Meatballs have a reputation for being fussy. They are not — they are just unforgiving of two shortcuts. Skip the soaked breadcrumbs and they come out dense. Crowd the pan and they steam instead of browning. Get those two right and the rest of it is twenty minutes of mixing and rolling while the oven does the work.
These go in the oven rather than a frying pan, which means all twenty brown at the same time and nobody stands over spitting oil turning them one by one. Then they finish in a skillet of marinara for five minutes, which is where they stop being baked meat and start being dinner.
The seasoning is doing a lot here. The Godfather is organic basil, garlic, oregano and onion, with coriander, rosemary, black pepper, parsley, thyme, marjoram, a little red pepper and a hint of sea salt, so one tablespoon stands in for most of a spice rack and tastes like sauce that simmered all afternoon.
Serve them over pasta, in a toasted roll, or in a shallow bowl with bread and a pile of Parmesan. In October we put a pan of garlicky collards or roasted broccoli beside them and call it a Sunday.
Baked Italian Meatballs with The Godfather
Tender oven-baked meatballs seasoned with The Godfather organic Italian blend, then simmered in marinara and finished with Parmesan.
Ingredients
For the meatballs
- 1 lb ground beef, 80/20
- 1/2 lb ground pork, optional but worth it
- 1/2 cup plain breadcrumbs
- 1/4 cup whole milk
- 1/3 cup grated Parmesan, plus more to serve
- 1 large egg, beaten
- 3 cloves garlic, minced
- 2 Tbsp yellow onion, grated on the large holes of a box grater
- 1 Tbsp The Godfather organic Italian seasoning
- 2 Tbsp flat-leaf parsley, chopped
- 1/2 tsp kosher salt
For the sauce and the table
- 2 cups marinara sauce
- 1/4 tsp The Godfather, for finishing
- Grated Parmesan and torn basil or parsley, to serve
Instructions
- Heat the oven to 425°F with a rack in the upper-middle position, and line a sheet pan with parchment.
- Stir the breadcrumbs and the milk together in a large bowl and leave them alone for 5 minutes. They will go to a soft paste. This is a panade, and it is the whole reason these stay tender instead of turning into little rubber balls.
- Add the beef, the pork if you are using it, the Parmesan, the egg, the garlic, the grated onion, 1 tablespoon of The Godfather, the parsley and the salt to the soaked crumbs.
- Mix it with your hands and stop the moment you no longer see streaks of egg. Over-worked meat goes tight and springy, and there is no fixing it afterwards.
- Scoop into balls about 1 1/2 inches across — a cookie scoop keeps them even and keeps your hands cleaner. You should get around 20.
- Space them out on the sheet pan with an inch between them. Crowded meatballs steam in their own juices and come out grey; spaced ones brown.
- Bake 18 to 20 minutes, until they are browned on top and a thermometer pushed into the middle of one reads 160°F.
- While they bake, warm the marinara in a wide skillet over medium-low heat.
- Slide the baked meatballs into the sauce, spoon some over each one, and let them simmer gently for 5 minutes. They drink up the sauce and the sauce picks up what came off the meat.
- Finish with grated Parmesan, torn basil or parsley, and the last 1/4 teaspoon of The Godfather. Serve them over pasta, piled into a toasted roll, or on their own with bread for the sauce.
The panade is the recipe
Breadcrumbs soaked in milk, mixed in before anything else. That is the difference between a meatball you want a second one of and a meatball you politely finish. The milk-soaked crumbs hold water inside the meat while it cooks, so the center stays soft even after a bake and a simmer. Skip it and you have a hamburger rolled into a ball.
Bake, do not fry
Frying twenty meatballs means standing over a spitting pan turning them one at a time, and the pan still has to be washed. A hot oven browns all twenty at once while you do something else. The one rule is spacing — an inch between them, and if your pan is crowded use two. Meatballs that touch will steam.
Where the time actually goes
Twenty minutes of prep, twenty in the oven, five in the sauce. That is the 45 minutes on the card, and the cook time counts the simmer because the meatballs are not finished without it.
What is actually in season right now
The garlic and the onion in these meatballs came out of the fall harvest across the Carolinas and will keep in a dark cupboard until spring, which is the reason they are grated in here raw rather than cooked first. Flat-leaf parsley is still going outside and will go on through the first frosts; cut it with scissors straight into the bowl.
Tomatoes are long gone in October, so the marinara here is honestly a jar off the shelf — summer tomatoes put up by somebody in August. What is good right now goes beside the plate instead: collards sweetening after the first cool nights, broccoli and cauliflower coming into the markets, and fall cabbage. A pan of garlicky greens next to a bowl of these is a whole supper.
Which beef to buy
Eighty-twenty ground chuck. Lean beef makes a dry meatball and there is no step later that puts the fat back. If your store grinds pork, half a pound of it in place of half the beef makes them noticeably more tender; if it does not, leave it out and the recipe still works.
On the salt
The Godfather carries a hint of sea salt alongside the herbs, so the half teaspoon of kosher salt in the bowl is a light hand on purpose. Taste your marinara before it goes in the pan — jarred sauces vary a great deal — and adjust at the table rather than guessing at the start.
Make them ahead, or freeze them
Rolled and raw, they will sit covered on the sheet pan in the refrigerator for a day. To freeze, bake them, cool them completely, and freeze them on the pan before bagging them so they do not weld together. They go straight from the freezer into simmering sauce, twelve to fifteen minutes with the lid on. A double batch on a Sunday is four dinners.
What is in the jar
The Godfather is our USDA Certified Organic Italian blend — organic basil, garlic, oregano, onion, coriander, rosemary, black pepper, parsley, thyme, marjoram and red pepper, with a hint of sea salt. No MSG, no fillers and no anti-caking agents, made in small batches by our family. It is doing the work of six jars here, which is the point of it.
The seasoning itself is gluten free and kosher. The breadcrumbs in these meatballs are not, so if you need the dish to be gluten free use a certified gluten-free breadcrumb and check your marinara label too. We make The Godfather in a 4 oz resealable pouch that lies flat in the cupboard and opens one-handed, which is worth something when the other hand has raw meat on it.
More to put beside it
If you want these on the grill and on toothpicks instead, Grilled Game Day Meatballs is the party version — different seasoning, different cooking, same crowd-pleaser. For the rest of the Sunday table, Baked Stuffed Shells and One-Pan Chicken Parmesan Pasta are built on the same blend.
Start the meal with Godfather Bread Dip or Easy Garlic Crostinis while the meatballs are in the oven. And if there are leftovers, they belong in a roll the next day — The Godfather Italian Sub is the blueprint. Italian Sausage and White Bean Skillet is the weeknight one-pan cousin of this dinner.