How to make the best spaghetti and meatballs from scratch! Featuring homemade meatballs baked in the oven, and a simple marinara sauce recipe.
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Recently I was performing at a cooking demonstration. At the end of the demo, I took questions from the crowd, and one of those questions caught me slightly off guard. The woman asked me what I would consider my signature dish. I couldn’t come up with an answer. I just make comfort food. But, then I got to thinking, “What dish means the most to me?” Surely this would be indicative of a “signature dish.”
I began running through recipes that had a deeply-rooted sentiment in my life, and a special place in my heart. Almost immediately, it came to mind. The dinner I asked for most as a child. The one I was requesting before I even knew how to properly pronounce its name, and one that is still my absolute favorite to this very day. A recipe that took me years to perfect, and folks, if I have a signature dish, there is no doubt — spaghetti and meatballs is it.
HOW TO MAKE SPAGHETTI AND MEATBALLS
So, we know there are three main elements to spaghetti and meatballs: (1) the spaghetti, (2) the meatballs, and (3) the marinara sauce. It all comes together in one perfect masterpiece of a meal. But, before we can put it all together, we have to get each separate entity under our belt. Boiling pasta is kind of a given, so let’s focus on the meatballs and marinara.
The meatballs will first be baked. Baking meatballs is much easier than pan-searing each side of every little meatball. Plus, this option keeps you from getting popped with hot grease. Yes, please. Then, while the meatballs are baking, it’s time to get started on the marina.
To make life a little easier, I use canned tomatoes for the marinara (we’ll get into that a little later). Once the meatballs finish in the oven, they’ll go into the marinara sauce, and simmer for about 15 minutes or so, just enough time for the flavors to marry.
HOW TO MAKE HOMEMADE MEATBALLS FROM SCRATCH
Making meatballs from scratch is really quite simple. It’s somewhat similar to making meatloaf…only they’re much smaller and way cuter. And, just like meatloaf, they consist mostly of ground beef and bread crumbs.
THE BREAD CRUMBS
The bread crumbs help to keep the meatballs from drying out. This recipe calls for homemade breadcrumbs, which are very simple to make. To make breadcrumbs, you simply pull off hunks of bread from a slightly stale loaf, throw them in the food processor and let it whir until it looks like…well, bread crumbs. however, if you substitute storebought breadcrumbs, cut the quantity called for in the recipe in half.
The bread crumbs are then soaked in milk, adding even more moisture to our meatballs, ensuring they will be perfectly tender.
ADD FLAVOR WITH ONION AND GARLIC
Sautéed onion and garlic, along with freshly chopped parsley add a great deal of flavor to the meatballs. The sautéed vegetables are added to the milk and bread crumb mixture, along with an egg (which binds everything together), and lastly, the ground beef goes in.
ROLL AND BAKE
Don’t be afraid to get your hands dirty here. They are the best mixing tools you have for meatballs. Once the meatball mixture has come together, it’s time to roll. Wet hands or a cookie scoop will make quick work of this. I use my medium-sized Oxo Good Grips cookie scoop from Amazon.com for uniformly-sized meatballs.
Once the meatballs are rolled, they go onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper or nonstick aluminum foil and bake for about 25 minutes. That’s all there is to it!
ABOUT HOMEMADE MARINARA SAUCE
Trust me when I say that homemade marinara sauce is so worth your time. This is the way my grandmother used to make it and, honestly, food just doesn’t get much better than this.
CANNED VS. FRESH TOMATOES
You can go about making marinara from scratch in one of two ways: Make it completely from scratch, or make it using canned tomatoes. If it happens to be summer, and you need to use up some homegrown tomatoes, I say go for the former. However, if you are under literally any other circumstance, go for the latter. Making marinara sauce with canned tomatoes is much, much simpler, and way less time-consuming.
BEST COOKWARE FOR MAKING SPAGHETTI AND MEATBALLS
Homemade marinara sauce begins with sautéed vegetables on the stove top. I use my Dutch oven to make marinara sauce for spaghetti and meatballs. It’s nonstick because of the enamel coating, it cooks evenly because of the cast iron interior, it’s large enough to house both the sauce and the meatballs, and it also provides a generous amount of wiggle room to stir in the spaghetti if you should choose to serve it that way. If you don’t use a Dutch oven for your marinara sauce, you’ll just want to be sure your using a good sturdy saucepan equipped with a lid.
MARINARA SAUCE INGREDIENTS
Onion and bell pepper are sautéed on the stovetop, and then a generous serving of chopped garlic goes in. Dicing and stirring the vegetables is probably the hardest part of making a homemade marinara sauce, and really, that wasn’t hard at all, now was it? So after the vegetables have softened, the canned tomatoes go in. But, before we get any further down the road in our recipe, we should pause to talk about those canned tomatoes. They’re kind of important.
