Meatballs make such a satisfying meal, and I love how this recipe is so simple, but still packed with flavour and delicious.
I’m all for time-saving in the kitchen, and I think that a really successful way to make a super flavoursome meatball sauce is to just blend all my sauce ingredients together raw, and then simmer them together! Not only does this save on chopping time, but the garlic blended into the tomato like this adds such deep flavour.
I have a food processor that does all the work for me, but if you don’t have one you can always use a hand blender, which will work fine to blend this sauce together.
There are only has 3 ingredients in the sauce (and if I’m doing it for the kids I leave the chilli out), but it tastes amazing. I think one of the reasons for this is that you whizz the garlic raw into the tomatoes rather than pre-frying it, so that flavour just spreads sweetly throughout all of the sauce.
The meatballs in this recipe are as basic as they get (ie just meat- no added breadcrumbs or seasoning), as the sauce has so much flavour that you really don’t need to mess around making fancy meatballs. If you prefer to jazz up your meatballs a bit you can always add some dried herbs and salt and pepper.
You can use any type of mince, pork, beef (or a mix), or turkey, just be sure to select the 5% fat or less version to keep this nice and lean.
If you are looking for a vegetarian alternative, there is an awesome vegetarian chickpea meatball recipe in my new book The Slimming Foodie: