Beef Meatballs in Tomato Sauce with Cream

Name: Beef Meatballs in Tomato Sauce with Cream
Prep time: 20 min
Cook time: 30 min
Total time: 50 min
Yield: 2
Cuisine: European
Ingredients: Beef (lean) 350 g; Cream (or milk) 100 ml; Stale white bread 1 slice; Garlic 1 clove; Salt, black pepper, coriander, sugar, flour, vegetable oil, tomato paste to taste

It just so happened that homemade beef meatballs became a regular dish in our house.

First, meatballs cook very quickly. Even after work, when you're really tired, making meatballs hardly takes any time; the main thing is to thaw the meat in advance. Second, meatballs in tomato sauce go perfectly with almost any usual side dish: rice, mashed potatoes, couscous. And third, importantly, meatballs are always delicious. You'd think they're just balls of ground meat simmered in sauce. Nothing special.

But in many cuisines around the world, meatballs are a staple. That said, it's often hard to tell meatballs apart from very similar dishes: Swedish meatballs, Sicilian meatballs with rice, croquettes, falafel, Königsberger Klopse, korokke… The difference lies in how they're cooked and what goes into the mixture. But almost always, meatballs contain a filler. Often it's rice, grains or onion, but most often it's soaked bread.

Unlike small meatballs that are fried or poached in broth, these meatballs are simmered in sauce. Usually, though, they're lightly browned first so they hold their shape better.

When making meatballs, as with any similar dish, it's extremely important to make good ground meat. The word forcemeat (farce) comes from Latin farcio, “I stuff.” That is, something used for stuffing. In this case we're not stuffing anything; we're using minced ingredients to make a dish in its own right.

The meat grinder is an amazing invention. Its blades turn meat or fish into an even mince. I still remember the hand-cranked grinders of my childhood that were screwed onto the table. If the meat was tough and sinewy enough, you could easily rip the grinder off together with the tabletop. Modern food processors are another story: multifunctional electric appliances for processing food, with a huge number of attachments and gadgets. Of which only the meat grinder attachment gets used. I know from experience.

It so happened that some time ago we started buying pork for cooking very rarely. The doctors insisted. We started making most of our usual meat dishes with beef or veal. We had to tweak our home recipes a bit, but as it turned out, it was worth it. And in general, beef dishes turn out even tastier.

Here's how we make beef meatballs, an almost everyday home-cooked dish.

Ingredients

2 servings

Beef (lean) 350 g
Cream (or milk) 100 ml
Stale white bread 1 slice
Garlic 1 clove
Salt, black pepper, coriander, sugar, flour, vegetable oil, tomato paste to taste

Step-by-step recipe

The main feature that sets meatballs apart from other similar dishes is the sauce. This meat dish is served with sauce. Or rather, the meatballs are served in sauce, usually quite a lot of it. I once thought that beef meatballs in sauce are more like a thick meatball soup.
So. Once the meat has thawed, you need to grind it. An ordinary meat grinder will do, manual or electric. Remove the bones from the beef and, as far as possible, the tendons and membranes. It's also best to trim off excess fat. Any meaty cut will do for meatballs; shoulder or hindquarter is best. So-called “stew meat packs,” small pieces of meat that are apparently trimmings, have worked very well. They make good ground meat.
Grind the meat. You can do it twice.
For meatball seasoning, salt and pepper are enough. But to my taste, I recommend adding 1-2 pinches of ground coriander and a pinch of ground nutmeg. Mix the meat with a fork so the spices are evenly distributed.
Next, add milk or cream to the ground meat. Not much: a quarter cup is enough. Actually, stale white bread soaked in milk is usually added to the meat. But as a rule, it's extremely hard to guess the right amount of milk and stale bread. Once, studying how chefs work, I noticed that they often say “add bread soaked in milk” but actually do something a bit different.
In many recipes for meat dishes you'll come across the word galeta. It isn't the cookie, which I love. From Italian galletta: dry (stale) bread ground into fine crumbs. It's usually used for breading. But essentially it's still bread, and it works great in ground meat. Unlike store-bought breadcrumbs, whose ingredients are anyone's guess, crumbs made at home have a perfectly known origin.
At home we always buy a French baguette, a long fresh loaf that's perfect for sandwiches or croutons. It makes ideal bruschetta. And if you dry the baguette and grate it finely, you get excellent crumbs with no additives, fresh and fragrant.
Add the crumbs to the meat in small portions and mix. As soon as the meat stops sticking to the fork, you have enough crumbs. The mixture should have the consistency of soft pizza dough. The crumbs will soak up the cream very quickly. However, if for some reason you don't like this method, just add bread soaked in milk to the ground meat.
Wet a large plate with cold water. Wetting your hands with water, roll the prepared mixture into balls slightly larger than a walnut. Place them on the wet plate.
Heat 3-4 tbsp of vegetable oil in a skillet. Roll the meatballs in flour. Note: in flour, not breadcrumbs. Put them in the hot oil and brown on all sides. It's very convenient to simply stir the meatballs with a spatula.
Frying time is 3-4 minutes. Just enough for the beef balls to start browning slightly, very slightly.
Next comes the sauce. If you like, add one minced garlic clove. If you don't like garlic, just skip this step. But, and this is important, the garlic shouldn't fry much. Add the tomato right away.
We usually make a tomato sauce. You can make a good sauce from fresh tomatoes, like a classic homemade tomato sauce salsa di pomodoro. But that's a fairly seasonal sauce. Out of season, there are two options. The first is to dilute 2 tbsp of tomato paste in 300 ml of water. The second, simpler one is to take 1.5 cups of good tomato juice. Pour the tomato into the sauté pan with the meatballs. Add the remaining cream right away. However, experience has shown that 2-3 tbsp of sour cream work fine instead of milk or cream.
Season the sauce with salt and pepper to taste. I recommend adding a pinch of coriander and 1-2 tsp of sugar. The sauce will be sweet and sour and very fragrant.
You should also add a little water to the sauce, literally half a cup. Bring the sauce and meatballs to a boil, cover the sauté pan and simmer everything over the lowest heat for 20 minutes. That's enough. If after that time the sauce seems too thin, you can take off the lid, turn up the heat and reduce it a little. This usually takes up to 5 minutes.
The beef meatballs in sauce are ready.
As I said, beef meatballs should be served in their sauce. Put the meatballs in a suitable dish and pour the sauce over them. That's really all.
We serve mashed potatoes as a side. It's a great combination and quick to make. Nothing stops you from spooning out some couscous, pouring sauce over it and topping it with the beef meatballs. Or serve everything separately.