Spicy Lamb and Beef Meatballs with Crispy Onions

Lamb and Beef Meatballs with Crispy Onions

Who doesn't love a meatball?

 So many cultures have meatballs. Wikipedia helpfully lists meatballs from 28 countries alphabetically from Afghanistan to Vietnam.

So many families have their favorite meatball. My  Mother's best meatball used a powder called Spatini, and leftover meatball sandwiches were treasured lunches.

My tastes have changed, and I went on a decades-long search for the secret of really spicy meatballs, which I learned by trial-and-error.

The road to spicy meatballs:  

1.  Italian Grandmothers have known this forever: Cooking the raw meatball in sauce is good for the sauce and bad for the meatball. The sauce gets the flavor and the meatball becomes texture.
2. Really spicy meatballs require aggressively spicy ingredients: hot sausage, pepperoni, tiny dice of fried very hot peppers, cayenne, chili paste, etc.

New to my meatball repertoire: lamb meatballs

Which came first? Lamb at the supermarket or a lamb meatball recipe in my nighttime reading? Don't know. This is a very flexible recipe that can be made with all lamb or 2/3 ground lamb and 1/3 ground beef. These meatballs freeze well and make great sandwiches (especially in pita). They are wonderful additions to salads and good friends to pizza. Use them in onion/garlic/hot pepper/meatball/spaghetti stir fries or (I live in Minnesota) your favorite hot dish.

Cook's Notes: 

1.  Fry the onions first. By the time you have made the meatballs they should be caramelized, and can be moved aside for the meatballs. If you have so many onions that the meatballs won't fit in the pan, remove half and serve them with cooked meatballs.
2.  If you have only whole spices, measure them out and grind them with some of the Panko in a coffee grinder. A mini-food processor won't get them to a fine grind.
3.  Makes 16 golf ball sized meatballs.

Lamb Meatballs With Crispy Onions

1 onion, thin sliced
2T neutral oil (Canola)

2 t ground cumin
2 t ground coriander
2 t ground caraway
1/2 t ground fennel seed
1/4 t cinnamon
1/2 t cayenne
2 scallions finely chopped
1 c fresh parsley finely chopped (or 1/3 cup dried parsley)
1-1/2 t harissa or Siracha
3 cloves of garlic finely minced
1 egg
1 c Panko
1-1/2 # lamb or 1# lamb & 1/2 # ground beef

1.  Heat the oil in a large oven-proof skillet. Fry the onions on medium heat. Turn on the oven to 375 or 350 in a convection oven.
2.  Mix the spices, scallions, parsley, harissa or Siracha, garlic, and egg in a large bowl. Add the Panko and mix well.
3.  Add the meat or meats to the bowl and mix well with your hands. Using your hands or an ice cream scoop, make 16 golf-ball sized meatballs.
4.  Add the meatballs to the pan with the caramelized onions. Brown on all sides.
5.  Bake for 15 minutes in the oven.

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Through Pass the Baton llc, Susan Gainen lectures to law students on Professionalism, Second-Career Law Students, Alternative Careers, Job Search Outside of OCI, and Job Search Skills = Business Development Skills. As Painter and Chief Whimsy Officer of nanoscapes & other visions llc, she paints geometric abstractions, whimsical creatures called small friends, and The Lost Cave Paintings of Saint Paul. She also teaches "Knife Skills," her favorite cooking class.

Really good meatballs and a meatball mistake

There are hundreds of methods for making great meatballs. While I hope that you find one you love and stick with it, you may want to experiment. A warning, though: "Healthy," Crunchy, Dampened Flavor Meatballs are a particularly bad idea.

Without an Italian Grandmother, my Spicy Meatball Odyssey took decades. Finally, I gratefully borrowed a method from generations of Nonnas, who take sturdy white bread and make a panade (paste) with milk or buttermilk. I made it my own by adding teeny tiny dice of sautéed pepperoni, onions, mushrooms, garlic and hot peppers, and learned that hot Italian sausage is the secret to a spicy meatball. Finally, because fresh meatballs give up their flavor when cooked in sauce, I now bake them and then add them to cooked sauces. They also make great meatball sandwiches.

Why mess with a good thing? Sometimes the urge to experiment is overwhelming. Learn from this: just because you can, doesn't mean you should.

I wanted a “healthy” meatball, and armed myself with a Healthy Hearty Whole Grain Bread That Was Fully Packed with Nuts, Seeds and Berries. Perhaps because it was a very tiny and very heavy and because I toasted it to enhance the "health," the texture and flavor of the meats and the spices were whomped by dead bread. Worse yet, crunchy nuts, seeds and berries are not friends to meatballs.

My meatballs are always different from one another, based on what was in my fridge or pantry or what meat combination was appealing. But one thing is certain, I'll always stick with plain bread...

Really good meatballs (freely adapted from Cook’s Illustrated The Complete Book of Pasta and Noodles, Clarkson Potter, 2000)

4 slices of sturdy white bread, cut into small pieces
1 cup of buttermilk (fresh or made with butttermilk powder)
1 cup total after cooking (your pantry’s choice: tiny dice of pepperoni, mushrooms, onions, garlic & hot peppers)
½ cup fresh grated Parmesan cheese
2 T minced fresh or 1T dried parsley
1 whole egg and 1 egg yolk
½ tsp salt
1 T fresh ground pepper
2 pounds of mixed ground meats (your choice: ground beef, ground beef/pork/veal meatloaf mixture, with at least one-third Spicy Italian Sausage)

1. Preheat the oven to 375. Cover a large sheet pan with foil, and Pam™ a rack that fits into or over the pan.
2. Soak the bread in the buttermilk for at least 10 minutes. Stir it vigorously to make a paste. Add the pepperoni-vegetable mixture, the cheese, parsley, egg, salt and pepper.
Add the meat and mix thoroughly.
3. Make meatballs as large or as small as you like.
4. Bake for 10 minutes. Check for doneness (are they cooked through?) and turn them and bake for 5-10 additional minutes. Add to sauce right away or cool on the rack.
5. To freeze, lay them out on a clean baking sheet. When frozen solid, pack into freezer bags or containers.
Recommended reading: Carol Field's In Nonna's Kitchen: Recipes and Traditions From Italy's Grandmothers. I read this straight through like a novel. Even if you never cook from it, you'll be inspired by the stories and you'll treasure the history.