How long does it take to cook raw meatballs in spaghetti sauce?

In this blog post, we will answer the following question: How long does it take to cook raw meatballs in spaghetti sauce? We will talk about the two options of cooking meatballs, and teach you a simple but yummy spaghetti sauce recipe. 

How long does it take to cook raw meatballs in spaghetti sauce?

It takes approximately 30 minutes to cook raw meatballs in spaghetti sauce, depending on the sauce quantity and the type of pan you are using.  To make the meatballs,  mix the minced meat, ricotta cheese, egg, sun-dried tomatoes, salt, and pepper in a large bowl. You have to mix everything well with a fork so that they are evenly distributed.

Take a piece of the mix with your hands and give it a round shape, the size of golf balls. If you want you can lightly pass them through the flour.  Next, heat a pan over high heat with the olive oil and the spaghetti sauce, and fry each meatball until a crust forms all over its surface.

For the spaghetti sauce, heat the virgin olive oil and poach the onion until it is transparent. Add the crushed tomato and bring to a boil.  Add the salt and pepper to taste and lower the heat to medium. Add the meatballs still raw to the pan and cook over medium heat for 30 minutes.

Homemade meatballs in spaghetti sauce

Meatballs are one of those dishes that gain a lot in quality and flavor if you make them from scratch at home, that is, from minced meat bought fresh in a butcher shop. Although the meatballs allow meats of all kinds to be prepared, the most common is to make them from a mixture of meat, one leaner and another slightly more fat, for example, 50% pork and beef. 

A trick to make the meatballs more tender once cooked is to add a cup of bread crumbs soaked in milk to the minced meat mixture. We will discuss below the most common ways of cooking them as well as the cooking time of the homemade meatballs according to the type of preparation.

  1. Make the meatballs

To make the meatballs, we will prepare a “dough” in a bowl by introducing the breadcrumbs soaked in milk, together with a beaten egg and the already mixed minced meat, to which salt has been added to taste and a little black pepper and chopped onion and garlic. With our hands, we mix everything until it is like dough. Then we can start taking the pieces of dough to form the meatballs with our hands.

Option 1: Cook the meatballs in the oven

You start by passing the meatballs through flour or breadcrumbs and they are placed on the oven tray. During this time, we can take the opportunity to preheat the oven to about 180 degrees. Before putting the tray in the oven, we can put a few drops of olive oil on each meatball, so they will be juicier. The cooking time of the meatballs in the oven will be about 20 minutes, turning them over half of the cooking time.

Option 2: Brown the meatballs in the pan

The other alternative, somewhat more caloric, but faster, is, once passed through flour or breadcrumbs, place the meatballs in a pan when the olive oil is already hot, and stir them until they are well browned on the outside. In this option, the cooking time of the meatballs so that they are golden will be approximately five minutes.

  1. Prepare the sauce and finish cooking the meatballs

The sauce is very simple to prepare. Chopped onion and garlic are added to a frying pan together with a splash of olive oil and sautéed for 7 to 8 minutes. Then we add crushed tomato and it is seasoned to taste with salt and pepper, after which we add the already pre-cooked meatballs for either of the two options that we have discussed. 

The additional cooking time for the meatballs in the sauce will be about 20 minutes, over low heat.

Other FAQs about Sauces which you may be interested in.

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How to prepare a spaghetti sauce: step-by-step

Ingredients:

How to do it:

1. Make a shallow cross-shaped cut in the bottom of the red tomatoes.

2. Heat the red tomatoes in boiling water for 30 seconds or as soon as the skin begins to peel off. Remove immediately from the heat and place in ice water to stop cooking.

3. Cut the red tomatoes in half, remove the seeds, and chop. Place in a saucepan over medium heat and cook for 10 minutes.

4. Add the oil and basil, and season with salt and pepper. Remove from heat. Serve!

Click here for more tasty recipes with spaghetti sauce.

Conclusions

Meatballs with spaghetti sauce is a delicious and easy to prepare recipe. Meatballs are one of those dishes that gain a lot in quality and flavor if you make them from scratch at home, that is, from minced meat bought fresh in a butcher shop. 

If you have any tips, comments, or questions on the content, please let us know!

References

Thymeforcookingblog.com

Katieskitchen.com

Eatthis.com