Cavatelli and meatballs

Prep: 30 minutes
Cook: 2 hours
Servings: 6

Ingredients:

Method

Step 1: The sauce

In a very large heavy bottom pot or dutch oven, over medium heat, add a few glugs of olive oil. Add in the 3 diced shallots and sauté for 2-3 minutes. Then, add the 3 cloves of garlic and continue to sauté for another 2 minutes.
Add the tomatoes to the pot and bring to a quick boil over high heat, and then reduce to simmer. Stirring constantly.
Add about 1 tsp of the Kosher salt. Stir and taste.
Throughout this cooking process I want you constantly tasting the sauce to check salt levels. You will be adding salt to the meatballs and to the pasta water, so start off a little under salted and work your way up.
Add the basil leaves, stir.
Let it simmer while you prep the meatballs

Step 2: The meatballs

In a large mixing bowl add the 500g each of ground beef and pork.
Break them both apart and kind of spread them around. Add a few big pinches of the salt. About as much as you would use to season a steak.
Crack the two eggs into the mix. Add some fresh ground pepper.
Add the panko and parmigiano.
A good friend of mine, who’s a quite famous chef, told me this one rule that changed my meatball game forever: add way more breadcrumbs than you think you need. And he was right, it makes a huge difference.
Using your hands, mix up all of the ingredients until uniformly combined.
Have a large sheet tray or cutting board nearby and start rolling the mixture into golfball sized meatballs until all of the mixture is used up.
Set aside.

Step 3: Cook the meatballs

Under no circumstances are you frying these meatballs. That’s insane.
Bring the sauce back up to a medium heat and carefully, one by one, drop the raw meatballs into the tomato sauce.
Once they are all in there, bring the sauce back up to a very quick rolling boil and then immediately drop it back down to a simmer. Put a lid on the pot but leave it slightly ajar as you want some of the steam to escape.
Simmer the sauce for about 2 hours. You can even leave it simmering all day if you’d like. The longer you let it cook, the more tender the meatballs will be.

Step 4: Bring it all together

Bring a large pot of salty water to a boil, don’t drop your pasta in just yet.
Have a large pan on another burner. Depending the size of stove you may need to remove the sauce – this is fine as it’s finished cooking and it will retain its heat.
Take two big ladles of sauce only from the meatball pot (leave the meatballs in the pot) and layer the bottom of the pan. Bring this pan up to a medium low heat.
Add your spaghetti to the water and cook to al dente.
When ready, drain the pasta in a large collander. No need to save any pasta water. Do not rinse the pasta, just let it get a little sticky. Keep tossing it so it doesn’t actually clump together.
Add the drained pasta to the large pan with the sauce. Stir and toss until the pasta is entirely coated with the sauce. Add some more sauce if you feel it needs it.
The purpose of the pan and draining the pasta until it’s a little sticky is to get the pan sauce to stick to the pasta. No one likes it when you get a bit of that watery edge on the bottom of a bowl of spaghetti and meatballs. This prevents that from happening!

Step 5: Serve!

Using tongs, add some of the spaghetti from the pan to a plate or a bowl.
Using a large ladle, add a huge scoop of sauce and meatballs on top of the spaghetti. Make sure to distribute the meatballs evenly among your guests! No fighting!
Grate some fresh parmigiano over top and serve.
No need for a salad, leave room for seconds of the meatballs! Enjoy

by jeremypotvin