SECRET Meatball Recipe from My Italian Grandma | Nonna Knows Ep. 3

RECIPE BELOW!
Today I’ve convinced my Nonna to share her slightly-untraditional Italian meatball recipe with me: Her Polpettes Con Riso. Let’s get cooking (Watch til the end to see what Nonna rates my dish on a scale from 1-10!!!)

And let me know what recipe you want from Nonna next!

WHAT YOU’LL NEED
-1 lb of pork
-1 lb of beef
-2 sausages with the casing removed
-3/4 medium-small loaf of stale Italian bread
-Milk
-Salt “to taste”
-Pepper “to taste”
-1 “touch” of nutmeg
-1 “handful” of chopped parsley
-2 “spoonfuls” of freshly grated parmesan
-2 Eggs
-1/2 medium onion, chopped
-1 drizzle of olive oil
-1 & 1/2 cans of crushed tomatoes
-Water
-1/2 tsp of sugar
-1 “handful” of basil
-White rice

HOW TO COOK IT (according to Nonna)
0:31 – Meet Nonna!
0:57 – Prep your ingredients.
1:37 – Soak the inside (without the crust) of bread in just enough warm milk to cover the bread.
2:32 – Mix your meats then season with your nutmeg and parsley + some Italian-sized pinches of salt and pepper.
3:00 – Strain the milk out of your bread then add the bread to your meat mixture.
3:24 – Add your parmesan and eggs to the meat mixture.
4:10 – Chill meat mixture in refrigerator for 30 minutes.
4:20 – In a wide and shallow braising pan, add your olive oil and onion, sweat for a few minutes.
5:09 – Add your crushed tomatoes, a bit of water, salt, pepper, sugar, and basil to the same pan.
5:38 – Let pan cook on medium-high heat for about 10 minutes.
5:46 – Remove your meat mixture from the refrigerator & prep 1 medium-sized bowl of water.
5:53 – Create golf-ball sized meatballs by rolling the meat in your hands, and add them to your sauce pan! Nonna note: Immediately put each individual meatball into your pan after rolling. Don’t wait for all meatballs to be rolled before adding to your pan.
6:50 – Nonna note: Wet your hands using your bowl of water between every 3-4 meatballs.
7:02 – Shake your pan in small circles to make room for more meatballs, then add more meatballs. Why? Nonna says so and it works!
7:45 – Let sauce pan cook for 20 minutes, uncovered.
8:25 – Lower heat after 10 minutes until sauce stops bubbling.
9:15 – Remove pan from heat.
10:14 – Plate by adding as many meatballs as you like to the center of a bowl of cooked white rice.
11:58 – Get a review of your dish!
12:55 – Help yourself to seconds because it’s just TOO good!

