Meatball Madness

If you are not Italian, perhaps you may not understand the heated debate surrounding what makes a great meatball. For last night's very un-scientific tasting we tried to decide whether one should fry, bake or cook your meatballs in your tomato sauce when making "gravy". And who better to tell you what makes a great meatball than the people who grew up eating them? If you think that sauce from a jar is completely and totally unacceptable, then you'll understand...

I assembled a veritable Cosa Nostra for my meatball tasting panel. The group wound up being a bit smaller than anticipated with Peanut D having plans with her Mom, MPV's son having to go to the doctor and my consigliere RRR working late and falling ill - but Monty & the GreenbandEeto were my enthusiastic tasting duo.

I separated my pasta platter into three sections: baked, fried & cooked in the sauce. I asked Monty & BandEeto to determine two things; (one) which one was their favorite and (two) which meatball was baked, fried and cooked.

BandEeto thought the meatballs went fried, cooked then baked and preferred the second one (cooked) although they were all "awesome".

Monty agreed on the awesome-ness but thought the order was fried, baked and cooked in the sauce. He suprisingly preferred the cooked in the sauce because it was "juicier" even though he's grown up on fried.

I was a bit of an impartial judge having eaten meatballs ad nauseam for the two weeks in preparation for last night's tasting but I have to admit they were all pretty close on taste and texture.

The actual order was (from right to left): baked, fried and cooked in the sauce.

The fact that I was able to get the baked version pretty crispy and brown was a bit deceptive to the panel. Judging by look before tasting it; it certainly seemed like this one was fried. What may also have skewed the results a bit were that the baked & fried were made on the same day meaning they had the same combination of ingredients versus the cooked in sauce version that was made at a later date.

I think the upshot of my 'experiment' was that what goes INTO the meatball winds up being just as important as how you cook it. While many of us may have grown up on our parent's & grandparents "calories-be-damned" meatballs, you can get the same crispy outside on a baked meatball with less mess, oil and calories than the splattery fried version without much of a compromise on flavor. And as far a baking in the sauce, I guess it is simply a matter of how much time you have on your hands since it does take a bit longer to make this version.

Or perhaps at the end of the day, there really isn't such a thing as a bad meatball - it's just all in the execution. Actually, I've had plenty of bad meatballs so maybe I should just be patting myself on the back for a meatball well done!

Luckily for a select group of my co-workers, today they get to enjoy the fruits (or meat as the case may be) of my labor.