Do you find yourself starting out making one dish and getting distracted by another recipe and completely changing direction? Meatballs always do that to me.
I had taken some ground pork out of the freezer to make larb with the Omsom sauce kit but got distracted by this pork meatball recipe from the NY Times Cooking site. We happened to have everything but the ricotta on hand, and my bet that the shop on the corner would have some was correct. Serves 4:
Pork Meatballs with Ricotta
- ½ cup whole-milk ricotta
- ½ cup grated Parmesan
- 2 teaspoons kosher salt
- 1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
- 1 large egg
- ½ cup breadcrumbs
- 1 pound ground pork
Heat oven to 425°. In a large bowl, combine all the ingredients and use your hands to gently mix.
Shape the meat into 12 equally sized balls (about 2 ¼” in diameter). Arrange on a lightly greased or parchment paper lined rimmed baking sheet.
Bake until golden and cooked through, about 15 minutes. Serve and enjoy!
My verdict:
These might be the easiest meatballs ever. I served them with rigatoni and Marcella Hazan’s 3 ingredient tomato sauce, and it turned out to be exactly what I wanted to eat that night. These aren’t knock-your-socks-off meatballs, just simple, stress free and tasty.
Some minced garlic, even some chopped spinach, could be interesting, but if you just want something easy for dinner, this is about as basic as you can get and still have a nice meal.
Any sauce would work here, probably even just butter and sage would be good. Same for the pasta. I love rigatoni, but ravioli, tortellini and even spaghetti are options. I almost added the leftover meatballs to some eggplant parm I made the other day, but decided that I’d save them for a solo lunch.
