To me, there’s nothing more irresistible than a bowl of warm, saucy pasta with meatballs. Extra cheese to top it all off? I thought you’d never ask.
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But where things really get interesting in my book is when you shrink down the meatballs, until they’re about as big as marbles. For starters, this gives them a patented-perfect crisp exterior to tender interior ratio. A miniature stature also means quick cooking—as in, less time than it takes to boil pasta water. And last (but so definitively not least), a big smattering of tiny meatballs across your bowl of noodles means a meatball in every bite—rather than a hack job on some single giant guy perched atop your spaghetti.
Like most good things, mini meatballs are endorsed by Marcella Hazan. In her recipe for Rigatoni al Forno con le Polpettine (aka Baked Rigatoni with Tiny Meatballs) in Marcella’s Italian Kitchen, she writes, “In the early years of my career in cooking, the statement that seemed most to startle students and interviewers was that spaghetti and meatballs is not an Italian dish. To be exact: the concept is undoubtedly Italian; it is the execution—the colossal meatballs, overloaded with herbs, saturated with oil, buried in tomato sauce—that appears solely on the western side of the Atlantic.” She goes on to describe her sparsely garnished meatballs as “diminutive,” which is just about the cutest thing I’ve ever read, full stop. (The incredible Deb Perelman has a great adaptation of Hazan’s recipe over on Smitten Kitchen.)
My Tiniest Meatballs have a few tricks up their (size XXXS) sleeves to pack maximum flavor while requiring the least amount of work—making them my all-time favorite easy weeknight meatball. They call in sweet Italian sausage, rather than plain old ground pork, so you get a couple of extras on the seasoning front: fennel seeds, dried parsley, onion powder, in most blends. They also let you skip all of the chopping and mincing of herbs and garlic and stale bread—instead, you just blitz it together in a food processor. And finally, they invite ricotta to the party, because they don’t want you to find them too dense. The ricotta in these tiny meatballs add extra tenderness to their interiors that serves as a perfect foil to the crisped-as-heck exteriors.
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One note on that: I’ve included cornstarch as optional in the recipe. If you give these teeny spheres a good roll-around in the stuff (then shake it off!) before frying, you’re in for a crazy-crispy crust. (Hazan called for her tiny meatballs to be rolled in flour for the same reason.) But, if you’re not planning to toss your ‘balls with a sauce to serve, you might want to go au naturel on the exterior to avoid the light white shell that’ll form in certain spots with the cornstarch. Either way, you’ll get super solid browning.
And now, with no further delay, I’d like to introduce you to the tiniest—but tastiest—meatballs I know:
Do you like your meatballs small or big? Let me know in the comments!
