Best meatball recipe | Easy pasta ideas | Jamie Oliver (2024)

FAQs

Which pasta is most widely used with meatballs? ›

Orecchiette: Known as small ears, orecchiette pasta derives from Puglia. They are often served with oil-based sauces and especially popular with broccoli rabe and sausage. Spaghetti: The most famous long pasta shape, spaghetti mixes wonderfully with a variety of sauces. It's the classic shape to serve with meatballs.

The best meatballs are tender, baked and browned in a hot oven to seal in all the juices. Simmered in robust sauce for a couple of minutes ensures they soak up all of those saucy flavours, this is an easy dinner recipe that will be a hit with your family!

In Italy, meatballs are most often a stand-alone dish. Called polpettes, Italian meatballs are often served sauceless and are much smaller than the meatballs you're probably used to. Traditional Italian meatballs typically contain equal portions of meat and soaked bread, and other additions such as egg and vegetables.

The most popular dried pasta in Italy is Barilla, which has recently become more widely available in the United States. Like all Italian dried pasta, it is made under rigid Government controls from hard durum-wheat flour, called semola di grano duro in Italian and semolina in English.

Italian-style meatballs often include additional ingredients such as milk, olive oil, ground pork, fresh parsley, red pepper flakes, Italian herb seasoning, and sometimes a combination of ground beef, veal, and pork [2].

Egg and breadcrumbs are common mix-ins to add moisture and tenderness. Another binder option that people swear by is a panade, which is fresh or dry breadcrumbs that have been soaked in milk. “The soaked breadcrumbs help keep the proteins in the meat from shrinking,” as food writer Tara Holland explained in the Kitchn.

After all of the Italian meatballs I've been making lately, I consider myself a meatball expert. A good rule of thumb is to bake meatballs for 25-30 minutes at 350 degrees fahrenheit.

While water and broth may keep the meatballs moist throughout the cooking process, milk's extra fat and luscious consistency add an unmatched level of complexity to any classic meatball recipe.

Not when speaking Italian: spaghetti is an italian word, and it is the plural of spaghetto. No need to call them elsewhere. “Spagett” (double t at end) is the Milanese (and Lombard) translation of “Spaghetti”. So they do if an when they speak those dialects.

What is the name of Italian pasta with meatballs? ›

However, combinations of pasta with meat date back at least to the Middle Ages, and pasta (including long pasta) dishes with tomato sauce and different kinds of meatballs are documented in certain Italian regions and in modern Italian cookbooks as maccheroni alle polpette (translated as 'spaghetti with meatballs') and ...

Spaghetti and meatballs with tomato sauce is a purely American invention, the result of a surge of Italian immigration to the U.S. and the adaptations they made to available ingredients. The truth about meatballs is that they are a clever way to dress up tough, cheaper cuts of meat.

And that is Swedish meatballs with perfectly cooked elbow macaroni stirred into that heavenly cream sauce gravy. I know. It's mind-blowingly-fantastic. Now if elbow macaroni is not your thing, you can use ANY pasta to your liking – rotini, cavatelli, ditalini, penne – it is ALL GOOD.

The Fusion of Flavors

The dish evolved as Italian immigrants combined their culinary traditions with American ingredients. They began serving spaghetti with larger American-style meatballs and tomato sauce, creating a satisfying meal.

Yes, Italy has its version of meatballs called polpettes, but they differ from their American counterpart in multiple ways. They are primarily eaten as a meal itself (plain) or in soups and made with any meat from turkey to fish.