The giant spaghetti meatball. This is no ordinary spaghetti and meatball recipe, but it is so delicious, creative, and more simple than you might think!
All you have to do is season the meat, blanch the pasta, stuff the meatball and then bake it! See it's not that bad but it looks and sounds badass, huh.
For the meat you will need:
Ground beef (I used already spiced mince)
Minced garlic
Oregano
Italian seasonings
Powder parmesan cheese
Optional - salt, pepper, crushed red peppers, egg (I did not use one but I imagine if your beef is unspiced and needs something to hold it together, these would help.)
For the inside stuffing, you will just need spaghetti and spaghetti sauce (with your own added seasonings such as garlic, oregano, basil, crushed red peppers, salt, pepper). For the pasta - do not cook it all the way. I cooked it with a style of blanching where I only cooked the pasta about half way and then soaked it in ice water to stop it from cooking more. This way, when the stuffed meatball bakes in the oven, the pasta will cook to the perfect tenderness!
Anyone wondering how you just stuff a giant meatball with spaghetti and sauce? Two things: plastic wrap and a cereal bowl. Place plastic wrap into a deep cereal bowl. Scoop the meat and make a thin layer like a bowl with taller sides than the bowl.
Scoop the already mixed blanched pasta and sauce into the meatball bowl. Do not fill all the way - only fill about 3/4 full to make sure you have space to make the top of the sphere. (Please excuse the blurry photo.)
Pinch the top of the meat together to form a full sphere so that all of the pasta is hidden. Onto a baking pan, flip the bowl over and the giant meatball will come out in its perfect sphere form.
Bake for about 40 minutes at 190C (375F). Your kitchen will smell delicious! My husband could not wait to try this because our house was full of the tantalizing scent. We even had our neighbor stop in and she couldn't resist a bite. Yum!
Depending on your appetite you could either split one or go for your own. I ate half of one with a large portion of green beans. I think David took down a full one. Either way, I promise you will feel like Kings and Queens eating this dish. Pinky promise.
Comments