hello this is chef john from food wishes comma with meatball stuffed garlic bread
sliders that's right i'm going to show you a very simple technique for turning
a plain old package of dinner rolls into a stellar slab of what are basically
mini meatball subs and while I'm not sure exactly what occasion you'll be
serving these apps I do know that long after whatever that is is forgotten
people will still be talking about that time that person brought those meatball
sliders and you know what that person was you so with that let's go hang get
started by quickly mixing up some meatballs which we will start with one
pound of ground beef grass-fed of course and to that we will add some onions and
garlic we've sauteed in olive oil along with some freshly chopped to tell him
parsley and one large egg extra credit if you beat it first we'll also toss in
some plain dry breadcrumbs and then if I was making regular meatballs I would add
some Parmesan cheese here but for these sliders I'm actually gonna add a handful
of grated fontina and by the way provolone would also be a beautiful
choice and I'm gonna finish these up by seasoning with some kosher salt some
freshly ground black pepper and of course a little touch of cayenne and
then we'll get in there with a couple of clean hands and mix this until just
combined and by the way of time is short and or you're making this for a large
group it's okay if you want to buy some pre-made meatballs for as long as
they're good quality I think we're all fine with that but anyway we'll go ahead
and give that a mix which would usually bring us to the most time-consuming
difficult part of the operation the traditional rolling and frying of the
meatballs but we're not gonna do that we're gonna take a shortcut by using the
old mini meat muffin method which is simply done by filling these mini muffin
cups up to the top with our mixture and then if we want with some dappin fingers
we can kind of smooth out the tops and as you'll see once these are break we're
gonna end up with a very meatball like shape which by the way for this use is
really not that big of a deal since these are gonna be stuffed in our rolls
and covered with cheese and sauce a perfectly round meatball is not going to
be noticed but anyway we'll go ahead and fill those up at which point they're
ready to transfer into the center of a 400 degree oven for about 12 minutes or
until they're just about cooked through and look a little something like this
and once those are said I will do is set those aside and let them cool down a
little bit while we move on to prep our rolls and we will start that by making a
little bit of garlic butter and for that we will melt a couple tablespoons of
unsalted butter over medium heat and once we see those milk solids in the pan
start to bubble we'll go ahead and add a couple cloves of finely minced garlic
and we will stir that in and immediately turn off the heat all right because
there's gonna be enough residual heat in that butter as this cools down that fat
is going to be perfectly infused with that garlic flavor and by the way I'm
using butter here but you could also do this with olive oil or a combination and
then once that's been accomplished we can simply set that aside and move on to
whole our rolls which I'm going to take out of the package in place on a well
oiled piece of foil on this sheet pan okay just rub that with some olive oil
and we'll go ahead and transfer our rolls on still attached I mean what
we're gonna want to do here is take a small knife preferably serrated and cut
a round a meatball sized hole on top of each one and we'll go ahead and pull
that piece out and save it for bread crumbs oh and one tip we don't want to
be cutting all the way through okay I'm trying to only go about two-thirds of
the way down okay because we are gonna fill these with sauce and meatballs we
do want to retain a little bit of bread at the bottom so we will go ahead and
make a hole in each one at which point we can take our garlic butter and very
generously apply it to the inside and outside of these rolls when in case
you're wondering I'm using some rolls that were imported from Hawaii because I
thought the sweetness would pair perfectly with the extra spicy tomato
sauce I'm using but of course any similarly sized roll will work here and
then what we'll do once these have been thoroughly garlic buttered is pop these
into the center of a 400 degree oven for about eight to ten minutes or until they
just start to turn golden brown and hopefully look a little something like
this and then before we start stuffing these with our meatballs what we'll do
is add about a tablespoon of tomato sauce to each one and as I mentioned I'm
using a spicy tomato sauce for this which was basically a marinara I put too
many red pepper flakes in but it really did work beautifully for this so like I
said we'll go ahead and add about a tablespoon or so to each one and once
that's been accomplished we can now start placing it in our meatballs which
if everything's gotten according to plan should just barely fit into the hole we
made and as usual the first one is always the
worst one okay that ball was a little bigger than the hole so as you're doing
these try to match the meatball to the appropriate role ok the roles are gonna
vary a little bit in size as are the balls so don't be afraid to do a little
bit of matchmaking and please note this is a techniques video and not
necessarily a specific recipe since we could use this exact same procedure to
stuff these with anything we want I mean you guys are after all the Billy Joel's
of what to stuff in these holes and if you happen to be in more of a New York
state of mind you could stuff these would press trom EA and cheese and
sauerkraut and do like a Reuben version or maybe Italian sausage and peppers or
sloppy joe mix or hay even something like garlic shrimp could work so what
I'm trying to say is even if you're not into meatballs you should make these
anyway and then what we'll do after we're done ballin and shot Colin is go
ahead and top these with sauce and cheese and just like when we're making
pizza we don't wanna wreck these by putting on too much topping all right we
definitely want enough sauce and cheese to make these moist and delicious but we
don't want them so sloppy we can't eat them so I don't think you want to use
much more sauce than you see me applying here and then one sauce I'm gonna go
ahead and apply some more grated fontina to the top and if you never had fontina
cheese before it's kind of like mozzarella only with flavor so I really
do like it here but of course use whatever you want and then we'll go
ahead and finish this off with a very very generous grading of Parmesan cheese
all right the real stuff parmigiano-reggiano from Italy and
that's it once that's been top with cheese we will finish this off by
placing it back in the center of our 400 degree oven for about 12 to 15 minutes
or until it's beautifully browned and our cheese is melted and everything's
heated through oh yes that does look amazing and you're gonna want to enjoy
these immediately but don't okay let's let these wait about 5 or 10 minutes to
firm up a little bit before we try to transfer them onto our serving platter
and while we're waiting if we want we can go ahead and garnish the top with
some freshly chopped to tell you parsley which not only looks nice but it will
also prevent you from getting garlic breath true story something to do with
the chlorophyll I'm not sure it's all very scientific but
go ahead and scatter over some parsley and like I said we'll let that sit about
five or ten minutes before transferring that onto our serving platter and that's
it what we're calling meatball stuffed garlic bread sliders is done or is it
are done I'm not sure but either way I'm ready to try one so let me go ahead and
grab this freakishly small cleaver so I can hack one off and go in for a taste
and that my friends really was amazing right not only do these look amazing and
taste delicious but most importantly especially when it comes to party food
they are extremely fun to eat I mean sure we could have just split the rolls
open and shoved in some meatball sauce and cheese but there's just something
about having it place down in the center there really makes it special and is
hopefully you can see here we achieve the perfect ratio of meat to roll to
sauce to cheese so I really was extremely happy with how these came out
although if I was gonna nitpick next time I'll probably just use a regular
dinner roll since as I said I chose the sweet ones because I thought that would
match my spicy tomato sauce but I thought the sweetness of the roll kind
of took away from the garlic bread aspect so that's something I might
adjust later but either way if you're looking to impress some friends and
family at a party or you're just looking to make a tasty snack for yourself or
maybe your new year's resolution was deep more stuffed breads no matter your
motivation I really do hope you give these a try soon so head over to food
wishes comm for all the ingredient amounts of more info as usual and as
always enjoy
you