Albondigas en Tomate(Spanish): Feeds 4 :Ingredients:500g mince meat (mixed pork & beef)
some breadcrumbs (2 tblspns)
To marinate meat50g onion
2 eggs
2 cloves garlic
bit of parsley
salt, nutmeg, pepper
For Tomato sauce50g olive oil
2 cloves garlic
100g onion
100g carrot
50g green pepper
20g sugar
1000g tinned or fresh tomatoes (have used half and half)
salt and pepper
Preparation:Start with marinade, place all ingredients in THX 12 seconds, speed 5. Mix this in with meat and leave for half hour.
Clean THX
), and then make Tomato sauce. Place olive oil in THX 3 mins, temp Varoma, speed 1. Add garlic, onion, green pepper, and carrot. Blitz 10 secs speed 5. Then program 7 mins, Temp Varoma, speed 3 & 1/2. Then add sugar & tomato and program 15 mins, temp Varoma, speed 1.
Now you have 15 mins to make the meatballs!!!
Add a couple of spoons of breadcrumbs to the meat mix, to aid the ball rolling. My kids love helping me do this! As you can see in the photo this has made 22 balls (I counted them!)
As they do shrink a little, make them quite biggish. If you need to feed more than four, just double the amounts as plenty of room in Varoma, just make the balls slightly larger and fit them on both layers of the Varoma. Although the 500g is plenty for us, we are family of 5. I serve with the garlic rice, guess would be nice with pasta too!
So place them on top of THX and program further 15 mins. Cooked to perfection!
Photos:Tips/Hints:If you make it with fresh tomatoes, then I recommend that you cut them open and squeeze out the juice a little (otherwise too watery) and before you start anything, blitz them first on speed 7. Place them aside until needed, otherwise if you do this later, the sauce goes orange instead of the lovely red colour as I hope you can see in the photo that I will try and upload.
I have made it half and half, and its delicious! Have some left over to use for pizza tomorrow!
members' commentsJD - Served mine with Brons' steamed garlic rice. Meatballs & sauce cooked yesterday and rice tonight. Lovely meal served sprinkled with parmesan cheese. Not a great meatball fan but must admit I did enjoy these. Next time I will add some chilli paste to the meatballs. Heaps left over as DH only wanted 4 and I had 3. Thanks for telling us how many meatballs to make too, it is always a help to know how many you should end up with.
VHJ - we are very pleased with how they turned out. I didn't have green capsicum for the sauce so added half a zucchini instead and used some Feta in the meatballs. Served it with garlic rice. Thanks for a tasty and versatile recipe Bron.
Narelle - I just made a kg of beef mince in to these meatballs and in to the freezer, making 4 meals for us. So very easy and all it needs is the tomato sauce made when we make them. They don't look that attractive being steamed but who cares!
faffa - You don't see them under the sauce anyway!!
Chelsea - I was very impressed. DH and the kids gobbled them up which is always a bonus!!! I served the meatballs and sauce with spaghetti. I made 22 meatballs (fairly small) and they were cooked perfectly in the 15 minutes.
Snoozie - I only made 18 but I was rushing a bit so they weren't masterpieces lol Still tasted awesome though!
JulieO - DELICIOUS! Thoroughly enjoyed this meal, though I must admit when I saw the balls after steaming I wasn't sure how my son would react as they were so white (being used to them being brown from frying off) but when I added them to the tomato sauce in a big bowl and combined them before spooning on top of the pasta, you really wouldn't have known.
I used a 800g can of chopped roma tomatoes with some baby romas from my garden to make up the 1kg, reduced the sugar to 2 tsp and in the final 15 mins of cooking the sauce, I added some steamed sweet potato that was left over from last night which disintegrated during the cooking and added a nice sweetness to the sauce. I can imagine adding other veg to this too. Finished off with some freshly grated parmesan. I got 20 nice sized balls from the mix. Thank you so much for a great recipe Bron, has gone straight into my 'kept' recipes.
sourdough - I accidentally missed the part where I should have cooked the chopped veggies for a bit without the tomatoes and we rolled 15 balls instead of 22 - it still cooked to perfection in the time you gave and we now have a new family favourite that is super quick and easy - I'm extremely grateful!
