Simply Sandwiches

Meatballs are a deli staple. Sure, they’re delicious and meaty, but who really knows the REAL meatball? The one behind all the riff-raff? Everyone loves meatballs, and yet, sometimes they bite back. Sometimes they are so laden with sauce that the bread gets uncomfortably soggy and disintegrates. Sometimes, when your karma’s running low and you accidentally hip-check an old lady into oncoming traffic, the meatballs are frozen inside and drowning in boiling tomato sauce. They’re exactly the kind of sub that has been left out in the cold of the homestead, left in the hands of delis and pizza shops. I’ll guess that no one makes them at home because they are so elusive. After all, what IS a meatball? (and for that matter, why don’t we try frying meat squares or triangles or parallelograms???) With this SANDWICHLab, we tired to unlock some of the meatball mystery.

We made a handful of delicious meatball sandwiches and along the way we discovered a few things.

• Meatball Mystery 1: Meatballs are not very hard to make. These took about an hour, which is well worth it for this level of delicious (a lot).
• Meatball Mystery 2: Homemade meatballs taste much better than the deli variety. They are more tender inside, they are a little smaller (in this case) and most importantly, they haven’t been sitting around feeling lonely all day. When your meatballs feel good, you feel good. You can heat them up with the sauce and avoid the wild temperature fluctuation that sometimes happen at delis.
• Meatball Mystery 3: They are much easier to eat when you don’t have excess sauce. By serving just the right amount of sauce, you can avoid soaking the bread all the way through and worrying that it’ll fall apart in your hands. I know I’m not the only meatball sub eater who has day-nightmares about stuffing meatballs into my mouth with my hands becuase the bread has disintegrated under too much hot tomato sauce. It’s horrible! Serve some sauce in the sandwich and in a little bowl on the side in case you want more half-wich through.

Meatball Sandwich Recipe (adapted from Cooks Illustrated “Classic Spaghetti and Meatballs “, published Jan 1 1998):

Meatballs
2 slices white sandwich bread (crusts discarded), torn into small cubes
1/2 cup buttermilk or 6 tablespoons plain yogurt thinned with 2 tablespoons sweet milk
3/4 pound ground beef chuck ( or 1 pound if omitting ground pork below)
1/4 pound ground pork (to be mixed with ground chuck)
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
2 tablespoons minced fresh parsley leaves
1 large egg yolk
1 small clove garlic , minced (1 teaspoon)
3/4 teaspoon table salt
Ground black pepper
vegetable oil for pan-frying (about 1 1/4 cups)
Instructions:
1) Mix bread parts and buttermilk in a bowl and mix with a fork until pasty.
2) Mix all ingredients in another bowl (including the result of step 1). Mix lightly with your hands. Use a spoon to grab the mixture and roll 1.5″ diameter balls in your hands.
3) In a large saucepan, add vegetable oil until it’s about 1/4″ deep. Heat until it sizzles when meatballs are added. Brown meatballs on all sides. When finished, set them aside on paper towels. Don’t let the oil smoke or it’s too hot.

Simple Tomato Sauce
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 teaspoon minced garlic
1 can (28 ounces) crushed tomatoes
1 tablespoon minced fresh basil leaves
Table salt and ground black pepper
Instructions:
1) Throw out the oil in the meatball pan, saving the bits on the bottom.
2) Brown the garlic in new olive oil, in the same pan.
3) Add all other ingredients. Simmer until sauce thickens, about 12 minutes.

Sandwiches:
1 loaf soft italian bread
Parmesan cheese, sliced and grated
basil, chopped

1) Add the cold meatballs back to the sauce to warm up.
2) Cut the bread into 8-9″ sections and add small slices of Parmesan cheese.
3) Toast the bread to melt the cheese.
4) Add 3-4 meatballs per sandwich and spoon a light portion of sauce ontop. Sprinkle on top with basil and grated Parmesan cheese.
5) Enjoy!

Raw, delicious meatballs:

Sizzle:

Heating with sauce:

The completed sub:

Laid open:

It looks bigger from this angle: