Meatball Nirvana

By Addie

"These meatballs are a compilation of many, many meatball recipes to finally achieve what I was looking for... Meatball Nirvana! Cover with your favorite red sauce and serve with pasta or in crusty garlic bread rolls."

Ingredients

• 1 pound extra lean ground beef
• 1/2 teaspoon sea salt
• 1 small onion, diced
• 1/2 teaspoon garlic salt
• 1 1/2 teaspoons Italian seasoning
• 3/4 teaspoon dried oregano
• 3/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
• 1 dash hot pepper sauce (such as Frank's RedHot®), or to taste
• 1 1/2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
• 1/3 cup milk
• 1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
• 1/2 cup seasoned bread crumbs

Details

Servings 12
Preparation time 20mins
Cooking time 40mins
Adapted from allrecipes.com

Preparation

Step 1

Preheat an oven to 400 degrees.

Place the beef into a mixing bowl, and season with salt, onion, garlic salt, Italian seasoning, oregano, red pepper flakes, hot pepper sauce, and Worcestershire sauce; mix well. Add the milk, Parmesan cheese, and bread crumbs.

Mix until evenly blended, then form into 1 1/2-inch meatballs, and place onto a baking sheet.

Bake in the preheated oven until no longer pink in the center, 20 to 25 minutes.
................

REVIEWS: (1148)

These are the best tasting meatballs we have ever eaten!!! We followed the recipe as written and used a large cookie scoop to keep them equal shaped. The kids loved to roll them into a ball. They had tons of flavor, next time I might try to cook them in sauce for spaghetti and meatballs. However you use these you will not be dissapointed!! Great recipe.

I've been using this recipe for some time now and its my staple. I have subbed an egg for the milk without any problems. Also, I never have seasoned bread crumbs so I just up the Italian seasoning (can't tell you by how much cause I don't measure this recipe anymore). If I'm just making this for myself, I add some additional sriacha for more heat (or if I don't have the Frank's at home) I bake these on a slightly greased cookie sheet and flip halfway. These freeze great cooked or raw. Oh and I've used 80/20, 90/10, and 95/5 beef with these and they've all turned out great. Thanks for the recipe!!!

If you want to try bringing this to an even better state of Nirvana: Use only 1/2 lb of beef and add 1/2 pound of ground pork. Also replace skim milk with 1/2 a cup of ricotta cheese. I think you'll find you'll have some moister more flavorful meatballs.

Thank you , everyone, for the glowing reviews! We at the LTH house LOVE these meatballs! I almost always at least triple the recipe when I make it so I can freeze a few bags of meatballs. I bake and then freeze the baked meatballs. I'm kinda lazy (ok, a lot lazy) and never feel like taking the time to place the cooked meatballs on a cookie sheet, freeze them, then bag them. I'm lucky if I let them cool before I toss them in a freezer bag and chuck 'em in the freezer. I freeze them in freezer bags without sauce. It makes for crazy easy meals when no one planned ahead/feels like cooking! These do have a nice bite, so adjust the crushed red and hot pepper sauce (Red Hot at our house) to YOUR tastes. I also rarely ever feel like dicing an onion (I'm lazy, remember?) so I usually sub dried minced. I also tend to forget that my aversion to black pepper is generally abnormal, so, if you're not a freak like me, you may choose to add some black pepper, too! Come as you are and enjoy Meatball Nirvana! :)

Hubs wanted meatballs as part of our "SuperBowl Smorgasbord." I have my own way of making meatballs, but since I was using these on their own rather than with spaghetti, I kind of wanted to try something completely different, and in terms of how I make my Italian meatballs, these are different. Italian seasoning, oregano, garlic salt, hot pepper sauce and Worcerstershire sauce are all different additions for me and, other than omitting the red pepper and hot sauce in consideration of Hubs' sensitive innards, I resisted the strong urge to make these more compliant with what I was familiar with. I popped half of one in my mouth and "Mmmm!" ran through my mind. They have a nice balance of flavors that will only get better once the flavors develop even further in my homemade tomato sauce, I thought. I had Hubs taste the other half and the first word out of his meatball stuffed mouth was, "Yum!" (Trust me, he NEVER says "yum") I've got more cooking to do to complete our smorgasbord (Go Pack!!!) but these meatballs are going to be one, fine contribution.

Excellent meatball recipe. This is good in homemade BBQ sauce or a good marinara and also in meatball sandwiches. Dosen't matter how you use it, it always turns out fantastic. This also works well with ground turkey or chicken and even adding a little italian sausage is good, too. I do like to use my own homemade italian seasoning and homemade seasoned bread crumbs (brush day old bread with garlic butter, bake until crispy, then run through the food processor until finely ground) in this recipe I also do what LTH does and double it because either my boys eat them all up or I'll make one batch and freeze the other. If you have any leftovers, it's even better the next day. GOOD STUFF.

Great recipe for meatballs! I used minced garlic instead of garlic salt, 1/4 tsp. of red pepper flakes (was adding hot sausage to the sauce as well and didn't want things too spicy), and used an egg in place of the skim milk. This was a nice change from my usual meatball recipe.

