Dr Mobeus
Budget Pork Meatballs in Tomato Sauce
A 500g pack of value pork mince costs about £2.20, and stretched with an egg and a handful of breadcrumbs it becomes 16 tender meatballs, enough for four proper dinners at about 89p a portion with rice. The same dish from a takeaway app would cost four or five times that for a single portion.
The breadcrumbs are the trick to keeping budget meatballs soft. Leaner value mince can cook up dense and dry, but the crumbs hold moisture and stop them turning into ping-pong balls. An egg binds it all together, and half an onion grated into the mix would not go amiss either.
Everything cooks in one frying pan, and the sauce is built on the brown bits the meatballs leave behind, which is where most of the flavour lives. Start the rice as the meatballs brown and the whole meal lands on the table in about 40 minutes.
Budget Pork Meatballs in Tomato Sauce
Ingredients
Method
- Mix the pork mince, breadcrumbs, egg, half the crushed garlic and a good pinch of salt and pepper in a bowl. Squeeze the mixture through your fingers until it just comes together, then roll into 16 walnut-sized meatballs.
- Heat the oil in a large frying pan over a medium-high heat and brown the meatballs in two batches for about 5 minutes per batch, turning until golden all over. Lift them onto a plate.
- Turn the heat down to medium, add the chopped onion to the same pan and fry for 5 minutes until soft, scraping up the tasty brown bits from the base.
- Add the remaining garlic, the chopped tomatoes, tomato puree, oregano and half a tomato tin of water. Simmer for 5 minutes until slightly thickened.
- Return the meatballs and any juices from the plate to the pan, cover and simmer gently for 10 minutes until the meatballs are cooked through and the sauce clings to them. Season to taste.
- Serve over rice with the sauce spooned over everything.
Tips and Variations
The uncooked meatballs freeze beautifully on a tray, then bagged, for up to 3 months: cook from frozen with 5 extra minutes of simmering. For sausages in disguise, squeeze the meat out of 6 sausages instead of using mince. A pinch of chilli flakes in the sauce, or serving the meatballs over mash instead of rice, are both welcome changes.
