Without meat dishes, most families cannot imagine a nutritious diet. And a worthy place among them may well be taken with ground beef meatballs. Unlike cutlets, they are more easily perceived by the stomach and are also suitable for baby feeding. And if you vary the ingredients included in the minced meat, sauces and gravy, the dish will never get bored and will always have a new tempting taste.
Just cutlets
Most often, housewives cook meatballs from ground beef in tomato sauce. However, it is not necessary to simply fill the workpiece with diluted paste. You can do much more elegantly and get a delicious dish at the exit. To do this, a slice of stale white bread is soaked in milk, squeezed and driven through a meat grinder with half a kilogram of beef, onion, mint leaves, herbs (it is taken to your taste and in large enough quantities), a clove of garlic and hot pepper without seeds.
Half a glass of rice is boiled until half cooked and mixed with meat. Meatballs are formed from ground beef, fried to a crust and stacked in a saucepan. For gravy, a spoonful of oil is fried from chopped onions and garlic cloves. Two chopped peeled tomatoes and selected spices are poured into it. As it boils, the gravy is salted and sweetened with sugar, after which it is kept on fire for a couple of minutes. Ready sauce is poured meatballs. For ten minutes they are stewed under a covered lid.
Refueling Options
The dish provides a fairly wide foothold for culinary imagination. For example, you can cook ground beef meatballs with sour cream gravy. For it, 2-3 tablespoons of butter are melted, a couple of tablespoons of flour is fried in it - you need to mix constantly so that there are no lumps left. In a separate frying pan, a 400-gram package of not the greasy sour cream is heated before boiling. As it foams, flour is added. Vigorous stirring again, and the last ingredient is a couple of spoons of tomato paste. Then salt and pepper are added, if necessary - water (suddenly the sauce is too thick), and the gravy is poured into meat balls.
Good meatballs with cream sauce. For him, the onion is chopped and a medium-sized carrot is rubbed. In melted butter, vegetables are allowed to soften. Then half a glass of tomato juice is added to them. In extreme cases, you can take pasta: five spoons. After boiling in a sauce, three tablespoons of flour are stirred. After a minute, a liter of warm broth flows in a little. A quarter hour of languishing gravy on the stove - and you can remove. Finally, the sauce is flavored with salt, spices and half a glass of the most fat cream. The gravy is best when the meatballs are baked in the oven.
Hedgehogs with cheese
Favorite food can be made even more tempting and delicious. For this, meatballs from ground beef are stuffed with something. It is most juicy with hard cheeses. Minced meat is cooked traditionally, only the onion does not grind with meat, but is grated. In addition, an egg is driven into the base - one for every half a kilo of beef. Stuffing pepper and salt, if desired, you can season with your favorite spices.
A piece of cheese is cut into cubes (with an edge about a centimeter). Stuffing disassembled into balls. A cake is made of each, into which a cheese slice is placed. Now the cake rolls back into the ball. And ground beef meatballs with cheese are laid out on a greased sheet. They will bake for 15 to 20 minutes. Time depends on the size of the "hedgehogs." Serve just like that, or with any of the sauces described above.
Yugoslav style ground beef meatballs in the oven
The first stage of cooking is not much different from previous recipes. The only deviation: in the minced meat, not onion is ground, but sweet pepper. You can add fragrant greens. Meatballs are not fried, but immediately placed on a baking sheet in the oven. From above they are covered with foil. After a quarter of an hour, it is removed, and the balls are filled with sauce. To prepare it, combine a glass of sour milk, a melted cube of butter, egg yolk and a spoonful of caraway seeds, mashed to a powder state. Ground beef meatballs are brought to a crust in a small heat. If you don’t really approve of sour milk, you can replace it with yogurt. But kefir is not suitable for this recipe.