How to cook meatballs with gravy: recipe with photo

2024 Author: Isabella Gilson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:14

Meatballs from minced meat with gravy - a simple and very tasty dish. It can hardly be called festive, but it goes well with many side dishes and is suitable for an everyday budget dinner or a family Sunday lunch. In classic recipes, meatballs consist of minced meat or fish, to which only spices, onions, sometimes herbs and ground nuts are added. However, Russian housewives know how to cook meatballs with gravy using additional ingredients. They make the dish tastier and richer. In the article you will find recipes for meatballs with gravy with a photo. It is easy to cook them step by step, following the algorithm.

Meat selection

The taste of meatballs largely depends on the quality of minced meat. Of course, you can cook meatballs with gravy from meat scraps or minced meat that has lain in the freezer for a long time. However, such a dish is unlikely to impress the imagination with its taste. It is better not to skimp and buy fresh meat, twist it and immediately use it for its intended purpose. Moreover, meatballs are tastier from several varieties of meat. For example, you can mixminced pork and chicken or beef and turkey.

Other ingredients

Meatballs also contain spices, which each culinary specialist chooses, guided by his own preferences. Paprika, black pepper, nutmeg, coriander go well with meat. It is difficult to make meatballs with gravy really tasty without adding green and onions to the minced meat. Green onions are finely chopped or twisted with meat. Onions are finely chopped and put into minced meat raw or pre-fried. In the first case, the dish turns out to be more juicy, in the second - more fragrant.

There are recipes that contain no ingredients other than meat, onions and spices. However, many housewives improve the taste of the dish with the help of other products. Most often, bread is put in minced meat, which makes meatballs juicier, fluffier and cheaper.

Moreover, professional chefs advise adding dry bread, not soaked in water or milk. Wet bread does not retain meat juices as effectively as dry crumbs. And milk protein curls up when frying and makes the meat tough. For the same reason, it is better not to use chicken eggs when cooking minced meatballs with gravy.

Recipes for this dish are very diverse, in the list of ingredients there are a variety of products: rice, cheese, semolina, beans, cabbage, zucchini. However, you need to experiment with additives carefully, otherwise, instead of meatballs, you can get something between meatballs and cutlets.

Gravy

gravy andmeatballs make a wonderful culinary union. They mutually exchange tastes and aromas. There are a lot of gravy options. It is made on the basis of milk, yogurt or cream, tomatoes or broth, a mixture of vegetables or berries. The fragrant sauce soaks the garnish and not only improves the taste of the food, but also makes it beautiful. The most convincing proof of this is the mouth-watering and tempting meatballs with gravy, the photos of which flaunt in step-by-step recipes.

What and where to cook

Meatballs are usually fried and then stewed with gravy. Therefore, dishes with high sides, a thick bottom, a lid and good, uniform thermal conductivity are considered optimal for them. It can be a stewpan, a cauldron, a deep frying pan, a duckling, a glass baking dish. You can cook meatballs with gravy in thin-walled and aluminum dishes, but there is a high risk that the food will burn.

It is very convenient to stew meatballs in a slow cooker. It creates the effect of an oven, the dish is not even stewed, but slowly languishes. In a slow cooker, you can do all the operations prescribed by the recipe: first fry the meat balls, then prepare the gravy, and then combine them together. The special coating of the bowl virtually eliminates the possibility of burning food. In addition, meatballs with gravy are cooked in a pan over medium heat or baked in an oven at a medium temperature of 180 ° C.

General cooking principle

Usually meatballs are molded into small balls of the same size. So they cook faster, and they are convenientthere is. The diameter of such balls should not be more than an average walnut, and some housewives take the size of the filling for dumplings as a guideline. Regardless of which recipe is used, meatballs with gravy are prepared according to the same principle:

• First minced meat balls are formed.
• Then they are fried or put into gravy raw. It's a matter of taste, but fried meatballs are juicier.
• Separately prepare the gravy.
• Meatballs are placed in the gravy and stewed or baked until tender.

Subtleties

There are several tricks that make the cooking process easier and help make meatballs especially tasty:

• Minced meat turns out homogeneous, and meatballs - lush and airy, if you mix the twisted meat and other ingredients with your hands, and not with a blender or other kitchen gadget.
• Don't shape the meatballs too tightly, this will make them too hard.
• Meat balls are easy to shape using a teaspoon dipped in water, so it's easier to control the uniform size of the meatballs.
• If you add a little finely chopped smoked meat to minced meat, then the dish will have a spicy flavor.
• Meatballs can be rolled in flour before frying, so they will have a delicious golden crust.
• You need to fry them in a well-heated pan so that the minced meat does not stick to the sides and bottom.
• You need to fry the meatballs in one row. If they do not all fit on the bottom of the dish, they are divided into batches.
• You can make gravythicker by adding flour to it, and thinner by adding broth, milk or water.
• Meatballs are stored in the freezer for a long time. They can be thawed at any time and added to soup or cooked with gravy.

