Meatballs - a popular dish and ... mysterious.
Different sources describe their difference from meatballs in different ways, and there is a lot of confusion in the recipes themselves.
They converge only in the fact that the "minced balls", the size of which is smaller than a walnut, are meatballs, everything larger is related to meatballs.
Another, perhaps, the difference is that meatballs are often used to increase the satiety of soups.
In our selection of recipes there are meatballs as independent meat and fish dishes.
Meatballs in Tomato Sauce - General Cooking Principles
• Meatballs are prepared from minced meat or fish, you can buy it already ready in the store, or you can grind it with a meat grinder yourself. Of course, cooking from the minced meat is faster, but the taste of the dish is significantly different.
• If you cook meatballs only with minced meat, they will turn out to be too dense and dry. Therefore, regardless of the type of meat or fish, to add juiciness and friability to the forcemeat, add sautéed or raw, twisted onions, cheese, boiled rice, breadcrumbs or stained white bread soaked in milk.
• Slightly moistened with water in the hands of the forcemeat form small, usually no larger than walnuts, balls and then prepare them according to the recipe.
• Tomato sauce is prepared on the basis of tomato puree, fresh tomatoes or tomato juice. In meatball sauces, you can add mushrooms, ground nuts to flour.
• Sauces and minced meat a little salt and a little pepper. They also add, after chopping, the greens, or sprinkle it on the dish when ready, before letting it brew.
• You can cook meatballs in tomato sauce in a frying pan, in a pan, bake in pots or a pan, tightly covering them with a sheet of foil.
Fish Meatballs in Tomato Sauce
Ingredients:
• 400 grams of silver hake;
• half the head of a bitter onion;
• 30 grams of butter sandwich butter;
• flour - 2 tbsp. spoons without a slide;
• salt, freshly ground pepper (black).
For tomato sauce:
• carrots - 1 pc.;
• white bitter onion - 1 head;
• half of a small parsley root;
• 50 ml "Rkatsiteli", "Aligote", or other dry white wine;
• leaf parsley;
• 30 gr. tomato puree.
Cooking method:
1. Peel parsley root and carrots, grate with a coarse grater and fry in vegetable (vegetable) oil, until lightly browned. Pour the tomato puree, wine diluted in one hundred milliliters of hot water, season with spices and boil for three minutes.
2. Twist the fish fillet cleaned from the skin and separated from the bones through a small grill in a meat grinder twice. For the second time, add chopped onion and spasserovany until transparent.
3. Pepper the minced meat, salt a little, put the softened sandwich oil, mix and knead the meat for the meatballs well.
4. Form small meatballs from minced meat, roll them in flour and fry them a little in warmed sunflower oil.
5. Transfer to a deep frying pan, pour the tomato sauce cooked earlier and simmer for six minutes under the lid.
Meatballs in Beef Tomato Sauce
Ingredients:
• 500 grams of beef pulp;
• medium sized onion;
• a glass (200 grams) of breadcrumbs, white;
• flour;
• two chicken eggs;
• a quarter cup of chopped parsley.
For the sauce:
• 500 ml of tomato, thick;
• half a glass of chopped basil;
• two full art. tablespoons of pure, refined (possibly olive) oil;
• 250 grams of tomatoes;
• garlic - 3 cloves.
Cooking method:
1. In a large pan, be sure to have a thick bottom, heat the oil “to smoke” well. Add the chopped garlic finely with a knife and fry it for no more than a minute, until softened.
2. Pour in the tomato puree, add the tomatoes, chopped into small cubes. Bring the tomato mass to a boil, reduce heat and cook for 30 minutes.
3. Season with spices chosen to your taste, salt and, slightly cooling, beat the sauce until smooth with a blender or grind on a sieve.
4. Beef, thoroughly wash with a whole piece and dry a little. Cut off excess films, veins and cut the meat into small pieces that can easily be put into a meat grinder.
5. Peel the onion, cut into slices and twist together with pieces of beef through a fine wire rack in a meat grinder once.
6. Mix the minced meat with white breadcrumbs, the dark ones do not fit, they give the meatballs a specific taste and smell. Insert the eggs slightly loosened with a fork and, adding the parsley chopped with a knife, knead well. Do not forget to slightly add minced meat.
7. Paste the minced meat with a dessert spoon, form the meatballs with your hands and fry them in small batches until a delicate golden brown crust is obtained. It is necessary to fry quickly, over medium heat, having previously rolled the meat balls on all sides in flour.
8. In the pan on which the meatballs were fried, pour the cooked tomato sauce and heat it well over low heat. Lower the meatballs and simmer for 15 minutes.
9. Finely chop the basil, evenly sprinkle with greens the finished dish and, covering it with a lid, set aside for 10 minutes to insist.
