There’s lots of different ways to make meatballs, combining meats brings more flavour to the party to say the least. Along with pork and beef were also adding some of our super flavoursome salami, our favourite to add to this has to be the Tuscan Salami but all of the work well.
Making a good sauce, sometimes less is more, for this recipe we decided to keep it super simple with a basic tomato sauce with onion and garlic. There’s some added sugar to help balance out the acidity from the tomatoes. The slow cooking of this sauce brings lots of flavour and gives you the time to create the meatballs without rushing.
3 Top Tips For Making Fennel Meatballs
- It’s all about protein extraction, you don’t necessarily need to use egg to help bind the meat, you can do this by mixing and squeezing the meat between your fingers. This is the same approach as when we hand craft salami. The process of protein extraction pulls out an ingredient to the surface called myosin. Look at it another way, not only will this help you bind the meat together but it’s ensuring all the ingredients are well combined!
- If you’re able to make them much earlier than when you want to cook them, it’s a good idea to chill them down once you’ve rolled them into fennel meatballs. They generally hold their form better when oven baking them. So long as you haven’t added too much liquid they will retain their form.
- When adding liquids try and avoid acids to prevent denaturing the proteins that you’ve worked hard to bind together. Water and milk are good additions as this will help keep the fennel meatballs juicy. Add too much and you’ll end up with lots of liquid leeching out of them as they cook. So what’s the magic number on how much liquid to add? From experience we prefer to go with a maximum of 1.25% of the total recipe for additional liquids. Have a play about and see for yourself what works.
6
servings20
minutes1
hour1
hour10
minutesIngredients
- To Make The Meatballs
1 1/2 tsp Fennel Seeds
1 Onion
3 Cloves Garlic
1/2 tsp Salt
1 Egg
75ml Whole Milk
2 Slices Brown Bread
500g Lean Minced Pork
750g Lean Minced Beef
Choose 1 of the following:
100g Tuscan Salami
100g Genoa Salami
100g Warwickshire Salami
100g Stratford Saucisson
- To Make The Sauce
1 Large Onion
4 Cloves Garlic
1200g Canned Chopped Tomatoes
2 Tbsp Granulated Sugar
1/4 tsp Salt
1/4 tsp Black Pepper
Directions
- Cook your Sauce first as it takes the longest. In a separate pan, heat the olive oil, add the garlic and cook gently for 4 minutes until golden. Add the onions and cook for a further 5 minutes until soft. Add the chopped canned tomatoes and sugar. Cook this low and slow for about an hour until the larger pieces of tomato have softened. Don’t be tempted to blend it, the texture is good but what will occur is that any seeds will turn the sauce bitter. Taste the sauce and add the seasoning as you desire.
- Pre-heat the oven to 230°C
- In a frying gently warm the fennel seeds until they begin to become fragrant and lightly toasted, place into a large pestle and mortar and grind into a powder. Add the garlic cloves and a little salt to create a thick paste.
- In a mini blender turn your bread into fine breadcrumbs and soak in the milk for 10-15 minutes, add the fennel seed and garlic paste and mix well.
- Chop your salami into small pieces along with the onion, in fact as finely as you can. Place the egg, minced beef, minced pork and bread, milk fennel, garlic mixture all into a large bowl. This is where you now need to spend a good ten minutes mixing the ingredients to get a little protein extraction and help them really bind well together. Roll into golf ball size pieces and place into a baking tray.
- Cook the meatballs on the top shelf of the oven for 11 minutes, turn them over and then cook for a further 7 minutes. The meatballs need to be 70°C in the middle. Don’t overcook them as they will dry up, we added moisture to keep them juicy!
Now that you’ve made the fennel meatballs and the sauce, what are you going to serve them with? The usual suspects are dried pasta such as penne or spaghetti. Plain long grain rice or wild rice is a great option and should you choose there’s also quinoa and couscous.
