I was trying to plan dinner for the other night & wanted to do something with the ricotta I had in the fridge (it was on great sale a week or so ago & with coupon had to buy two containers)! I also knew that I had plenty of frozen ground beef (once again – when something is on sale, you must get it… perfect way to cook delicious things on a budget). The logical choice with those base ingredients would be lasagna but I was not in the mood for it! I decided to try ricotta meatballs and got started on a search to try to get a rough idea of what to cook. Surprisingly, I had a hard time finding more than just a few recipes to go from. Simply Recipes seemed to have the best starter recipe for me to work from 🙂

My version of Ricotta Meatballs:

• 1 1/2 (about) pounds of ground beef
• 1 cup ricotta (I use part skim)
• 2 eggs
• 1/3 cup? (no idea – I just dumped) breadcrumbs
• 3 cloves garlic
• 1/4 cup? parsley
• handful chopped basil
• 1/4 cup? parmesan

Combine the ground beef with garlic, breadcrumbs, basil, parsley, parmesan, & some pepper. Then lightly beat your eggs & add in the ricotta. Combine the ricotta mixture into your meat mix (go ahead – use your hands, you get a better mix & it is just so darn fun!!). Heat a pan (you will make your sauce in here later) with a little olive oil & form your favorite sized meatballs. I like to brown them all around (you will have to probably brown the meatballs in at least two batches) and then bake them the rest of the way (Usually about 10 minutes to brown and then about 20 minutes in a 350 oven?). Once everything is in the oven I made a simple sauce of a can (28 oz) of diced tomatoes, a can of tomato sauce, some red wine (ehh – it was on the counter, so why not!) Once the sauce was good, in went the meatballs & let it go for another 10 minutes or so.

Add some fresh spaghetti, plate it up, add some fresh basil & the moistest, most delicious meatballs that I have ever made were served!!