Albóndigas (Spanish Meatballs)

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This little tapas dish is a firm favourite and can be served alongside some of my other recipes or just knocked up and frozen for a quick lunch whenever you need a little taste of Spain.

The meat should be a mix of minced beef and minced pork as you need the fat for this recipe; if you want to use just minced beef make sure it isn’t too lean – you can get 12% or 20% at most supermarkets. I would go for the 12% at an absolute minimum.

You can use a tin of chopped tomatoes instead of fresh tomatoes but if you do this leave out the sugar as tinned tomatoes usually have quite a bit of sugar in them already. Personally, I prefer to use fresh, on the vine tomatoes as they somehow taste more “sunshiney”.

Ingredients

  • 500g of minced beef/pork.
  • 2 cloves of garlic
  • A handful of fresh parsley
  • 1/4 tablespoon of ground nutmeg
  • 2 tablespoons of salt (keep them separate)
  • Fresh ground black pepper
  • 50g breadcrumbs
  • 150g grated parmesan cheese
  • 2 eggs
  • 60ml whole milk
  • 60ml olive oil
  • 1 medium sized onion
  • 8 tomatoes
  • 2 teaspoons Herbs De Provence
  • 1 tablespoon of sugar

Preparation

  • Chop your garlic very finely (or run it through a garlic press)
  • Chop your parsley quite finely
  • Beat your eggs
  • Finely chop your onion
  • Chop your tomatoes (if using)

Method

  1. Put all the meat into a large bowl and add the garlic, parsley, nutmeg, one teaspoon of sale, a good pinch of the pepper, the breadcrumbs and parmesan cheese. Using your (washed / sanitised) hands mix it all together by kneading it until it is all very well mixed together.
  2. Add the beaten egg mixture and the milk and, again using your hands, knead it and throw it around the bowl until it forms a nice heavy, meaty, “dough” ball of meat.
  3. Wash your hands and, whilst they are still wet, break bits off the meat ball in the bowl into smalls about 1″ in diameter (meatball sized!)
  4. Heat 2 tablespoons of the oil in a frying pan over a medium high heat and put the meatballs into the oil. Fry them and flip them over until they are nicely browned all the way round. Don’t put too many into the pan at once – you can do them in batches. Just keep going until all of the meatballs are a nice brown colour, put them on plate with a bit of kitchen roll and leave them to rest and drain.
  5. Empty the oil out of the frying pan and give it a wipe with some kitchen roll. Add another 2 tablespoons of oil.
  6. Add the onion and fry it for about 5 minutes until the onion is golden brown – don’t let any of it go black.
  7. Add the tomatoes to the onions and cook it for about 2 minutes.
  8. Add 1 teaspoon of salt, a pinch of pepper, the herbs and some sugar. If you are using tinned tomatoes use about half the sugar (or none at all).
  9. Give it a good stir and simmer it for about ten minutes. Stir it two or three times and if it looks like the tomatoes are sticking add a splash of water so nothing burns.
  10. Put the meatballs into the pan with the sauce and give it all a good stir. Let the meatballs cook in the sauce for five minutes. After five minutes, cut a meatball almost in half and make sure they are not red or pink. If they are pink or red just give them another two minutes, if they look cooked all the way through take the meatballs out.
  11. To serve, put some of the sauce into the bottom of a small dish, put 3 or 4 meatballs on top and throw a bit of chopped parsley on top. Put the dish on a plate with some crusty bread and a good slug of salted butter and let your guests enjoy.
  12. Alternatively, to serve, pour the whole lot into a big bowl, fire up Netflix, and grab a fork….