Grandma’s spaghetti and meatballs get tweaked
Spaghetti and meatballs was the classic dish I ate at Grandma’s house growing up: She had her allday recipe that filled her creaky house with heady aromas that built anticipation as meatballs simmered in sauce on the stove.
The fact that she was 100 percent first-generation German — she emigrated at the age of 6 — never stopped me from making her recipe the benchmark by which every other meatball would be judged.
Tweaking her recipe to lighten it up a bit, and make it weekday-friendly by shortening the cook time, was a task I didn’t take lightly. And truth to be told: There is a special place in this rush-to-eat food world for the leisurely simmer of small orbs of meat in thick, tangy tomato sauce covered in a fine slick of co-mingled pork and beef fat that has gently floated to the top. But life is busy, and we need to get a healthy dinner on the table and move on. I get it. These meatballs are for those nights.
First to change: The fatty mix of pork and beef became simply lean (93 percent) beef. Feel free to mix in turkey, but our family preferred the beef. The next tweak: I added a half pound of mushrooms for every pound of beef to stretch the meat out and add in nutrients. I pulsed the mushrooms in a food processor, and then cooked them with another healthy meat stretcher — onions. (Here, you could add other veggies too: shredded zucchini, carrot, and chopped spinach work great.) I added the mushroom and onion mixture right in with the ground beef, and they added flavor, moisture and bulk, with nary an added calorie (nor a suspicious eye from any of my four kids). I used one egg white (no yolk), and used oats pulsed into a coarse flour instead of breadcrumbs. Simmer these meatballs directly in a pot of a high-quality jarred marinara sauce (check for no added sugar), and in 20 minutes, they will be succulent, tender, and juicy.
Almost like Grandma’s.