this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2025
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The question is whether it’s actually cooked. I don’t even know how long that meatball would need to sit, cooking in sauce. Small meatballs require 15 minutes to drink in the flavor but only 10 to cook completely through. This monster needs at least an hour on medium-low for a pink center. Is that even safe? How long can you let bacteria live in pleasant warmth and multiply before turning dangerous? Not to mention the lack of char, meaning this is just a boiled meatball with the texture of boiled meatball.
I would guarantee this thing is overcooked to hell, dry as a paper towel in the center. It probably swam in day-old red sauce in a pot for 90 minutes to prevent lawsuits, then cooled off, cooking another 20 holdover minutes. Then into the fridge to be microwaved when anon orders it.
My nan got a recipe from this Italian lady, back when dinosaurs roamed the earth. The recipe says to cook the sauce for one hour and then you add the meatballs and cook them for 1.5 hrs.
You must giveth the recipeth hereth noweth.
Sure! As requested
It says to roll into small balls, but small could be anything depending on context.
What a random measurement! Does that mean just half the shell, full of water, twice? I realize precision here is probably unnecessary, but my brain is just really struggling!
You've got to work out the surface area of the interior and exterior of the egg and then extract the volumetric square footage in metric imperial flombles.
The difficulty my aunt had when writing down my nan's recipes is that, in a lot of cases, she had the measurements in her head. So, there was a lot of guess work and estimation.
My guess was always that it would be half of an eggshell, previously used, twice. So, maybe it would technically be 1 egg worth of water. Never really considered that before...
Who knew dinosaurs had color image printing!
It was actually a black and white stone carving. We had to do a pencil rubbing, imprinted that on another piece of paper and sent it off to be digitally enhanced and then printed in the colour you see before you.
You're awesome. We thank you!
No problems! If you end up making them, let me know :)
I personally can’t stand overcooking meat. Searing the exterior to trap the juices and then letting the meatball split or the sauce overcook just pisses me off. Why go to the effort of sealing in the juices if they’re just going to render out? My parents had many recipes involving overcooked ground beef, and all of them bother me. They might have been what spurred me into becoming a vegetarian. I honestly can’t remember, but there was a straw, camel, and a back to break
Fair enough. There's a video I watched by Mythical Kitchen not too long ago and they go through the different techniques used when making spaghetti and meatballs. I think they went for a sear type thing, but mostly because cooking it in the sauce for so long made the meatball really soft and fall apart easily and they preferred a tougher meatball. I don't really remember though, so don't take my word for it. Was an interesting watch regardless.
I have nostalgia tied with that way of making meatballs. So, it may not be the best way to cook them, but they're still delicious and reminds me of my nan.
Never heard of this program before. I can’t say that I like them as hosts but their information was decently high quality and accessible.
To recap, mix the meat longer to produce a crunchier meatball (if you want), sear the ball to produce umami flavor (if you want) and cook in sauce to impart flavor into the sauce and (over)cook the meatball (if you want). Though there was a dark horse, boiling raw meatballs in sauce for a sort of soup meatball texture.
Nothing inherently wrong with your baking method, but I have overriding trauma that would leave me stink eying you if I witnessed it. Caring about others’ food preferences beyond the improved expression of your own desired flavors and textures doesn’t make sense to me, for the most part. Almost always, really. I’m glad you found a food that produces such fond feelings for you and wish you many pleasant dinners.
I remember learning that searing actually doesn't trap in juices. its only value is in the maillard reaction and is best done at the end of cooking as a reverse sear
No.
Whenever I've made homemade meatballs, we just bake them in the oven to cook, then either add to the sauce or serve separately.
I guess you'd just cook this monster like a lil meatloaf.
If it had been baked, there’d surely be some dark bits, right?
I mean, the outside looks pretty close to what I'd expect for unsauced meatloaf--there are clearly some darker brown areas. I do personally like to bake them at a bit higher temp to get some of those browned bits, but for a larger meatball, you may need to stay a little cooler to let it cook evenly without nuking the outside.
Are we looking at the same meatball because I don't see any darker areas? I see some flecks of spice, but that looks like an unseared ball of meat to me. There are some tinges of red, but those are from the sauce poured over it, not from cooking. You can see the remnants of the sauce at the base of the meatball mixing with another completely different sauce. Pretty sure that meatball is just unseared boiled meat.
i smoke my meatballs/MOINKs for about two hours at 225. they're about 2/3 that size. they typically don't have char marks, but they have smoke ring.
God damn it why did I click that link. I knew better but now im hungry!
Why would this be unsafe compared to something like a pot roast that cooks in simmering liquid much slower
Temperature. Granted, liquids more quickly convey energy to solids than gas, but a low simmering pot of sauce should be below pot roast temps. Which is fine for a tiny seared meatball, but for a half kilo beef sphere? That meatball is like 5 cm thick. It would take a while to heat up the center unless you’re upping the temp, but then you’re interfering with the sauce. In short, it’s a major recipe change.