- Prep Time: 20 minutes
- Cook Time: 1h 10 min
- Serving: Serves more than 10
Oven Baked Pizza Meatballs in Homemade Tomato Sauce
This is a great-tasting meatball dish that beckons from underneath a delicious tomato sauce. No one would ever know that the sauce uses dates as the sweetener! We particularly love these meatballs due to the 'hands off' factor when they are baking in the oven. So good for entertaining! If you have any left over, try adding them to pizza, pasta or lunchboxes for the next day.
Recipe Tester Feedback: “Tasty meatballs. Loved by all. Add chorizo!" - Kim
No: Gluten / Egg / Nuts
Contains: Dairy
Preparation Time 20 minutes
Cooking Time 1 hour 10 minutes
Makes 48 meatballs
Can be frozen
You will need:
knife
chopping board
spatula
mixing bowl
internal steaming basket
2 roasting pans
baking paper
tongs
Ingredients
- Tomato sauce:
- passata - 500g
- white vinegar - 1/2 tsp
- dates - 4, Medjool, pitted
- salt - 1 tsp, rock
- pepper - 1/2 tsp, cracked, black
- Pizza meatballs:
- Parmesan cheese - 50g, grated
- bacon - 200g, or chorizo (*ensure GF if using chorizo)
- beef mince - 800g
- tomato paste - 40g
- vegetable stock - 10g, paste
- onion powder - 3 tsp
- dried Italian herbs - 3 tsp
- garlic granules - 2 tsp
Method
Meatballs:
- If you need to grate your cheese, add cubed Parmesan cheese (50g) to the bowl and grate Speed 7 / 5-10 seconds.
- To the grated Parmesan cheese (50g) in the bowl, add the bacon or chorizo (200g). Chop Speed 7 / 5 seconds. Scrape down sides.
- Add the beef mince (800g), tomato paste (40g), vegetable stock paste (10g), onion powder (3 tsp), Italian herbs (3 tsp) and garlic granules (2 tsp) to the bowl. Combine Speed 5 / 10 seconds, with the help of your spatula. Remove the mixture from the bowl and refrigerate it while you prepare your sauce.
Sauce:
- Add the passata (500g), white vinegar (1/2 tsp), pitted Medjool dates (4), rock salt (1 tsp) and cracked black pepper (1/2 tsp) to the bowl. Program 25 minutes / 100C / Speed 2. Set the internal steaming basket on top of the lid to prevent spatters. While the sauce is cooking, move on to rolling the meatballs.
Meatballs:
- Preheat the oven to 200C. Line two roasting pans with baking paper.
- Remove the meatball mixture from the refrigerator. Roll into bite-size meatballs and arrange them on the roasting pans in a single layer.
- Pour the tomato sauce across the top of the meatballs so that they are coated but not drowned.
- Bake for 20 minutes, then turn all the meatballs. If the sauce has dried out, add more.
- Bake for another 20 minutes, or until the meatballs are golden brown.
- Enjoy!
Make your own!
* Make your own passata with the Passata recipe from The Make Your Own Bonus Issue.
* Make your own tomato paste with the Pizza Sauce / Tomato Paste recipe from The Make Your Own Bonus Issue.
* Make your own stock paste with the Odds and Ends Stock Paste recipe from The Make Your Own Bonus Issue.
