I Made Meatballs Yesterday

For years I have been making this amazing sweet and sour sauce. Everyone that has tried my sweet and sour meatballs has loved them. They're that good.

But I've always used frozen meatballs. I know, I know, blasphemy. How dare I? It's not laziness, I swear. It was intimidation.

Somewhere along the line - and I have no idea where - I got it into my head that meatballs were challenging. That making good meatballs is tricky and difficult to get right. That they were difficult. So I never even attempted it, and I continued to use those dreary, frozen gray balls.

Until yesterday. Somehow I worked up the amazing amount of courage to just do it. I made meatballs for the first time. And... they were easy. They took almost no time at all to make. The recipe was relatively simple, and the process was not overly complicated.

The same thing happened with making my company an LLC. I got it into my head that it would be an arduous process with complicated paperwork requiring an expensive lawyer. In reality most of the work took less than an hour and cost $250.

I let it get into my head that something would be difficult without first making an attempt, or even giving it serious consideration. And I suffered years of bland meat-like things as a consequence. Don't tolerate gray balls of meat in your life.


Oh, and the meatballs were delicious. Here's a rough recipe. It's mostly taken from The Kitchn:

Pour 1/2 cup milk over 1/2 cup breadcrumbs and let them soak and grow soggy. Beat an egg in a large bowl, then mix in a teaspoon of salt, pepper, and a half cup of grated Parmesan. (The stuff you get in the pasta sauce aisle works fine, so does nicer real cheese.) Throw in a handful of finely chopped parsley if you have it. If not, add in some dry herbs - I've tried parsley, basil, and oregano. I like to add sage here too.

Now for the gross part - mix in a pound of ground meat with your hands. You can wear prep gloves if you don't like raw meat getting under your fingernails. I'll typically use ground chuck for these, but they are better if you mix ground chuck and Italian sausage. If you're not using sausage you probably want to go heavy on the spices and herbs. Add a chopped small onion or half of a large onion. If you don't like the texture of onion, use a generous amount of onion powder. Add a clove of garlic minced. And add in the soggy breadcrumbs. Mix this again with your hands.

Roll the meat into balls. I make two bite balls, but you can make them however large or small you like. The important thing is getting a roughly consistent size so that they cook at the same rate. Lay them out on a baking sheet with room in between them, and bake at 400 degrees for 20 to 30 minutes. Use a meat thermometer to check the internal temperature.