MEATBALLS!!!

Cooking recipes, and various other food related stuffs. Hey, a wolf's gotta eat.
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Who invented the Meatball?

The Chinese: they invented everything else...
0
No votes
The Romans: as portable food for the Legions.
1
14%
2 - Doesn’t really care either way
0
No votes
3 - They’re pretty cool I guess, but they aren’t an obsession
0
No votes
4 - I like werewolves a lot but wouldn’t want to become one
1
14%
Report the incident to your pack’s leaders and let them decide what to do
3
43%
Nobody really knows, they just appeared one day.
2
29%
 
Total votes: 7

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RedEye
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MEATBALLS!!!

Post by RedEye »

Thank the lowly meatball for saving many a tired student or laborer from having to make dinner or go hungry. A package of Ramen, some meatballs, and some frozen veggies makes a quick and relatively painnless dinner, lunch, or sometimes breakfast. Tired? Eat out of the pot you cooked in, I won't tell anyone. (I've done that myself.)

I'm going to give you a little bit of advice before I get to the recipe, and the recipe will be for one pound of meat (or other stuff). I recommend that you don't make just one pound of meatballs; it's no more work to make several pounds worth, and you can season them differently for different applications. They go with everything except chocolate cake.
You keep them by freezing them, usually in one-serving batches; so...make sure there is room in your freezer for them as well as a bag of frozen vegetables (your choice). Note: make sure there is room in your freezer for this stuff! The Vodka can live elsewhere, it won't mind.
What you do is take a handful (roughly) of frozen veggies and dump them in the Ramen water and let them cook as you bring the water to the boil, nuke the meatballs and add them to the pre-ramen mix, then add the packet of soup and noodles. Dinner will be ready when the noodles are soft. You can also boost soups this way, and I've heard of daring experimenters using them on Spaghetti, as well! :lol:

Meatballs are made of Meat (duh!), a binder, and a filler; along with spices and flavorings.
The MEAT can be anything. All that is required is that it be ground finely and not very fatty (15% max, 8% is preferrable). It can be chicken, or turkey, or fish, or pork, or beef, or...really, ANY flesh will do for meatballs.
If you have a butcher available, ask him to re-grind your hamburger or whatever, the smaller the meat bits, the better. You can even use non-meat to make meatless balls; such as dried Tofu granules or Vegetarian dry non-meat imitators. I don't recommend using frozen Veggieburgers, they have other stuff in them that doesn't do well as meat-less balls.
The BINDER is either Egg, or Potato Starch (Kosher section) or Arrowroot. I've even used dried potato flakes (ala Mashed Potatoes) as a binder, and it worked acceptably well. The binder sticks everything together and gives you balls, not mush.
The FILLER (neccessary) is either very mashed crackers, prepared bread crumbs, matzo meal, oats (!) or anything that fills the spaces between the meat bits and sucks up the flavorings you add. It's easy to overdo the binder, and you'll get dry rubbery weak-flavored balls as a result.
FREEZING: Use a plastic bag that you can squeeze tight against the meatballs you make. You don't want frost to form on them (freezer burn), and usually it's easier to make this happen in a non-ziplock bag. I use twist-ties and sandwich bags and make individual servings, myself. The same applies to the veggies, use a twist tie once you open the bag and wring the air out of it every time you open it, or make individual servings of veggies, too.

MAKING YOUR MEATBALLS:
Take one pound of low-fat meat, one egg or one tbsp (tablespoonfull) of BINDER, and one to one-and-a-half tbsp of FILLER and mix thoroughly. Thoroughly means that you can't see separate pockets of anything; everything is totally mixed together. Add spices: salt and pepper, onion powder, Lowry's Seasoned salt, sage, Worschestershire sauce, A-1 sauce, five-spices, that left over meat-rub or that last bit of marinade or some packaged flavorings (taco, meatloaf, etc.). NOTE: start easy, you don't want to overdo the flavors or they'll take over what you're eating. Use the seasonings appropriate to the meat you're using, though; otherwise it'll taste funky. Soy sauce or a small dash of tabasco sauce works, ditto teriyaki and Hoi-sin sauce; just be easy with the liquids, though.
Mix the spices you've chosen into the meatball mix thoroughly and then stick it in the fridge for a few hours to rest and allow the flavors etc. to blend in and mix. Resting the meat is important between handlings!

After the mixture has rested (Important!), you are ready to make your meatballs. Size matters; small balls are better than big ones. A small meatball is made out of enough mixture to fill a tablespoon measure level with the top. A big meatball is twice as much. Don't try to make your balls too big, they won't cook properly. A small ball is about half an ounce of mixture, and a big ball is about 3/4 to one ounce of mix.
Take your meat and make it ito a ball by rolling it between your palms until it's nice and round and solid. Loose balls are bad, they don't cook properly, and you will be cooking your balls before freezing them.
Once you've rolled your balls, put them in the fridge and let them rest while you prepare to cook them.
You can boil your balls or you can bake them, I'd advise against frying your balls as that can make them tough. Baking your balls is best, boiling is next best.
Bake your balls in a 325 degree oven for half an hour on a greased or sprayed or teflon cookie sheet. Boil your balls at a rolling boil for ten minutes or so, slice one of your balls open to be sure it's cooked through. Boil your balls in small batches, not more than ten balls at a time and start counting when they boil, not when you put them in the hot water.
Okay, now you have hot balls; either baked or boiled. Put your balls in ice water to (1) cool them quickly and (2) remove the grease that has come to the surface of your balls (less fat!). Once your balls are cool, set them on a plate with some paper towels to dry them off. You don't want to put wet balls in the freezer, ever.
Now, you have cool balls ready for the freezer. Put them in small sandwich bags or a large storage bag (I prefer the small bag and single servings, myself). Twist the bag and squeeze the air out from around your balls so there's no freezer burn, then use a twist-tie to seal them up and into the freezer with them. Label them, though; or you'll get some...interesting...taste combinations.

Let's say you fixed up three pounds of meat into meatballs. Figure on a serving as being six little balls or three big balls. You now have a lot of balls waiting to turn Ramen soup (or any soup) into a meal. Sliced balls make a meatball sandwich. Nuked meatballs in a cold salad make a meal on hot days. Cereal and meatballs make breakfast or lunch, and if you wake up hungry at night; nuked balls make a tasty snack.
The best part is that you do the work once, and enjoy it for months! I've kept meatballs frozen for up to a year, and if I did everything right; they tasted just fine and stayed down. (the Acid test.)

You can do this with fish, as well. You can roll your balls in cracker meal or flavored breadcrumbs for a little extra flavor and crunch. Meatballs can feed students that are financially exhausted and only able to do Ramen soup.

Meatballs can be a lifesaver, if you are tired of soup (any sort) and that's all you have to eat. Nuke and add to the soup.
Give it a try; you'll like it!
RedEye: The Wulf and writer who might really be a Kitsune...
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