I love ground beef in any form. I use our lovely local Stormont County ground beef which we sell at Sharyn’s Pantry. It’s a win-win, you support a local farmer and get the very best quality of lean ground beef. I tried a new recipe for meatballs a few days ago with great results. You can freeze extras for another day. If you allow 5 meatballs per sub, you will have enough meatballs to make 14 subs. This would be a great treat to enjoy watching the final hockey game series with Chicago and Boston.  Have a great week!

INGREDIENTS: for the meatballs:

about 3 lb. lean ground beef (1.36 kg.)

4 hamburger buns (or about 7 slices of white bread), torn into tiny pieces

1- 1/4 cups skim milk

1/4 cup flat leaf Italian parsley

1 egg

1- 1/2 tsp. Kosher salt

1 tsp. ground black pepper

2 tbsp. Worcestershire sauce

1- 1/2 tbsp. minced garlic in oil

  for the sauce:

1 cup Heinz ketchuip

1 cup Heinz chili sauce

3 tbsp. yellow mustard OR 2 tbsp. dry mustard

2 tbsp. Worcestershire sauce

3/4 cup brown sugar

5 shakes Louisiana Hot Sauce (or more if you want more heat)

for the toppings:

1 each red, yellow and orange bell pepper- seeded and sliced into long strips

1 Spanish onion, sliced lenghwise into strips

METHOD:

-Tear the hamburger buns (or slices of white bread) into tiny pieces in a bowl. Pour the skim milk over them and allow to sit for a few minutes. The milk will be absorbed into the bread.

-In a large bowl, combine the chopped parsley, salt and pepper, Worcestershire sauce and garlic in oil. Add to this the milk and bread mixture. Mix to combine.

-Now add the ground beef and mix gently but thoroughly.

-Lay a length of waxed paper down on your counter or cutting board.

-Take the ground beef mixture and pat it into a rectangle about 1″ in thickness.

-Now, using a long chef’s knife, cut the meat into equal sized squares about 1″ in size. By cutting this way, it will resemble a sheet of graph paper. Each meatball will be exactly the same size and pull off easily from the mass of meat on the waxed paper. I got about 70 meatballs from this.

-Spray your frying pan with no-stick spray and cook the meatballs in batches until they are all cooked. Cook them until no pink remains in their centres.

-Now prepare you sauce. In a suacepan, combine all the sauce ingredients and cook for 5 to 10 minutes.

-Add the cooked meatballs into the sauce and simmer for a few minutes.

-In the same frying pan that you cooked the meatballs, saute the strips of peppers and onions until they are softened and tender.

-I spread garlic butter over my cut sub buns and sauteed them on my hot grill pan to heat them and give them extra flavour. Turning once to heat the outside of the buns.

-To assemble, spread some of the sauteed onions and peppers in the hot bun, place some meatballs in the bun and spoon over them some of the sauce.

-If you allow about 5 meatballs per bun you will be able to make 14 subs with this quantity of meat.

-Pass the napkins and enjoy a tasty supper.