LOVE! I've never been 100% satisfied with any meatball recipe until now. The kick from the crushed red pepper and hot sauce really make these something special. I served them on hoagie rolls with sauce and cheese. Delicious.

My kids was served this with Nana's Pasta sauce by EAKE, and my son said it was better then Subway's meatball sub. WOW, is what I thought. 3 of my kids had 2 hot dog size meatball subs a piece. And I tried the meatballs myself and thought it was delicious by slightly on the salty side, I think I would omit the salt the next time I make these(for my prefences) It had such a wonderful aroma of flavors. I really enjoyed it. However, my kids said it was slightly spice on some crunchy pieces but I guess that means the red pepper flakes. But all agreed it was loved. I think possibly use cayenne powder in the place of the red pepper flakes just for them. But I saw no problems with the red pepper flakes....but I have to apease to the children. I will so keep this recipe in my box, because not only was it good, it's the 1st meatball I've ever made that was cooked all the way through and moist, not hard or stiff.

We love these meatballs! We've been making them for over a year now and they are perfect for our family as my son is allergic to eggs and this is one of the only recipes I've found that doesn't include eggs. I decrease the pepper flakes to just a pinch since my three year old is eating them. They have a nice flavor compared to a lot of other meatballs I've tried that seem rather bland. Thanks for the recipe!

I took a leap of faith and quadrupled this recipe and it was worth the risk! Sooo wonderful! I used ground sirloin. I was alittle worried about not using any egg but I followed the recipe to a "T" other than using fresh garlic and reducing the crushed red pepper to a 1/4 proportionally to suit my family. I made a pot of sauce and had pasta and subs last week. I intended to freeze them in bags but ended up making family size portioned containers and froze them in my sauce. Gave one to DD and she loved them. Each pound made a dozen meatballs slightly larger than a golfball. I have a convection oven so 15 minutes cooked them nicely. Thanks LTH, I will be making these again soon!! (As long as the fam doesn't OD on them in the mean time!)

Fantastic!! I have prepared dozens of recipes off of this site - some have even become staple meals at my home and I have never left a review. These meatballs are great! Only minor changes on my part. I used 2lbs lean ground beef and 1lb ground pork sausage. I basically tripled the other ingredients (I am not a seasoning measurer). I omitted pepper sauce and cut down on pepper flakes ONLY because of my kids - would have added if making for adults. I only double the seasoned bread crumbs (1 cup) and used oatmeal (1/2 cup) to finish what I needed, as I don't like the taste of the pre-seasoned breadcrumbs. Needed a little more milk. This made 40 meatballs larger than a golf ball. Filled my jellyroll pan. I baked for 10 minutes, then moved a little more than half of them to my pot of spagetti sauce to finish cooking on simmer. I finished baking the other half as directed and used them for meatball sandwiches the next day. For the meatball sandwiches, I LIGHTLY buttered split french bread, sprinkled with garlic powder, covered both sides with mozzarella and fresh parmesean cheeses and broiled till bubbly. put warmed meatballs on bread and drizzle with warmed marinara sauce - YUM! Next time, I will tear fresh basil UNDER the cheese before broiling.

Delicious! Made these for my hubby and his father and they loved them! I used more than a lb of ground sirloin 90/10 and added more ingredients as needed. Mixed with sauce and served over pasta and it was an amazing dinner. Will definitely make again.

I have been looking for a meatball recipe for as long as I've been cooking---at least 25 years! I can't ground pork where I live, so I used 80/20 sirloin. These were by far the best meatballs I have EVER made. I only used 1/4 tsp red pepper flakes and they were still too hot for me---but other than that, they were perfect. I didn't change a thing, except I used Club cracker crumbs instead of bread crumbs. These meatballs were reminiscent of Flora's, an old Italian eatery I frequented as a kid. I've been trying to reproduce that flavor. These are so moist, not dry at all (I mixed everything for about 20 seconds with my hand mixer to keep it from getting dense and tough). I cannot wait to try them on crusty Italian bread with marinara and melted mozzarella!

These meatballs were delicious! I've been looking for a good Italian Meatball recipe for a long time and I think I have found the one. Served on spaghetti for dinner and on good crusty rolls as leftovers the next night.

This recipe is/was absolutely wonderful!!

That'sa spicy meatball...( in my "Old Italian Man voice") lol... Very flavorful and good!.. If you don't like spicy omit some of the red pepper/hot sauce but we loved them just as they are!... I doubled the recipe and served on whole wheat spaghetti tonight; we will probably use the rest for meatball subs tomorrow. My modifications were to omit the oregano because it's already in my Italian seasonings; I didn't have enough worcestershire so I used steak sauce... :)

Outstanding recipe! I'm not sure why other people choose to leave out the red pepper flakes and hot sauce. It does NOT make it spicy, it only adds an additional layer of flavor that makes this recipe even more awesome! Made them with spaghetti sauce and pasta and it was a big hit!

My boys LOVE these-especially my 4 yr old! I decreased the red pepper flakes to 1/4 tsp & they had just enough kick for the kiddos. Thanks for another GREAT recipe!!