This is yet another dish that I made in a hurry. I bought a nice amount of ground beef at Costco the other day, because I planned on making hamburgers for lunch. But if you know Costco, you must know that the amount of meat I bought was way too much for one meal (or two, or three). I didn’t want to freeze the remaining meat, so I was trying to figure out what to do with it. I also had about 3 pounds of tomatoes that I wanted to eventually turn into tomato sauce. I was in the middle of my work day and didn’t want to spend much time on cooking, so the first idea that came into mind was meatballs in tomato sauce, the speedy way.
This is what I had to work with:
Ingredients:
3 lb tomatoes
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 medium onion, diced
4 cloves garlic sliced
2 ½ lb ground beef
1 cup parsley, leaves only
1 egg
2 tablespoons chicken soup powder
2 teaspoons onion powder
salt and pepper to taste
Preparation:
I rinsed the tomatoes, placed them in the food processor and crushed them into a coarse puree.
Chopped an onion and sautéed it in oil. Once it turned golden, I added a the sliced garlic. Into that I added the crushed tomatoes, sprinkled some salt and pepper, and once it all boiled, I lowered the heat and let it simmer.
In a large bowl, I combined the ground beef, egg, parsley that I chopped thinly in the food processor, onion powder, salt, pepper, and my secret ingredient – chicken soup powder. I skipped the bread crumbs because of Doron, who is completely off carbs (except for Friday night) for the past year.
Once my meat mixture was well combined, I proceeded to creating balls and placing them directly in the tomato sauce. Every once in awhile, I gave the pot a shake, to make room for more balls.
The only mistake I made was that I covered the pot with a lid once all the meatballs were in, and let it cook covered. Although I did not add any water to the pot, the sauce became somehow watery. Had I left the pot uncovered, the liquids would evaporate and the sauce would be thicker. That was easily fixed, though. I let the meatballs cook longer, this time without a lid.
Bottom line is, even though they weren’t authentic Italian meatballs, these speedy meatballs came out great. The kids ate them over spaghetti, of course. Doron and I had them with some veggies. Doesn’t my plate look gorgeous?
