Simple Spaghetti & Meatballs

    A great weeknight favorite that you can throw together pretty quickly using staples that you have in your house. This is the Basic Beef Meatball recipe in our super easy tomato sauce.

    Simple Spaghetti and Meatballs

    Prep Time: 40 minutes
    Cook Time: 35 minutes
    Servings: 23 Meatballs
    Who doesn’t love spaghetti and meatballs – it’s a classic combination that is a crowd-pleaser. I know on other posts that I’ve mentioned the dinner requests that I get from my husband and that they are usually one of five different meals – well spaghetti is almost always one of those requests. Whether it’s spaghetti and meatballs or just simple spaghetti with ground beef in the sauce, it’s requested quite a bit in my household. No matter if the sauce is a meat sauce or a simple tomato sauce with meatballs, I do use this simple tomato sauce a lot. The nice thing about this sauce is that I use things that are staples in our house like canned tomatoes, simple canned tomato sauce, garlic, onions, and some dried herbs. It’s a great recipe for those nights that you don’t know what to make and don’t want to or can’t spend all night in the kitchen cooking. I like using certain canned tomatoes that are low in salt and that only consist of a few ingredients to keep this recipe a little simpler.
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    Ingredients

    Meatballs

    • 1 lb ground beef
    • 1 cup Italian Style breadcrumbs
    • 2 eggs
    • salt & pepper to taste

    Simple Spaghetti Sauce

    • 1 can tomato sauce
    • 1 can diced tomatoes
    • 2 tbs olive oil
    • 3 small onion diced
    • 2 garlic cloves minced
    • 2 tbs Worcestershire sauce
    • 1 cup water
    • 1 tsp dried basil
    • 1 tsp dried parsley
    • 1 tsp dried Italian seasoning
    • 2 bay leaves dried or fresh
    • 2 tbs sugar

    Instructions

    • Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit
    • In a bowl combine ground meat, breadcrumbs, eggs and season to taste with salt and pepper.
    • Take a scoop of the meat mixture and form a ball in your hands by gently rolling the meat around.
    • Place your meatballs on a greased baking sheet and place in the oven. Bake for 20 mins.
    • While the meatballs are cooking in a pot add the onion, garlic and olive oil and simmer for about 5 mins.
    • Add the diced tomatoes, tomato sauce, water, Worcestershire sauce, basil, parsley, Italian seasoning, and bay leaves and sugar to the onions and garlic and simmer.
    • Once the meatballs are cooked you can drain them on paper towels to remove the excess grease and then you can add them to the simple tomato sauce. You can either let them simmer in the sauce for a while or you can serve them right away warm from the oven.

    The nice thing about this recipe as a whole is that it’s really pretty simple and really satisfying. I like to come up with recipes that take advantage of the staple pantry items we all seem to have. We always have a freezer full of meat including various types of ground meat – mostly because of my meatball obsession. I also try to have at least some basics in the pantry. It may be because we live in Minnesota and there are days where we don’t know if we’re going to get stuck inside because of weather.

    The meatballs are really simple and consist of very few ingredients. There are so many ingredients that you can add to this recipe to make them customized to your style or your favorite ingredients. One suggestion is to add sautéed mushrooms to the meat mixture. My husband jokes about how much money I spend weekly on mushrooms – I put them in everything and when I cook vegetables they are almost always included in the medley for the veggie side dish. If you’d like to add them to your meat mixture you can check out my Beef Stroganoff Meatballs recipe to see the instructions on how to sauté the mushrooms and some tips on adding them to the meat.

    If you love peppers, you can sauté those up and add them to the meat mixture as well – you can check out my Stuffed Pepper Meatballs recipe to get some tips on how I add peppers to the meat as well. The options are really endless and up to how you want to customize your meatballs.

    I have really liked making this sauce recipe because you have a little more control on what goes into it. You can always substitute your favorite store bought sauce for this recipe for an even quicker weeknight dinner. Maybe you have an amazing family recipe that you use as well – if you please share because I always love trying new things! If you do and have that canned or frozen feel free to try my Basic Beef Meatballs recipe and add them to your homemade sauce.

    I say that you have a little more control with what goes into the sauce when you make it from some simple canned goods because I try to get canned tomatoes that have no added salt and very few ingredients added. If you are conscious of your salt intake this can help – some premade sauces can be higher in sodium that some folks may like.

    The other nice thing about making your own sauce from some simple canned good is that you can add your favorite ingredients to your sauce as well. If you’d like to make this a little more interesting – and you have a little more time to let the sauce cook and simmer you can add some carrots and cinnamon. I know this sounds odd but we have a family member that makes a sauce with these two ingredients and it’s good – different but good. I use an emersion blender when making this type of sauce and once I have it perfected I’ll share that version as well.

    I like both simple and complex recipes when it comes to cooking – it really depends on how much time I have to cook and how great or draining the day has been. There’s something about Monday’s where I really look forward to just relaxing after the first day back to work. These type of simple recipes are perfect for that type of mood.

    You can serve these meatballs and this simple sauce over a variety of noodles including penne, rigatoni, and farfalle just as easily as serving them over spaghetti. You can also use this same sauce and meatball recipe served over tortellini or ravioli – the options are endless. It’s actually even quicker at times to use those stuffed pastas since you can get them in forms that have quicker cook times.

    It’s really one of those classic dinners that we all have grown up with in one version or another. It’s a familiar comfort food that creates those same memories that your loved ones will have after eating this recipe. I hope you and your family enjoy this version of a classic that’s easy to throw together as much as me and my loved ones do.

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