Polpette al Sugo

beef and pork, long simmer in tomato

Prep
25 min
Cook
50 min
Total
1h 15m
Serves
4
Difficulty
Easy
Rating
4.7 / 5 (198 ratings)

Smaller than you might expect, mostly beef with some pork, softened with bread soaked in milk. The bread is not optional: it keeps them tender through a long simmer. They go into the sauce before they're cooked through and finish there. Don't skip the simmer.

Ingredients

For 4 servings.

Meatballs

  • 350 g minced beef
  • 150 g minced pork (all beef works but the pork adds fat and softness)
  • 100 g stale white bread, crusts removed
  • 80 ml whole milk
  • 1 pc egg
  • 40 g Parmigiano Reggiano, grated
  • 1 clove, finely minced garlic
  • 2 tbsp flat-leaf parsley, chopped
  • a pinch nutmeg
  • to taste salt and pepper

Tomato sauce

  • 800 g canned whole tomatoes (San Marzano)
  • 1 small white onion
  • 3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
  • 5 leaves fresh basil
  • to taste salt

Method

  1. 1. Soak the bread

    Tear the bread into chunks, put in a small bowl, and pour the milk over it. Leave for 10 minutes until completely saturated. Squeeze out the milk firmly with your hands until the bread is moist but not wet. Discard the milk.

  2. 2. Make the mix

    Combine the meat, squeezed bread, egg, Parmigiano, garlic, parsley, nutmeg, salt and pepper. Mix with your hands until just combined. Don't overwork it or the meatballs will be dense. Fry a tiny amount to taste for seasoning before shaping.

  3. 3. Shape and brown

    Roll into balls about 4cm across. Heat a thin film of oil in a wide pan and brown on all sides over medium-high heat, 4-5 minutes total. They don't need to be cooked through. Set aside.

    Browning is about flavour, not cooking. A deep crust on the outside gives the sauce character.

  4. 4. Make the sauce

    In the same pan, cook the diced onion in the oil for 8 minutes until soft. Add the tomatoes, crushing them as they go in, and the basil. Simmer for 10 minutes. Season with salt.

  5. 5. Simmer together

    Nestle the meatballs back into the sauce. Cover partly, simmer on low for 35-40 minutes, turning them gently once or twice. The sauce will thicken and the meatballs will absorb some of it.

    Low heat. A rapid boil breaks up the meatballs.

Nutrition per serving

  • 480 kcal
  • Protein: 38g
  • Carbs: 18g
  • Fat: 28g

A bit of history

Italian polpette are very different from the giant meatballs-in-red-sauce version that became a staple of Italian-American cooking. In Italian home cooking they're smaller, often served as a secondo without pasta, and the bread is always there to keep them soft.

The technique of soaking bread in milk or water to add to ground meat is called panade and goes back hundreds of years in European cooking. It spread into Italian regional cooking through French culinary influence in the 18th and 19th centuries and became a standard part of how meatballs are made.