When I am making a homemade marinara sauce I always use high-quality, organic canned tomatoes. For this recipe, we will use a combination of two canned tomatoes: One is crushed tomatoes (with or without basil — your choice), and the other is fire-roasted tomatoes.
Lastly, granulated sugar to balance out the acidity from the canned tomatoes, Kosher salt, and a combination of both black pepper and red pepper flakes. If you wanted to be extra fancy and add a fresh note to the marinara sauce, you could throw in a few tablespoons of freshly minced basil at the end.
HOW TO MAKE SIMPLE MARINARA SAUCE FROM SCRATCH
All of the ingredients simmer together for about 25-30 minutes with the lid slightly ajar, allowing the sauce time to reduce by just a hair. This is really all the time you need to cook out any residual metallic flavor from the canned tomatoes, and for the flavors to come together. You can leave your sauce chunky, but I prefer a smooth marinara sauce. If you too prefer a smooth sauce, you could use an immersion blender or ladle it into a blender, and process until smooth.
Once the sauce is ready and the meatballs have finished baking, the meatballs are added to the sauce and allowed to simmer for about 15 minutes more. As soon as that timer goes off, it’s time to serve.
Remember that whole deeply rooted sentiment I was talking about at the beginning? Well, here it is: This may be my signature dish now, but it was my grandmother’s first, and she would practically make me this meal on command. Literally. She was pretty wonderful that way.
Sadly, she became sick right after I left for college, and before it ever crossed my mind to ask for her recipe, so all those years I spent perfecting homemade spaghetti and meatballs? I was actually on a mission to recreate hers. Mission accomplished.
This meal is now served at our home regularly, and I’m not the only one requesting it these days. It’s my little girls’ favorite meal, and one I’ll gladly (and very willingly) make on command. Please, enjoy.
How to make the best spaghetti and meatballs from scratch! Featuring homemade meatballs baked in the oven, and a simple marinara sauce recipe.
- 1 pound spaghetti
- 1 cup fresh bread crumbs or 1/2 cup store-bought bread crumbs (see note for fresh bread crumbs, if needed)
- 1/3 cup whole milk
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 1/2 yellow onion minced
- 3 cloves garlic minced
- 2 tablespoons freshly minced parsley
- 1 large egg slightly beaten
- 1/4 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese (optional)
- 2 teaspoons Kosher salt
- 1 teaspoon black pepper
- 2 pounds 80/20 ground beef
- 2 tablespoon olive oil
- 1 yellow onion finely diced
- 1 red bell pepper seeded, stemmed, and finely diced
- 3 cloves garlic minced
- 1 (28 ounce) can crushed tomatoes
- 1 (14.5 ounce) can fire roasted tomatoes
- 3 tablespoons granulated sugar
- 2 1/2 teaspoons Kosher salt
- 1/2 teaspoon black pepper
- Generous pinch of red pepper flakes
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Bring a large pot of salted water to a roaring boil. Add the spaghetti, and cook according to package directions. Set aside until ready to use.
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Preheat the oven to 400° and have ready two rimmed baking sheets lined with nonstick aluminum foil.
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In a medium-sized mixing bowl, combine bread crumbs and whole milk. Stir until crumbs have absorbed the milk and set aside. Add olive oil to a small saute pan over medium heat. Stir in onions and coat with oil.
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Saute for about 3 minutes, add the garlic and saute 1 minute more. Stir in the parsley, remove from the heat and set aside to cool slightly. Add egg to the moistened bread crumbs and stir to combine. Add the sauteed vegetables, Parmesan (if using), Kosher salt and black pepper. Stir once more to thoroughly combine. Gently mix in the ground beef.
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With damp hands, roll about to 2 tablespoons worth of the meatball mixture into a ball and place on the baking sheets, placing each meatball at least 1" apart. Bake for 25-30 minutes, until properly cooked through. Serve with spaghetti and marinara sauce, make yourself a meatball sandwich or eat them as is, and enjoy.
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For the marinara, add olive oil to a large saucepan over medium-high heat. Add the onion and red bell pepper, and sauté for 6-8 minutes until softened. Add the garlic and sauté 1 minute more.
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Add in the cans of tomatoes, sugar, salt, pepper and red pepper flakes. Stir to combine. Reduce the heat to maintain a gentle simmer. Allow the sauce to simmer for 25-30 minutes, partially covered. Stir often. The sauce will reduce slightly.
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If you prefer a smooth marinara, you can either purée it using an immersion blender, or ladle the sauce into a blender, and process until smooth. If using a blender, be sure to remove the cap and cover with a dish towel to avoid a build-up of pressure.
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Add the baked meatballs to the prepared marinara, and stir. Gently simmer on low, covered, for an additional 15-20 minutes. Serve the meatballs and marinara over spaghetti noodles, and enjoy.
To make fresh breadcrumbs, use day-old (slightly stale) white bakery bread. Discard of the crust, and add about 1 cup of torn or cubed pieces of bread to a food processor. Process until the mixture is crumbs.
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