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that looks fing sick I’m Owen Han this is Nana nose and today we’re making Nana’s meatballs CIA nana n meatballs also known as Pete in Italian today we’re making nonas variation gr up eating these so you might think this show being non the NOS is all about classic Italian dishes and to be fair we are doing some Classics but at the same time we’re doing non the specific recipes which sometimes like today might be a little outside the box NAIA how are you I am great Nana’s recipes are very specific which is what makes them so special I’m on a mission to recreate them using her techniques and when I’m done I’m going to give her a call show her the results wish me lucke ciao Bye Mom just got off the phone Nana here we have all the ingredients to make hero all the meat we got pork beef and sausage usually you see pork beef and ve that’s a power move sausage way tastier than ve Pig beef half and half t m d bread which will soak in some warm milk two eggs go in the mixture parmesan and we’ll season with salt pepper nutmeg a little bit of parsley as well and then Super simp simple for the tomato sauce onion obviously crushed tomatoes and of course it’s Coro so we got our good old rice so for our first step we are soaking our bread in some warm milk old ass loaf of [Music] bread the recipe calls for half a loaf I will say this seems like a smaller loaf so we’re just going to do maybe like 3/4 of it and then she uses warm milk so this has been heating up just enough to really cover it the reason behind this is to really help bind all the proteins together keep it shape and one thing I noticed when eating these meatballs as a kid is they’re super light I think one of the main reasons being bread soaked in milk definitely do not skip this step we’re going to let that sit while we make our meat mixture Big Bowl One lound of beef one lb of pork one to two sausages she’s always like you just kind of feel it out I just love sausage so we’re going to we’re going to do two here get it out of the casing I believe nna on the call said just really any sausage will work now obviously we have to season it pepper salt a touch of nutmeg and then chopped parsley and now by the time this is all done the bread should be good to go it’s clearly soaked it is super hot very crucial step that Nana was saying is you really want to ring it out I mean any excess liquid I think will really kind of mess up the structure of the meatball so you really just want as little liquid in here as possible there we go nice now two spoonfuls of Parmesan and two whole eggs got a nail it this time there we go I was getting a lot of a lot of from Nana for how I cracked my eggs [Music] before try not to crack him like a fool like me sorry [Music] Nana and she’s still going to give me hello Uncle see everyone’s making fun of me for how I crack my eggs this will chill in the fridge for 30 minutes while we make the sauce and by the time the sauce is done you can make the meatballs and put it in the sauce so there’s no killing time essentially it’s just go go go super crucial step for this is you need a shallow brazing pan not a big ass pot boom so this sauce is slightly similar to the tomato sauce we made for the pastal Forno the only difference really is we add a little bit of water because you want a little more liquid to really simmer and cook all those meatballs half an onion for this ount of [Music] sauce great sound all right these look pretty sweaty um okay so we’re going to go in with 1 and 1/2 tins tomato and then she adds half a cup of water as well and this is really just to make sure there’s enough liquid and now we can season it salt pepper The crucial step good old sugar same so we’ll just do like that looks about right don’t forget your basil so we’re going to let this go for about 10 minutes and by the time this is up the meatballs in the fridge have cooled all right so we have our meatball station set up sauce meat and you’re going to need a bowl of water that is critical First Step W your hands this is so the meat doesn’t stick to it now one big note you’re not making Americanized meatballs here I think I referenced it to a baseball we’re going for golf ball pingpong [Music] size that looks about right so as soon as you roll just boom you plop it in and then you just keep going this is a if you got kids feel like this is a fun family activity I don’t so maybe I could be wrong maybe kids don’t like this stuff but it’s fun for me so as a kid I used to roll these all the time with nna it was just the whole fam would get together big pot of meat in the middle of the table and we would just all get rolling that’s a lie I can’t lie it was it was all NaNa so Nana made a crucial point after about 3 or 4 you’re going to want to rewet your hands [Music] seems quite full and overcrowded but this is where we use nna’s trick awesome technique here the shake and [Music] stir okay that looks sick so definitely just created a bunch of space I think we can plop more on the outside and then the more we shake the more it’ll just kind of sit in the middle I think as they cook they’ll also shrink a little bit I think as they go as well we’ll we’ll do a little shake to make sure it’s all getting evenly cooked give it 20 minutes and they’ll be totally cooked I would avoid touching or trying to move it with a spatula because they’re super tender and soft so any sort of movement will break them apart give them time to firm up in the sauce flavor-wise I almost prefer this because you get like a meatball that almost melts in your mouth as opposed to searing it and all the flavor is still there it’s seeping into the sauce it’s a perfect combo I just don’t know whether we cook this covered or uncovered so I’m going to give Nana a ring n [Applause] [Music] okay ciao that just shows you how OG Nana is she’s not even here just looking through it over the phone she says it’s too liquidy give it five more minutes at this heat and then lower it because she noticed it’s bubbling too much so it’s too high of a heat and it’ll be too dried out if you cook it all the way through at this temperature good thing we called her and she said uncovered so we got that part right 20 minutes are up boom this looks amazing one key thing we talked about it earlier how the meatballs simmering in the sauce are going to released the fat and the flavor we weren’t just pulling that out of our ass and you can see the separation here that is all flavor and fat that came from the meat yum I can just feel it and I know they’re cooked I mean they’re super tender but just to show you guys we’ll take one out and we’ll get a nice little crosssection I mean I can do this with like the back of the knife so I mean I could have cut into this with like my finger and it would have fallen apart they are super delicate they like crumble and melt at the touch I’m telling you literally the meat it just it it melts I don’t know how else to explain it it is so different from any other meatball really that I’ve had this is it these are n Pete wow wow wow wow that is so good so honestly this would be amazing with spaghetti but it’s just as good if not better with rice so just regular cooked white rice and basically what Nana does is she kind of creates like a crater Cola our good old trusty tools gifted To Us by Nana herself we use this for sauce we’ll use this for the meatballs now this is a pretty big portion I would say it would feed like two or three people or just one hungry me and of course we have to grate some fresh Paroo on top so I’m G give n a ring for Italia Echo he [Applause] na see you later Chia na that was our first ever 10 and I got to say if there’s a dish deserving of that it may not look anything special but I’m telling you like forget about the rice just make these meatballs please I there’s nothing like it I I generally don’t know how else to explain it they melt in your mouth it is so flavorful this will be great on a sandwich it’ll be great with pasta potatoes whatever like even on their own just this is worth making Nana gave it a 10 out of 10 it’s a 10 out of 10 for me one of my favorite dishes we just made Nas BSE