Soutzoukakia: Greek Baked Meatballs

It’s been awhile since I’ve tried a new meatball recipe; on Meatball Mondays we’ve been enjoying old favorites like Cherballs and Parmesanfleischbällchen mit Sternschnuppen im Kurkuma Meer. After scoring three packages of ground meat marked down due to the MHD (“good until at least” date), I was in the mood for experimentation, flipped through my folder of new meatball recipes, and–without giving him any details about flavor directions–gave Mr Radish a choice between German, American, and Greek. He picked Greek.

My source for this recipe is a Greek food blogger who works in her family’s taverna and loves cats. I’m here for the flavor, but I also appreciated the time-management structure of this recipe. The meatballs are be prepared while the sauce simmers, and then the prep dishes can be washed up during the bake. A clean Dish Jenga tower is a happy tower. Her “10 minute prep time” might be for a professional kitchen; it took me at leave five to find the allspice I bought for Narnish Breen and haven’t used since, and another five to peel the garlic.

The sauce starts like every other sauce, sautee some onion and garlic, then add tomatoes and spices, and “a splash of red wine”. This ended up being about three bottle inches, because I already had a cooking beer open and didn’t want to put the bottle back into the fridge. Your splash mileage may vary. Add some water, then simmer for half an hour.

The meat mass starts off standard–meat, crumbs, egg, seasonings. I was annoyed by “season with salt” instead of an actual salt measurement, but for 800g of meat, a teaspoon is a good start. Then, a cup of water is added. A whole cup! For 5 TBSP of breadcrumbs!

But I think it turned out OK. The mixture was quite wet, but not as sloppy as Iowa Ham Balls, Almond Milk Edition.

I was further annoyed by “shape into 14 balls”, because while I have many skills and talents, dividing a lump of something into seven equal parts is not among them. I made 12, and they filled my purple casserole dish.

The hot sauce was poured ladled gently over the loaves, and the whole thing was shoved in the oven for 45 minutes.

I chose to serve this with fried potatoes and Tzatziki, but this was a mistake. There is too much sauce. Too much yummy yummy sauce. I made plain rice to go with the leftovers, which was better because 1) all the yummy yummy sauce was absorbed up into the rice and 2) shoveling spoonfuls of flavor is so much easier with rice. And the water did the trick; the balls stayed very moist. In all, I’m impressed.

Mr Radish wants “some cheese on top next time”. I think there’s too much liquid to do it Lasagne-style, but I could put a strip of feta inside each ball easy. What’s important here is that there will be a next time.