With vegetable sauce

To cook meatballs with vegetable gravy, you just need a desire, some food and about an hour of time. With a set of vegetables, you can safely experiment, choosing the ingredients at your discretion. This dish is most appropriate in the autumn, when vegetables are especially juicy and fragrant. It can be eaten alone or served with rice or mashed potatoes. Ingredients:

• For meatballs: 300 grams of minced meat; 50 grams of rolls; onion head; spices.
• For gravy: onion head; small zucchini; tomato; one carrot; one bell pepper; a few garlic cloves; 50 grams of tomato paste; s alt and spices.

Cooking:

1. Knead the minced meat thoroughly, adding spices, crushed bun in a blender or moistened with water, crushed garlic and chopped onion to the meat.
2. Make meatballs the same size.
3. Fry them in vegetable oil to brown them. Place meatballs on paper towel to release excess fat. Although in this recipe you can not fry the meatballs, but put them raw in vegetable gravy.
4. In the same bowl, if its volume allows, fry the vegetables cut into strips or cubes in the following sequence. First - carrots and onions, then - peeled fromtomato skins and finally - pasta, bell pepper and zucchini. After that, fry the vegetable mixture for about 5-7 minutes.
5. Add a glass of water, preferably hot, so that it boils immediately. Put the meatballs to the vegetables and simmer until all the vegetables are cooked under the closed lid.

With sour cream sauce

The dish is prepared extremely quickly and easily, goes well with pasta, fried potatoes, buckwheat porridge. If there is a supply of frozen meatballs in the refrigerator, then in half an hour an excellent dinner may appear on the table. Cooking requires the following ingredients:

• For meatballs: 500 grams of minced meat, poultry meat is in perfect harmony with sour cream; bulb; favorite spices; clove of garlic; one egg.
• For gravy: 200-250 milliliters of sour cream; a couple of tablespoons of flour; clove of garlic; spices, nutmeg and black pepper are especially good; s alt; greenery.

Cooking:

1. Make gravy by mixing sour cream with spices, flour, s alt and a glass of water.
2. For minced meat, it is better to take poultry meat (turkey or chicken) and pork in equal parts. Thoroughly mix the minced meat, adding chopped onion, egg, spices and garlic to it.
3. Shape into meatballs, roll in flour and fry until lightly browned.
4. Pour in sour cream sauce and leave to simmer covered for 10 minutes.
5. Adjust the thickness of the gravy by adding flour or water.
6. Add pre-chopped greens to the dish and serve with pastaor other side dish.

With spicy tomato sauce

Due to the rich tomato flavor and the sharpness of chili, these meatballs are an easy accompaniment to any side dish and are able to warm during long winter colds. Ingredients:

• For meatballs: 500 grams of any minced meat; a few green onions; one bulb; spices; flour for breading; one tablespoon of mayonnaise or sour cream.
• For the sauce: a few very ripe tomatoes or one pack of natural tomato pulp; ground or fresh chili pepper; a couple of medium bulbs; greens to taste; s alt.

Cooking:

1. Quality knead the minced meat with all the ingredients. Moreover, it is better to pass the onion through a meat grinder or grate it so that it gives more juice to the meatballs.
2. Make small meat balls, roll them in flour and fry.
3. Separately prepare the gravy by first sautéing the onion and then adding the peeled tomatoes, finely chopped chili s alt and spices to it.
4. Combine gravy and meatballs, simmer the dish for 10 minutes, add greens.

Swedish Meatballs

Scandinavian dish. It has a delicate creamy taste, and meatballs literally melt in your mouth, if you follow the recipe exactly. For cooking you will need:

• For meatballs: 500 grams of ground beef, it can be diluted with minced turkey or chicken fillet; two pieces of dried white bread; s alt; bulb; ground nutmeg and a pinchblack pepper.
• For the gravy: 100 milliliters of 35% fat cream; 400 milliliters of beef or chicken broth; a few tablespoons of flour.

Cooking:

1. In a separate bowl or blender, combine the gravy ingredients.
2. Grind the bun in a blender.
3. Fry the onion.
4. Add onion and bun to meat along with spices.
5. Knead the minced meat well and form meat balls.
6. Fry them in oil until almost cooked, add gravy to the pan.
7. Simmer meatballs in sauce for a couple of minutes.