How to Make ITALIAN MEATBALLS Like an Italian

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the most famous Italian meatballs on the planet. I sell them every week at the markets here in Sydney. Everybody loves them, they are incredible, they are moist, full of flavors, and they are the Italian meatballs that you want on your table. So let's watch this episode and learn how to make meatballs like me. Easy, moist, yummy. Mmm, mmm. Hi and welcome to Vincenzo's Plate. The place where you get to learn how to cook delicious Italian recipes. And this is a fantastic recipe I'm very proud of. I turned my grandmother and mother Italian meatballs to the next level. You want to know how? Watch this video. To make my meatballs, we are making one batch of one kilo, which means you can make it and then freeze half and eat half. We start by using 500 grams of pork, 500 grams of veal. Then we need five tablespoons of pecorino cheese, or you can use Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese. Three tablespoons of breadcrumbs, 20 grams of salt. One egg, four slices of an Italian bread, or any artisan bread that you like, okay? You can use sourdough if you like, just don't use cheap bread, okay? One carrot, one celery, two cloves of garlic, half onion, some chopped parsley. Be very generous with the parsley. I normally chop about a bunch, but you can put less, you can put more, up to you. Nice fresh basil, extra virgin olive oil, and two bottles of passata. This is, of course, homemade passata, and a little bit of salt and pepper. Before we start this recipe, we need to start making the sauce. The sauce needs about one hour to cook, and then we can add our meatballs in the sauce and cook for extra 40, 45 minutes, okay? So, to make the sauce, first thing we need to do, we need to blend our ingredients here, the carrots, the onion, and the celery stick. We put a little bit of extra virgin olive oil, about four tablespoons, but I'm going to use half of this to use as a base for our tomato sauce, and the other half, I'm using it for the meatball mix. Trust me, guys, it's an amazing ingredient to add to the meatball mix. So, this is a carrot, onion, and celery mix. What we're going to do is we're going to put half of it in here. For everyone who has been using sugar in the sauce, thinking that sugar is the way to go, well, guys, I'm going to be honest with you. This is what you need to use to make it sweet. The carrots will help to make it sweet. You also need a good tomato sauce made with nice sweet tomatoes, but do not put sugar in your tomato sauce anymore, please. Just two tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil, and let's cook the soffritto. You do not want to burn the soffritto, so make sure you keep an eye on the soffritto for the first five minutes. Keep stirring so it cooks evenly everywhere. After five minutes, you can see that the soffritto is ready to make love with the tomato sauce. Look at this tomato sauce, look how beautiful it is. These tomatoes grow in Australia. They're made by Filippo, the gentleman that shared a video with us. You can watch the video now on my channel if you want to learn how to make homemade tomato sauce like a Sicilian. Look how thick it is, so thick. Yum. Yum! At this point, give it a nice stir, stir, stir, stir. And let it cook. The tomato sauce from a very dark, bright red, it will become a little bit more light in color. All the soffritto has been mixed, so what we can do now, we can add some salt, some pepper. Make sure you cover your sauce with a lid, and we're going to cook this on a medium-low heat for one hour, okay? And stir every 15 minutes. We don't want to burn the bottom of the pan. So while you're cooking the sauce, we are making the meatballs. So here we have pork and veal, okay? If you don't want to use veal, use beef. So what we do now with the meat, let's mix it a little bit. An important thing to do with the bread, you want to soak the slices of bread in warm water because this bread will keep your meatballs nice and moist when you cook them in the sauce. Now in the mix, we start by adding the carrot, celery, and onion mix. We're going to add a pecorino or parmigiano cheese, breadcrumbs, and salt, all in there. And the eggs will help to combine all the ingredients in there. I'm going to crush two garlic cloves. You can use more if you want, you can use less. You can add any spices that you want. If you want to add more spices, this is how I love it. This is how I like my meatballs. I like the garlic to be crushed like that so it spreads evenly and I don't have big chunks in my mouth. Then