Meatballs

I found this recipe years ago in my Betty Crocker cookbook. Our whole family loves meatballs, and I much prefer making these to buying them in the store.  They can easily be made ahead of time, too.

Meatballs

1 lb. ground beef
1/2 cup bread crumbs (plain or seasoned)
1/4 cup milk
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. Worcestershire sauce
1/4 tsp. pepper
1/4 cup finely chopped onion
1 large egg
Other seasonings if you'd like, such as garlic powder, Italian seasoning, etc.

Heat oven to 400º. Mix all ingredients in a large bowl. Shape into meatballs*, place in ungreased pan or baking sheet. Bake uncovered until meatballs reach an internal temperature of 160º, or until no longer pink in center and juice is clear.

*Meatball options- you can make these small or medium, depending on your preference.
- Small: uses a small (1 tbsp.) cookie scoop, makes 45 meatballs, bakes for 17-18 minutes (these are what's in the pictures)
- Medium: uses a medium (2 tbsp.) cookie scoop, makes 24 meatballs, bakes for 20-25 minutes

*Tips on how I make them: I always use a pair of disposable gloves, because I don't like getting my hands so grimy. After I mix the meat, I scoop all the meatballs, and just drop them on the baking sheet. At that point it looks like this:



After they're all on there, I roll each one between my hands to make it nice & round, then I line them up (that's where the perfectionist in me comes out!). Them, bake 'em. Ta da, perfect meatballs! :)



Why I love them? They're easy; if I buy ground beef I normally have all the other ingredients in my kitchen already; they're versatile; they taste great; they're freezable (I cool them after baking, then stick a dinner's worth of them in a freezer bag)... and I just like them so much better than the kind you get at a store. The beef ones at a store are so high in fat, and the turkey ones are better, but not as tasty (and a little mushy). I like that I know exactly what ingredients are in these. That's it! :)

What I do with these meatballs- I can think of 3 different things:

- Serve them with spaghetti & sauce
- Dave LOVES meatballs with mashed potatoes, so I'll make it that way. I serve it with either a brown gravy or country gravy.
- What I did this week was make it sort of like Swedish meatballs. I put the meatballs over cooked egg noodles, and made a sauce by heating a jar of beef gravy, and mixed in a spoonful of sour cream at the end. It made a nice, creamy sauce.