Grandma's Tomato Sauce Meatballs

Grandma’s meatballs in tomato sauce are a comforting classic of Italian home cooking, a dish that immediately invokes the warmth and traditions of family life. Here is a recipe that could come close to “grandma’s” according to Italian tradition:

Ingredients

For the meatballs:

• 500 g of ground meat (mixed veal and pork for a richer taste)
• 1 egg
• 50 g of stale bread
• Milk, enough to soak the bread
• 30 g of grated Parmesan cheese
• 1 clove of garlic
• Chopped parsley to taste
• Salt
• Pepper
• Flour, for dusting the meatballs

For the sauce:

• 700 ml of tomato passata
• 1 small onion
• Extra virgin olive oil
• Salt
• A pinch of sugar
• Fresh basil
• 1 glass of red wine (optional)

Preparation

1. Meatballs:

   • In a large bowl, soak the stale bread in milk for a few minutes until it becomes soft.
   • Squeeze the bread to remove the excess milk and crumble it in the same bowl.
   • Add the ground meat, egg, chopped parsley, crushed or finely chopped garlic clove, grated cheese, and season with salt and pepper to taste.
   • Mix all the ingredients well until you have a uniform mixture.
   • Form walnut-sized meatballs, rolling them between your hands, then coat them in flour.

2. Browning the meatballs:

   • In a large frying pan, heat a bit of olive oil and add the floured meatballs.
   • Brown them until they are golden on all sides, then remove them from the pan and set aside.

3. Making the sauce:

   • In the same pan, add finely chopped onion and a little more oil if necessary.
   • Sauté until the onion becomes translucent.
   • Add the tomato passata, salt, and pinch of sugar.
   • If desired, you can deglaze the pan with a glass of red wine before adding the passata.
   • Cook the sauce for a few minutes and then add the meatballs to the sauce.
   • Cover the pan with a lid and simmer on low heat for about 1-1.5 hours. If the sauce dries out too much, add a little water.
   • At the end of cooking, add some freshly chopped basil.

Serve the meatballs in sauce nice and hot, perhaps accompanied by a generous sprinkling of Parmesan and rustic bread for mopping up the sauce.

Curiosity

Meatballs in sauce are a dish for reusing leftovers: in many families, they were prepared to recover remnants of meat or stale bread. And Italian family cuisine is a master at the art of not wasting anything, creating dishes with the renowned “home-cooked” flavor.