Hey Foodtubers, I'm Gizzi and welcome to my test kitchen
This is where the magic happens
Today I'm going to be cooking some classically Italian American style meatballs
Now we're going to crack on and make our meatballs first of all
To do that I just need to chop up and onion really really fine
The finer, the better because then it sort gets really immersed in with all of that meat
Just some olive oil into the pan and then bung these onions in
Then we all know that kind of Italian food wouldn't be what it is, without a ton of garlic
I'm going to put three cloves into this part of the dish
What also goes in there is some rosemary
And some fresh thyme
I'm going to chop these up really really fine
Get your onions to tinge a little bit of golden
And it's just starting to do that now
Alright we have some minced beef and some minced pork
You want to do a mix this is what is classically Italian, American
And it's just far more interesting and I'm actually going to really heavily season this with salt
Then pepper as well
We're going to go in and give this a good squidge up
Just shape them into meatballs
I'm going to go for golf ball size
And then we just repeat
I want them just to chill for a second because if I start cooking them now
They might start breaking up
There we go
Nice
Alright I'm going to get on with the sauce so three onions
I'm going kind of roughly chop them
Olive oil, hot pan, I'm bunging all these onions in there
and we're going to cook those down slowly again
We're going to take the heat down on that now
Put the lid on as well
Because what's going to happen is they'll sweat inside there
So next, honestly it's a whole bulb of garlic
But don't worry about it, it's going to be fine, this kind of food needs garlic
Trust me it really does add to it
And the great thing is they're all going to cook down at about the same time
I'm going to cook this for about 10-15 minutes just reall slowly
Make it add ten times more flavour
What makes these really special is that I'm going to do a mixture of fresh tomatoes
And tinned ones
and within that I've got a mixture of plum tomatoes and some cherries
I'm just going to chop these into quarters
So this has been going for about 15 minutes
It's totally soft now which is exactly what we want
Now I'm going to put in these tomatoes
Like most normal people might have put this in a bowl
but this looks like more fun especially with these cherry ones going everywhere
So we've got a tin going in there as well
And then a good, big tablespoon of tomato puree
And then some sherry vinegar, I'm going to say a good tbsp to 2 tbsp's worth
About a teaspoon of sugar
And then let that cook away for about 40 minutes
Until it's reduced and it becomes really rich looking
These have been resting in the fridge for about an hour whilst the sauce has been cooking
I have had my sauce cooking down for about 40 minutes
And it's looking absolutely spot on
I'm going to pour our sauce into here and then let that whizz up and get smooth
Now finally we're just going to pop in a whole load of basil into that
Get that back on the heat
Basil. If you cook it out for like one or two minutes at the end of cooking it really makes a difference
So meatballs, hot pan, ready to go
This is the sound that you want, you want them to sizzle
Right so we're just going to lay these up
A really good tip is to do them clockwise so you know which ones you put in first
So you can kind of turn them round in that order
It's really important that you get some really good colour on these
So I'll show you what it should look like
I mean that's looking pretty good
Because it's a ball and you want to keep it ball shaped
You might have to sort of turn them round two or three times to keep the shape of them
I'm going to give these a bit stir, they're all holding their shape now
And they can go into our gravy
And then sounds
It even sounds like gravy, right I'm just going to go berserk
So we'll give that a stir
And I'm going to cook them for another ten minutes
Water very well seasoned with salt
If you're going to make this effort to make meatballs
I personally would go out and get some really delicious fresh tagliatelle
This stuff cooks in a matter of minutes
So I'm just going to put this in
What you're looking for with your pasta is that is has some bite - al dente
It means sort of to the tooth
You don't want your pasta to be overcooked
Just draining out all that liquid
Give it a flip
I'm going to pour it back in here for now
Tiny bit of olive oil actually and a tiny bit more seasoning
into the pasta and treat them like they're - they call them noodles
In the Italian restaurants in America, this is just going to stop them from sticking a little bit
Tongs are a brilliant thing for when you do pasta
So they just make everything easier
So I'm going to scoop out some meatballs, put them on the top
I'm going to probably serve about 4 to 6 meatballs per person
And then no meatball dish would be finished without parmesan cheese
Bit more pepper
And there we are
So this is my meatballs with gravy, proper mafioso style
That sauce is unbelievable
That's the taste of New York, right there
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So I will see you again, thank you very, very much and I hope you enjoy the recipe