It'sa Me! Spa'ghetti!

Incredible Baked Meatballs

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Yield: 24~ meatballs
Time: 45 minutes

1 lb ground beef
2 eggs, beaten with 1/2 cup milk
1/2 grated Parmesan
1 cup breadcrumbs
1 small onion, grated
2 cloves garlic, grated
1/2 tsp oregano
Salt & pepper to taste
2 tbsp basil

Preheat oven to 350°.  Grease cookie sheet.  Combine all ingredients and form into meatballs.  Bake 30 minutes.

More Info

Incredible Baked Meatballs

Okay, the original recipe had a good few differences.  Firstly, it said to mince, not grate, the onion and the garlic.  I just felt like grating them for the heck of it.  Be warned, however, that even if your eyes don't normally water when you cut an onion, they definitely will when you grate one.  And do so carefully, as well.  If you are grating the onion at a mad pace, the onion juices will squirt into your eyes.  It did it to me, even though I wear glasses (still trying to figure out how it managed that one).
Secondly, the original recipe called for 1/4 cup fresh minced basil.  I just went with 2 tbsp of dried basil, since dried herbs are stronger than fresh herbs, and 2 tbsp is (or is about) half of 1/4 cup.
Thirdly, the original recipe didn't tell you to grease your cooking surface.  I learned this the hard way, with my meatballs sticking to my baking surfaces.
Lastly, the original recipe said you could use panko or bread crumbs.  Panko is costly, and I already had bread crumbs, so that's what I went with.
Also, the reason there are so many meatballs in my pictures is because I made a double batch.  I wasn't sure how many it was going to make, plus my brother's girlfriend was over, so I wanted to be sure we had enough.
I did make the mixture ahead of time and refrigerated it, but I wouldn't recommend refrigerating the mixture more than 24 hours (I only refrigerated mine about 4 hours).
Also, you'll notice from the pictures that I used a glass casserole dish and a cake pan instead of a cookie sheet to bake my meatballs.  It was because I was concerned about grease (I was using 75/25 ground beef).  However, there was no reason to be concerned.  Even though each dish was holding 30 meatballs, there was hardly any grease at all.  I would've been fine using a cookie sheet.
Like I said before, I used bread crumbs, and I made a double batch.  I was using plain bread crumbs because the recipe not only didn't call for Italian bread crumbs, but I was also out of them at the time.  In the future, I will probably use Italian bread crumbs just to get an extra bump of flavor.
Not only was I using plain bread crumbs, though, but I ran out of them; instead of having the two cups I needed, I only had 1 1/4 cups.  What did I do?  I didn't panic.  I first considered toasting off some bread in the oven and grating it into bread crumbs (because my food processor was lost in our last move), but I quickly brushed that off and opened a sleeve of saltine crackers and crumbled up a good bit of them in place of the remaining 3/4 cup of bread crumbs.
Let me also say, do not over mix your meatball mixture.  Mix it until it just comes together.  I know you're going to want to mix it thoroughly, to make sure everything is evenly distributed, but have faith in your mixture that it's mixed enough.  If you over mix your meatballs, they're going to be tough meatballs.
Finally, I used a small (ish) ice cream scoop and a spoon to round off my meatballs and get them into the pan.  It allowed for cleaner hands and more uniformity in my meatballs.

Overall Meal

 

So what goes with meatballs?  Duh~~.  Spaghetti.  So we had spaghetti and meatballs, and it was delicious.  Now I didn't serve any sides with it, but some good sides would be garlic bread (or cheesy garlic bread...yum~), and a side salad.  Or, even better?  A Caesar salad, for one thoroughly Italian meal.
And, as you all can tell, I found my old digital camera.  From now on, my posts will include pictures.  Enjoy!

UPDATED 02/13/14:

• Added links under recipe titles to credited source

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