Best Meatballs Ever!

Pretty nervy to title something the 'best' right? But really, these are the best I've ever had! 

They are SO so good...I really hope you'll try them and love them as much as we all do. I followed this recipe from Fabio (a cute Italian chef on Top Chef a few seasons back) I saw in a magazine, and I'm super glad I did!  I made a couple changes - I had one pound each of beef, lamb, and pork on hand because I thought I was going to make meatloaf last week; I used that instead of all beef and added an extra egg since I was using a half pound more than the recipe. One other change is that the recipe calls for grand Padano cheese (another one I had to look up, it's a hard italian cheese like parmesan), I just used parm instead. I can't say if they will be the "best ever" if you follow the recipe exactly but I'm thinkin' they'll still be delish.

Friends came over a few nights ago to watch football and I made these into sliders along with broccoli slaw as our side. I formed the meatballs using a large cookie scoop (I'd say it holds at least a quarter cup), 3 pounds of meat mixture made 29 large meatballs - the recipe calls for making them normal sized and says the yield is 65. I baked them for 25 minutes and then put them in a large pan on the stove in marinara sauce to finish.

We then put them on hawaiian rolls with a small piece of provolone cheese and a romaine lettuce leaf, top with more sauce if you like (I like, so I ate mine with a fork instead of trying to pick it up!).

A couple nights later I warmed up the leftovers and put them over "zoodles" - have you had those yet? Zucchini put thru a vegetable spiralizer thing and it makes long noodle shaped strands...so they're "zoodles"- less calories and carbs then if you use actual noodles. And after eating all those sliders we needed a night of lower calorie zoodles haha! You can get the spiralizer thing lots of places now, I found this small hand held one at a cooking store. I just warm up the zucchini in a large saucepan for a few minutes, don't over cook them or it gets quite watery. You can also microwave them for a couple minutes instead.

This version came from BHG magazine.