Georgie - It's delicious! and so easy. I even minced the beef myself (organic, I'd bought a whole rump from the wholesaler). Thanks for the recipe!
maddy - the family gave your dish a big thumbs up! I used 600g minced beef, which made 35 smaller meatballs which I spread out over both varoma trays. I added a few basil leaves to the carrot mix too. I added 2 slices of blitzed wholemeal bread to the mince mixture before rolling. I cooked it for 18 minutes.
In the sauce I also added a dozen basil leaves with the veggie mix sauce and 2 tsp. cornflour.
The tomato quantity I used was 600g bottled passata sauce and 400g home grown cherrry tomatoes.
Family requests more meatballs next time, so I will have to increase quantities when I make it again
Might also add some extra veggies into the sauce as well (shhhhh.....don't tell the kids)
Chelsea - I always have quite a bit of sauce left over and normally freeze it to use as pizza sauce. Last week however I used it as a vegetable sauce in a lasagne. It was perfect layered with lasagne sheets, mashed sweet potato and grated cheese. So easy and tasty. I got the idea from one of the 4 Ingredients Cookbooks.
Jewels - I made this and it was delicious.
Millipede - had to make a couple of adjustments to suit my DH's dietary requirements.
He doesn't eat red meat so I created two types of meatballs... one using Beef mince for me and the kids and some with chicken mince for DH (ie minced 1 chicken breast in the TM, which made about half a dozen meatballs).
I also decided to brown off the meatballs in a frying pan before I put them in the varoma to steam. I know this creates extra washing up (LOL), but I thought that browning off the meatballs first added a bit more colour and flavour to the final dish.
Next time I might add some stock powder or maybe worcestershire (or even good old vegemite LOL)- something salty to contrast with the sugary tomatoey flavour. Loved that all those vegies where hidden in the sauce though. Kids were none the wiser and I liked that I got to pull my varoma out. Thanks! Great recipe.
tarasis - we really enjoy this recipe; my wife and I have the balls and the sauce and my kids just the balls. It is a firm favorite in the house which we usually have with Bron's Steamed Garlic Rice (I usually make the sauce in advance as we don't have a thermoserver/insulated bowl yet and it's easy to reheat in the saucepan), it's rare to actually get to freeze some of the balls for leftovers.
Tasty - was happy with how they turned out...especially the meatballs. However next time I will probably reduce the sugar a bit and maybe add red wine or something to the sauce. Had it over plain rice.
MJ - I made really little meatballs and got 34 of them. I added chicken stock powder to both sauce and meat mixture. Also a few herbs to sauce. Yum!
Kimmyh - was a big hit. Used sage instead of parsley and two cans tomatoes and red wine to make up to 1000g. Served over pasta. Love the steamed meatballs. Thank you this will be a regular for us from now on.
JuliaC83 - Delicious!! Sauce was much nicer than I was expecting to be. I added some chopped basil into the sauce too. I also forgot to follow the directions about blitzing fresh tomatoes before doing anything else ... and ended up with an orange sauce - but was still delicious. Definitely make again.
Obbie - good for the kids, thanks.
ViolinCuddles - made this doubling the meatball mixture (I couldn't fit it all in the Varoma, so will make a couple of hamburger patties today) and using 200 gm fresh tomatoes, so the sauce was a bit yellow but still delicious. We all enjoyed it - thank you! Now I'm off to find this fabled garlic rice...
arcadia - I have this cooking atm, the sauce is yum. My meatballs weren't cooking at all above the sauce, so have them steaming on their own at speed 4, varoma temp. I was unsure if speed 4 for the sauce would be to much? I have made lots of meatballs so doing it in 2 lots and will serve with garlic and herb pull a part.
