Meatballs With A Breadcrumb Panade
Breadcrumbs soaked in milk keep these tender through a long simmer. They go over penne with the sauce they cooked in.
- Prep
- 20 min
- Cook
- 40 min
- Total
- 60 min
- Serves
- 5
Ingredients
About 20 meatballs plus sauce.
- ThinSlim 3/4 cup ThinSlim Foods Love-the-Taste Low Carb Breadcrumbs Plain
- ThinSlim 8 oz ThinSlim Foods Impastable Low Carb Pasta Penne, for serving
- 2/3 cup whole milk
- 1 lb ground beef, 80/20
- 1/2 lb ground pork
- 1 large egg
- 3/4 cup grated Parmesan, plus more to serve
- 3 garlic cloves, grated
- 1/4 cup chopped parsley
- 1 1/2 tsp kosher salt
- 1/2 tsp black pepper
- 2 tbsp olive oil
- 4 cups marinara or crushed tomatoes
- 2 tbsp kosher salt, for the pasta water
- Basil, to finish
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Method
- Stir the breadcrumbs and milk together in a large bowl and leave them 10 minutes, until the crumbs have taken up the milk and the mixture looks like a thick paste.
- Add the beef, pork, egg, Parmesan, garlic, parsley, salt and pepper. Mix with your hands until it just comes together and then stop.
- Roll 1 1/2 inch balls with wet hands and set them on a tray. Chill them 15 minutes if you have the time.
- Heat the oil in a wide Dutch oven over medium high. Brown the meatballs in two batches, turning for color on three or four sides.
- Pour off all but a tablespoon of the fat. Add the tomatoes and scrape the browned bits up off the bottom.
- Return the meatballs, bring to a bare simmer, cover part way and cook 25 minutes. Move them once, gently.
- Boil the penne in well salted water to the package timing while the meatballs finish.
- Check the sauce. It should cling to a spoon. If it is loose, lift the meatballs out and boil it down for a few minutes.
- Drain the penne and fold it into the sauce off the heat, or spoon sauce and meatballs over bowls of pasta.
- Finish with basil and more Parmesan.
Tips
The panade is the whole recipe. Three quarters of a cup of these breadcrumbs to two thirds of a cup of milk is the ratio that works, and it is wetter than what you would use with dry supermarket crumbs. Give it the full ten minutes. Crumbs still gritty when you mix them into the meat will pull moisture out of it in the pan.
Mix with your hands and stop early. A paddle in a stand mixer works the meat protein until the meatballs turn springy.
Reduce the sauce before the pasta joins it. Impastable sheds no starch into its cooking water, so there is no ladle of magic liquid to pull a loose sauce together at the end.
Mix with your hands and stop early. A paddle in a stand mixer works the meat protein until the meatballs turn springy.
Reduce the sauce before the pasta joins it. Impastable sheds no starch into its cooking water, so there is no ladle of magic liquid to pull a loose sauce together at the end.