On Top of Spaghetti…

When I checked in on Is My Blog Burning to see what upcoming blog roundups were happening, one caught my eye in particular. Serge the Concierge is hosting one asking for meatball recipes. This gave me the perfect excuse to dig out another recipe from my index card file.


Again, the handwriting on this card indicates that I probably copied it down to take it to college with me. It came from a copy of the Betty Crocker Cookbook that is my mother’s. I loved to look at this cookbook when I was a child, leafing through its pages and looking at all the photos of the platters of food. The drawings are a little dated and sort of "Father Knows Best" or "Pleasantville," but the sentiment of the warmth of home-cooked food eaten as a family still remains - with the lady of the house preparing it, of course.


The recipe on the card is slightly different from that in the cookbook. My mom had made adjustments to spread this out for a large family. She also eliminated the hamburger/pork combination and just used hamburger. The recipe amounts weren’t quite doubled. After testing the cookbook version this past weekend, I actually think that my mom’s proportions are better and tastier.


For the sauce, I also made some changes. I’m not sure about you, but I wasn’t going to spend the time sieving two large cans of tomatoes (per the original instructions) when I can get my hands on great Italian-style passata di pomodoro (make sure no sugar is added). I did use tomato paste and also added a can of finely chopped tomatoes as well. In the hour-long cooking time for the sauce, these will mostly break down and will add a great texture to the sauce. Up here, this is referred to as “gravy.”


This is still a great dish to have on hand and the leftovers are fantastic. Making meatballs is a great activity to get your children, uhem, more “involved” with their food. Have them help out making them. In my family there was also the One Giant Meatball that was made from the last of the meat. Put that on a pile of spaghetti with a little gravy, dust with some freshly-grated Parmesan cheese, and let the kids belt out “On Top of Spaghetti” at the top of their lungs (clean version of course)!

Kitchen Witch Tip

My mother always made meatballs for this dish by putting them into disposable broiler trays and cooking them in the oven. I’ve followed this tip many times with several meatball recipes that call for frying them first and then adding them to the sauce. This has a few advantages. The original recipe for this calls for frying the meatballs in oil. Why add all that extra fat?

Cooked in the trays, the fat in the meat itself helps the meatballs to cook and stay moist, all while keeping their shape. It also is easier to clean those pans instead of scraping lots of bits of meat off of a skillet. You may need to turn them each once for more even browning, but that isn’t a requirement as they’ll all just get put into the sauce anyway to finish cooking. Adding the accumulated juices from the cooking pans is optional, as that will also add extra fat to the sauce, but it does have great flavor.

Buon appetito!