Potato Chicken Meatballs in Tomato Sauce
Ingredients:
• 450 grams of minced chicken or breast (fillet);
• a small onion;
• 120 grams of round grain rice.
For the sauce:
• tomato paste - 75 grams (3 tbsp. L.);
• two medium carrots;
• a small head of bitter onion;
• champignons, fresh - 300 grams;
• 2 tbsp. tablespoons of 20% sour cream.
Cooking method:
1. From the rice, select unhealed as well as damaged grains and rinse the groats in running water under the tap. Dip the rice in boiling, slightly salted water and boil until half cooked over low heat. Rinse again by discarding the rice in a colander, and leaving it for a while, let all the water come off completely.
2. Combine the minced chicken twisted with one onion and boiled rice, add ground pepper, a little salt and mix well. When using fillet, it should be chopped with a meat grinder twice, for the second time also add onions.
3. Roll the meatballs, and immediately fry them in a frying pan in vegetable oil, slightly fry the meat balls in flour before frying.
4. In a clean frying pan, fry until lightly browned the second onion, chopped into small slices, with coarsely grated carrots. Add the mushrooms sliced in small plates and, putting the sour cream, simmer for up to 20 minutes. Two minutes before readiness, introduce tomato paste diluted in a quarter glass of water, stir and bring to readiness, add a little salt and pepper.
5. Transfer the mushrooms fried in sour cream into pots, put the meatballs on top. Pour everything with hot boiled water, you can take the broth, and put the filled containers in the oven. Cover the pots with lids and cook at 180 degrees 40 min.
Oven meat meatballs in tomato sauce
Ingredients:
• a pound of any minced meat;
• two fresh chicken eggs;
• a small piece, about 100 g., Of stiffened white bread, is better than a loaf;
• 100 ml of pasteurized milk;
• 120 gr. Russian cheese;
• a third of a glass of chopped parsley.
For the sauce:
• two small onion heads;
• three cloves of garlic;
• 50 grams of tomato paste;
• one liter of tomato (thick) juice;
• four tbsp. l vegetable oil.
Cooking method:
1. Pour brown bread with milk and let it soften for ten minutes. Choose a crumb, squeeze the milk, the bread should not be too wet, almost dry.
2. Add the soaked crumb, eggs, finely chopped parsley, table salt, a small pinch of pepper to the re-rolled minced meat. Rub the cheese coarsely and mix well. For juiciness, add finely chopped onion, sasserirovannaya in vegetable oil or ghee.
3. Form the balls from the prepared meat, put them in a deep baking dish and place in a preheated oven. Keep the meatballs in the oven for seven minutes at 200 degrees.
4. In vegetable oil, until soft, fry chopped garlic, chopped into small pieces, add the onion, chopped into slices, and fry them all together for about five minutes.
5. In a small saucepan, boil tomato juice, add frying, fine salt into it, let it boil again and pour the sauce into the form to the slightly baked meatballs and cover with a sheet of foil.
6. Put the meatballs back in the oven and cook at 190 degrees for about fifty minutes.
Meatballs in Tomato Sauce with Nuts
Ingredients:
• fish or minced meat - 500 grams;
• 80 grams of browned white bread;
• one egg;
• a glass of milk;
• white salad onions - 1 head.
For the sauce:
• 200 grams of ketchup, grade at your discretion;
• a small clove of garlic;
• a third cup of breadcrumbs;
• A handful of walnut kernels.
Cooking method:
1. Crush the walnut kernels in a mortar or grind in a flour grinder. Dry the nuts beforehand, you can even fry them in a dry frying pan or oven and cool well.
2. Mix nut flour with breadcrumbs and sauté until creamy in 2 tables. tablespoons of butter. Add ketchup, stir and warm a little, no need to boil.
3. Fry the finely chopped onion until transparent and transfer, cooling, to the minced meat. Add the milk soaked and slightly wrung out bread, a small pinch of pepper, salt. Pour in a slightly beaten egg, knead the minced meat, divide and form small balls of meatballs out of it.
4. To a tender golden crust, fry meatballs breaded in flour in vegetable oil and transfer them to the gravy.
5. Gently, so as not to crush, mix the meatballs with the sauce and boil over low heat for five minutes under the lid.
Meatballs in Tomato Sauce - Cooking Tips and Useful Tips
• Meat for minced meat and minced meat should be grinded with a manual meat grinder through the large grill installed on it.
• For tomato sauce, it is best to take fresh tomatoes, but if there are none, you can take canned tomatoes in your own juice or buy a tomato.
• When using fresh tomatoes or tomato paste, add at least half a teaspoon of sugar to the sauce, it will turn out to be much tastier.
• Leave the finished dish for 15-20 minutes with the lid closed, brew. The gravy becomes thicker, and the meatballs are better saturated with its taste and aroma.
• To get a thicker gravy, add a little flour when storing the onions, mix well and only then add the liquid part.
