Sadly, it's almost the end of comfort food season,
so today, I thought I'd get in under the wire
with a little mini-meatball stroganoff,
yum. (audience hums)
So, the meatballs for this dish
are actually the filling that I use
for meat cannelloni.
The gravy's a little different,
but it's an equally delicious filling
if you just wanna make a bechamel sauce,
stuff it inside cannelloni, bake it off in the oven.
For the base for the meatballs,
we're using an equal amount of ground veal
and ground chicken.
It's very tender, very buttery.
You can switch that up if you like,
switch out the veal for beef,
switch out the chicken for pork.
That's more traditional, right,
the mixture of beef and pork.
But, I'm tellin' ya, I stand behind this choice.
So, two pounds of meat all day.
I have veal and chicken as I said,
and I'm gonna season that with salt,
and instead of black pepper,
I like to use white pepper in this dish.
To that, I'm going to add a little bit of cooled,
completely cooled, finely-chopped onion and garlic.
To that, a little breadcrumb,
about three-quarters of a cup,
and then we're going to moisten the breadcrumb
with a little half-and-half,
or cream or whole milk, any of those will work,
you wanna keep this nice and moist.
To that, we're going to add in one egg, boop.
And then, here's the secret ingredient,
a mousse-style pate.
So, this is a little, thin slice from the store.
This was a duck and pork combo,
and this is just straight-up chicken liver.
See, it's like a mousse.
You put in just a little bit,
a couple of ounces.
It's weird, but let me tell you,
it makes these crazy, like, mouth-watering,
insanely good. (audience laughing)
So then, you gotta take your rings off,
a little drizzle of olive oil in here
to help them brown in the oven.
We're going to roast these,
one kind of a small,
little bit smaller than a golf ball size,
we're gonna roast these on a piece of parchment paper
in a 400-degree oven until they're lightly golden
and just cooked through.
Don't overcook them.
They're tiny, little meatballs, it won't take long.
Now, if you want, you can use a small scoop,
I'd say like a one, one-and-a-half-ounce scoop
is all you need for these.
I've been rolling meatballs since I was a meatball,
since I was a little kid. (audience laughs)
So, I don't need me no scoop,
but it does help if you wanna go a little faster
and you're not used to rolling meatballs.
The gravy portion of this starts out
with some sliced mushrooms,
and then I add some shallots,
and you could throw some garlic in this,
too, if you want.
Now, we're going to add in a little paprika
into the butter-shallot-garlic-mushroom mixture.
A little Worcestershire sauce to highlight
the beefy quality of the mushrooms.
A sprinkle of flour to help thicken up our bone broth,
or bone stock, or stock in a box.
Stir that in.
Now, we can add in
our broth or Brodo.
And then, we're gonna let this thicken up.
We're gonna cook up some extra-wide egg noodles.
Sauce, we're gonna finish with a little heavy cream.
A little butter on the noodles
after you drain them off,
couple of dabs of butter.
Then, we're going to take fresh herbs,
dill, parsley, and chive,
toss them with the egg noodles,
now you have buttered herb egg noodles.
We added the cream to our gravy,
and now we're gonna add about a half a cup
of sour cream as well,
in combination
to our mushroom-shallot,
and I forgot to tell you, I add a little sherry,
or you can put in a splash of white wine
when you first put in the flour there.
The last special, fun twist,
is some Dijon mustard, couple tablespoons of Dijon.
(audience humming)
I know. (audience laughs)
And then, we're gonna take
about a half of that sauce
and ladle it down over the eggy noodles.
And then, we're going to take all
of our little chicken and veal meatballs
and put them into the remaining gravy,
(audience awes) like a little hot tub of love,
(audience laughs)
and mix that all together.
(groans)
My mom would take her coffee mug,
and we're gonna scoop egg noodles into the bowl.
We're gonna scoop
some balls down over. (audience laughs)
(audience applauds)