an angel!



—I started with one pound of 85/15 ground beef. Many recipes call for ground sirloin or mixture of beef & pork, but this is what I wanted to use. I seasoned the beef with fresh ground pepper and Mediterranean seasoning salt. I also added about ½ teaspoon of crushed garlic.

—Next add 1 large egg and grated Parmesan cheese (about ¼ cup) and mix them all together however you want. I used a fork, but hands work well too.

—Finally in preparing the beef, add about ½ cup of breadcrumbs. Mine were homemade panko, but whatever you have on hand will be fine. Mush these into the seasoned beef until all is well combined.

—Roll the meat in to ping-pong sized balls (about an inch and a half). As you can see my one pound of meat with breadcrumbs and seasoning produced 15 meatballs. I placed them in a non-stick baking pan and into a 425℉ preheated oven, for 12-15 minutes.

—While they bake, take a large deep skillet and add your favorite store-bought pasta sauce. I like the ones with chunky vegetables (of course you may make your own if you like). Heat on medium until bubbling nicely and add another quarter cup of Parmesan to the sauce.

—Add the partially cooked meatballs to the sauce to finish cooking. They should have developed a nice brown crust in the oven and will have shed some of their excess fat. Allow them to cook through for another 10 minutes. Cover if needed to prevent the sauce from over-thickening.

—I buy the pasta in what they call "Pot-Perfect" size. It fits nicely in a smaller pot since we are just two. I know all of the TV chefs would not approve, but it makes cooking pasta easy. In our household, we do not cook our pasta al dente, because "happy wife, happy life". If you like yours that way, by all means, cook it to your liking. That is the only way it will be perfect. You could even cook it al dente and then finsh it in the sauce, but I felt it was too cumbersome with the meatballs in there. Top with MORE Parmesan cheese and enjoy simple and very tasty spaghetti and meatballs!