As you may recall, my Italian heritage requires me to love all things pasta related, that includes spaghetti and meatballs. These homemade meatballs were very easy and I liked how plain they were (a real “shock” to those of you that know me personally.) But honestly, the nice plain flavor is not too overpowering, making these a great candidate for being added to any pasta dish, sauce, and the like.

Here is what Marguerite had to say:

You may have noticed, Marguerite’s original recipe called for a quarter pound of veal. We decided we did not want to go through the hassle of finding or paying for veal. As you may recall, we had issues with this earlier. Also, while some may think veal has a discernibly better flavor, both Aaron and I felt it was not necessary to include in this recipe. Veal-Schmeal! We just edited the amounts of each remaining meat to keep a decent ratio of beef to pork, as well as making sure to keep the total amount of ground meat to one pound. Make sense? If not just read the recipe below.

Marguerite’s recipe says that this amount of ingredients will make 16 meatballs. Our cooking of this recipe did not yield that many, however, we made some of ours way too large! Most of the ones in these photographs are an average size, but we (Aaron) did make a few monster meatballs that ended up larger than desired.

As mentioned above, they were a little plain. Not something I would serve on their own as an appetizer, but something to add to some pasta and sauce. Perhaps with her meatless spaghetti sauce, which we previously made? We will have to try them together sometime and get back to you.

The meatballs also reminded me of my mother’s meatloaf, and some insight into this recipe from Aaron’s mom proved that to be a valid thought. She told us that her dad, and Marguerite’s husband, Jim, liked meatloaf. The ingredients in this recipe were incredibly similar to the meatloaf that Marguerite would make for Jim, particularly the three different kinds of meat.

Aaron liked making these meatballs because they reminded him of making homemade meatballs with his mom. She had a different meatball recipe of her own, and if you want to hear about that recipe in the future, you should subscribe to our monthly newsletter! In contrast to these homemade meatballs, it’s very much an “eat on their own as an appetizer” recipe. Aaron thought these meatballs were yummy, but he is getting increasingly tired of all the finely chopped onion in these recipes, particularly because the Marguerite he remembered couldn’t stomach onions anymore and didn’t but them in anything she was planning on eating! I also make him do all the onion chopping…