The Elusive Tasty Meatball

There are a handful of foods that I absolutely love, and always have.  Club members who have followed my rants on this site over the last few years probably aren't surprised that I'm a carnivore, through and through.  So it shouldn't come as a surprise when I say that the glorious meatball is and always will be one of those favorites.

But, it seems as though everyone from Subway to Holiday Inn seems to to have the secret to a tasty meatball down pat.  Everyone, that is, except me.  What have I been doing wrong?  I've rolled them with everything under the sun you can imagine - even Jimmy Dean Sausage - and I just can't seem to get a meatball with good flavor.  They always come out bland and unremarkable.

So, another Saturday afternoon, home alone.  My wife and the girls took an overnighter to Galena and once again, I'm brimming with ideas about what to make.  A while back this summer at Cost Plus World Market I noticed a grilling gadget along the lines of a slider maker.  But this guy was cut different.  It was for grilling meatballs.  I decided it was time to make a trip back and pick one up.

Of course, the flare ups from 80/20 ground beef over charcoal, I figured, would add a depth of flavor I'd been missing.  But there has to be a spice that will send it over the top.  If Holiday Inn's bars can figure it out, why the hell can't I?  I decided to cruise over to my old recipe stomping grounds, allrecipes.com.

After checking out a few different recipes on the site, the one that seemed to get the most positive feedback was this one, entitled "Meatball Nirvana".  I gathered up as much of the data as I could and hit the Goose for the goodies.

Basically, I followed the recipe as closely as possible, going a little lighter on the yellow onion (I minced and sweated it - not a big fan of onion texture, but love the flavor).  I did add more Franks Red Hot - by accident - but it didn't have a negative impact on the final flavor.  Quite the opposite, in fact.  Rather than garlic salt, I minced about four to five cloves and threw that into the mixture.  Half of the yellow onion went in the meat, the other half into the dutch oven where about five cloves of minced garlic were placed with two large cans of Contadina Tomato Sauce, all coming up to temp.

The first 12 meatballs stuck somewhat to the grilling rack, unfortunately.  I loaded it up with Pam for Grilling before hand, but I clearly didn't use enough.  The second pass I made a concerted effort to get more of the Pam on the rack and got better results.  Once all the meatballs were seared on the coals, they went into the Dutch oven to finish.  The grill was a bonfire from all the fat from the balls hitting the coal.  Beautiful sight - to me, that meant flavor (as an aside, why do people bitch about flare ups?  Fat rendering down into charcoal creates phenomenal taste... but I digress).

A loaf of french bread was cut into small pieces... when the meatballs had been in the boiling sauce for about 45 minutes or so it was time to make the sandwich - leftover charcoal made the perfect melting platform for provolone overtop a two meatball french bread sandwich.

About an hour later, the internal fire was quickly doused with some glorious Alka Seltzer.  What a perfect finish to a good afternoon of suds, College Football (Noles 23 Miami 19) and food.

Jeff H.