I'm going to add a nice generous amount of parsley. When I say generous, I mean it, generous. Squeeze the bread so you get all the water out, okay? Make sure you get all the water out. And then we put this in the mix. Now that we've got all the bread in there, there's nothing else to add. So what we do now, we mix. When you mix this, you really want to put all your energy, all your power in there. And you want to mix it like you want to turn your hands into a mixer. I find meatballs one of the nicest recipes to make because everybody loves them. Even if you make the vegetarian meatballs, it's easy to serve, easy to eat, comfort food that is best. One of the best dishes to have. And you can actually freeze them with a sauce already cooked. You can freeze them raw. You can keep them in the fridge cooked for a couple of days. Okay, perfect. So now that we have the mix, we can make the meatballs. What you need to do is always have water next to you to wet your hands. So I'm using the same water that we used before for the bread. And you want to make sure your hands, the palm of your hand is always wet. So every two, three meatballs that you make, wet your hands, okay? And start making meatballs. Now you choose the size of your meatballs, okay? I like to make my meatballs about 40 grams each. Press, press like this, press. And here is the meatball. There are two options. You can bake the meatballs, which is what I'm doing today. Or you can shallow fry the meatballs, okay? Both options are amazing. Bake them for 20 minutes at 180 Celsius. After 15-20 minutes, the meatballs are ready. As you can see, they are perfectly cooked on the outside. They did sweat. And that sweat is flavors. Just before we add the meatballs in our sauce, make sure you put basil everywhere. Put the basil. Stir it well. Listen to the sound of music. Listen. Yeah. Now what we do, we're going to put the meatballs in the sauce. Just like that. And we let it cook. Just like that, gently. You know, it's enough sauce for you to add more meatballs if you want. You know, this is just a tutorial. I'm just showing you how to make it. Then it's up to you to decide how many you want to make. It is extremely important you never, never, never stir the meatballs. Because you don't want to break them, okay? So what you do, you just move the pan around. Just be careful not to get burned. Move it around like this. Cover the meatballs. Make sure they're covered. And then cover with a lid. And let it cook for 30 to 40 minutes. Feel free to go and stir it every 5 to 10 minutes. Now is the moment that the meatballs are cooking. They are almost ready for you. So show them some love. 10 more minutes until we do the meatball test. What's the meatball test? You're about to find out. Ladies and gentlemen, here are the famous Vincenzo's Plate meatballs. It's time for the test I was telling you about. So what we do, we get one meatball. And now we need to cut it. Let's see if it breaks easily with a fork. Let's see. Oh yeah, not too much pressure. Is it cooked in the middle? Let's have a look. Cooked to perfection. Does it break easily again? Let's have a look. Easy to break. Are they moist? I need to try them to make sure they are moist. Melt in my mouth. The parsley is still fresh in there. This is the meatball that you want to eat, my friend. The meatball full of flavors that melt in your mouth. Time to serve. Now to serve, I like to put the tomato sauce at the bottom. I've got a nice bright plate so the meatballs stand out. And then what we do is we put the meatballs on the plate. Put them nicely. Be kind. Be gentle. Put extra sauce on top of the meatballs. Meatballs always need the sauce. They love the sauce. And to decorate, I'm going to sprinkle some parsley. I'm going to sprinkle some pecorino cheese. Or you can use parmigiano cheese. And then what I like to do, I put some basil leaves on the plate to make it look more sexy. The final touch is the basil. All you have to do now is bring it to the table and enjoy it. These Italian meatballs are not just moist and full of flavors. They have all the love that you want in life. Look how easy it is to break. Look. Look at that. Easy. Moist. Yummy. It's melting in my mouth. This sauce, it's sensational. The meatballs are all about those beautiful, simple ingredients. And the meat is the main ingredient. These are just fantastic the way they are. My face is a proof. What can I say, guys? Just go to the butcher and make meatballs. Thank you so much for watching this episode. We will see you in the next Vincenzo's Plate video recipe. E ora si mangia. Vincenzo's Plate. Thank you.