How to Make Italian Meatballs
Italian Meatball Sub Sandwich
Easy meatballs
I love meatballs and probably do not make them enough for my husband's taste, so I decided I needed to make some up again. This time I happened to have really good Italian bread from the bakery and decided to make sub sandwiches out of them. These would also be fantastic in spaghetti. I am working at coming up with other sauce recipes so that I can have a meatball appetizer party eventually. But this is a straightforward Italian take on meatballs.
I started with a jarred spaghetti sauce base, then I added diced, fresh garlic to that. I parboiled a pint of cherry tomatoes and removed the skin from them. Then I added them to the sauce. This gave the sauce much more texture and a delicious fresh from the garden taste. My kids do not care for onions so I did not add any, but you could certainly add onions to the sauce, or whatever vegetables you like. I then let the sauce simmer for about an hour before adding it to the skillet with meatballs. Once I placed it with the meatballs, I simmered it all for another half hour.
I heated up the Italian bread in a warm oven for 5 minutes, then sliced the bread and assembled the sandwiches. I used four meatballs for each sandwich and topped them all with mozzarella cheese. You could also top these with onions or any other fresh vegetables. These sandwiches are extremely satisfying and tasty. I really hope you enjoy them as much as my family does.
Cook Time
Ingredients
- 1 pound hamburger
- 1 cup Italian breadcrumbs
- 1-2 Tbsp Italian seasoning
- 1 egg
- 1 jar (24 oz) spaghetti sauce, your choice of variety
- 4 cloves fresh garlic
- 1 pint (approximately) cherry tomatoes
- 2 Tbsp Italian Seasoning
- 1 cup shredded mozzarella cheese, use your preference on topping
- In a large mixing bowl, blend the hamburger, Italian breadcrumbs, Italian seasoning and egg.
- Form hamburger mixture into 1 inch meatballs, this makes about 20 meatballs.
- In a saucepan, boil water. Add cherry tomatoes to boiling water for about 30 seconds - one minute. Remove from boiling water and place into a bowl of ice cold water. You can also fill the kitchen sink up with cold water and put them in there to cool down. The skins should split on the tomatoes and they will be easy to remove.
- In another saucepan, heat your jar of spaghetti sauce. After the skins have been removed from the cherry tomatoes, add them to the sauce. Dice the garlic and add it to the sauce with some additional Italian seasoning. Let this cook for about an hour.
- In a skillet, cook the meatballs so they are browned on all sides. This takes about 10 minutes of turning them periodically. When browned, removed from skillet and drain on paper towels.
- After all the meatballs have been cooked and removed from the skillet, rinse it out. Place the drained meatballs back into the skillet when the sauce has cooked down for about an hour. Add the sauce to the meatballs in the skillet and heat them in the sauce for another 30 minutes.
- I had Italian bread and decided to serve these meatballs as Italian sub sandwiches. I sliced the bread and warmed it in the oven for 5 minutes, then scooped up the meatballs and topped them with shredded mozzarella. These were delicious meatballs and they made great subs, I hope you enjoy my recipe!
