Best August weather of all time! I’m not complaining: instead of eating cold cheese on bread because it’s too hot to cook, I got to make meatballs!
Due to a tragic previous over-purchase of carrots, I settled on this “Meatball Stew“–the one without canned soup–from a 1977 Betty Crocker cookbook that I had discovered some months ago while looking for something else. (If you’re looking for cheap eats, Carter-era cookbooks are a good resource, and there are many free to browse at the Internet Archive.)
Instead of ground beef, I used the mix of pork and beef sold as standard at every German supermarket. The crumbs were handmade (food-blogger smirk), earlier in the summer on a day when we accidentally bought more Brezn than we could eat.
The “Basic Meatballs” contain both egg and milk, and were very juicy. I will add herbs next time, at least parsley, to get more umami.
I treated the balls to some high fast heat in my big deep pan to build up the Röstaroma. Once they started to splatter I added the rest of the ingredients and let them finish off in the liquid. Easy clean-up!
The basic stew recipe sounded a little bland, so I threw in the unused half of the onion, some garlic, and some of that celery seed leftover from that earlier project.
I should have dropped some flour or starch in the liquid; it was too thin for my taste, but Mr Radish really liked it. I wished I had thrown in more onion, and added mushrooms. Verdict: Recipe is a good starting place, but needs more oomph.
