This week’s recipe for Cook the Book Fridays comes from Dorie Greenspan’s latest cookbook, Everyday Dorie and was the perfect comfort food this week. Meatballs and Spaghetti sounds like a simple dish but slow cooked, the meatballs take on a lot of flavour.
In fact, my version of the dish was even simpler as I used a prepared tomato sauce that I had in the fridge that needed using us. It was spicy too which worked well – my sausages that I defrosted ended up being NOT spicy (as the recipe calls for) so this balanced it out well! The sauce in the recipe is just tomatoes, garlic and a little balsamic (also the ingredients in my jarred sauce!) and it’s a good reminder that you can get a lot of flavour from just a few ingredients.
The meatballs themselves contain ground beef, spicy sausage, red onion, salt, pepper, an egg, herbs and – oats and walnuts! Stealth healthy ingredients! I opted not to use walnuts as I was serving these to Neil who is recovering from dental surgery so no “hard food” allowed for a few days – I added a touch more oats to compensate.
Dorie simmers the meatballs in the sauce in a Dutch oven on the stovetop for 90 minutes but I couldn’t be in or around the kitchen for that long the day I made them so I put them in the slow cooker. Perfect! 2 hours later…
My only comment about these and the only thing I would change is using a smaller cookie scoop to portion these. The recipe calls for a 1 1/2 tablespoon cookie scoop which makes HUGE meatballs (the photo in the book shows much smaller ones, I think…). I cut these in halves to photo and serve them and it was a little more manageable!
I will, however be making these again – love the reminder to pan fry and brown meatballs to get some flavour them slowly cook them in a sauce so it permeated the meat. SO good.
Get the recipe for Dorie Greenspan’s Spaghetti and Meatballs on page 22 of Everyday Dorie or here.
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Disclosure: I was provided with a copy of “Everyday Dorie” for review purposes. I was not asked to write about the book, nor am I being compensated for doing so. All opinions 100% my own.
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Yum
I ended up making 30 meatballs, a few more than Dorie suggests. I agree with you on making smaller meatballs with a smaller cookie scoop. All and all, they are delicious!
love how you made this work for you! these photos are great–so beautiful on that blue plate!
Great adaptations to make it work for you…looks delicious! We loved this one too!
What I will like about this recipe ( I will make later this month) is that I can manage portion control and make 1/2 or 1/3 the recipe. Loved the slow cooker tip. Hope Neil is on the mend. Yuck. Dental surgery, Yuck. Yuck. XOX
We also left out the walnuts for my nut allergy kid. This recipe not for week night meals due to time but I love your slow cooker idea. I thought the frying in the pan was a nice touch and the sauce was good.