{"id":82,"date":"2010-01-19T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-01-19T08:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/wp_genova\/?p=82"},"modified":"2010-01-19T08:00:00","modified_gmt":"2010-01-19T08:00:00","slug":"how-to-make-meatballs-with-bacon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.dongenova.com\/site\/how-to-make-meatballs-with-bacon\/","title":{"rendered":"How To Make Meatballs, with Bacon!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"DSC_1574\"<\/a>Right at the end <\/strong><\/em>of last year my wife and I bought half a cow.  It was already processed, so we didn't have to find a place for it in the yard, just in our freezer.<\/p>\n

I had a lot of the trim from the cutting-up process minced into one-pound packages of ground beef.  There were a lot of those little brown-paper wrapped nuggets, so this year, expect a lot of entries on what to do with it.<\/p>\n

Luckily, our new edition of Bon Appetit magazine was laden with meatball recipes.<\/p>\n

So, How to Make Meatballs, chapter one<\/strong><\/em>, begins with amatriciana-style balls and sauce.  Amatriciana usually means pumping up a tomato based sauce with chunks of guanciale, cured pork cheek.  Believe it or not, I had some of that in the fridge, from the half pig I had in the freezer.<\/p>\n

The recipe actually called for applewood smoked bacon as a substitute, so I used some of the fatty trimmings from my homemade bacon.  So, two pounds of ground beef, two eggs, roasted peppers, parmigiano-reggiano cheese, panko bread crumbs (Japanese style), a generous lashing of hot red pepper flakes, and oregano. Oh, grated onion and garlic as well.<\/p>\n

\"DSC_1591\"<\/a> I took off my wedding ring<\/strong><\/em> and watch and plunged my hands into the whole mix.  A little salt and freshly ground pepper, moosh it all up, then into the fridge to let the flavours get to know each other for about half an hour.  <\/p>\n

The magazine featured tips on rolling meatballs, like having a bowl of cold water handy to plunge your hands into.  The chill made the balls easier to roll. While I was rolling I was frying more bacon trimmings that would be used in the sauce, but also used the resultant hot fat to brown the meatballs all over.<\/p>\n

\"DSC_1598\"<\/a> Once browned,<\/strong><\/em> the meatballs came out and were set aside while I browned about 3 cups of onions, more garlic, and a couple of cans of diced tomatoes. Not to mention the 2 cups of white wine…(yes, I finished the rest of the bottle)Oh, and more hot red pepper flakes!<\/p>\n

After simmering the sauce for a while, the meatballs went in to finish cooking and I boiled a few ounces of bucatini, since we were kinda tired of plain spaghetti.  <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\"DSC_1604\"<\/a>Seven minutes later<\/strong><\/em> we sat down to one of the best spaghetti (bucatini) and meatball dinners I have ever had.<\/p>\n

Looking forward to learning more about pasta and sauces at our Slow Food Pasta Workshop this coming Sunday.  Visit our website <\/a>to learn more.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Right at the end of last year my wife and I bought half a cow.  It was already processed, so we didn't have to find a place for it in the yard, just in our freezer. I had a lot … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-82","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-all-you-can-eat-test-kitchen","category-ground-meat-madness"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.dongenova.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.dongenova.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.dongenova.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.dongenova.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.dongenova.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=82"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.dongenova.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.dongenova.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=82"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.dongenova.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=82"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.dongenova.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=82"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}