For our February Monthly Family Dinner with the R family, I chose red as the theme, for Valentine’s Day. Originally I thought maybe eggplant/chicken parm. Then I thought meatballs would be fun and even more fun when stuffed with mozzarella. I haven’t made meatballs in a while. This is my basic meatball recipe‎ and I loved my Greek meatball recipe.

I started with a pretty basic meatball base then stuffed them with mozzarella before baking them. Yup, I don’t like to fry things.

Ingredients:

¾ pound ground pork
¾ pound ground chicken
2 eggs
⅓ cup grated Parmesan
½ cup breadcrumbs
½ cup panko
¼ cup milk
2 tsp Italian seasoning
1 tsp garlic powder
¼ cup red wine
salt & pepper
1 head of garlic (or 2 tbs chopped garlic)
mozzarella cheese sticks

Directions:

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
Cut off ¼ inch off the top of the garlic bulb and remove a few outer papery layers leaving only 1.
Drizzle olive oil and a pinch of salt onto the exposed garlic before roasting for 30 minutes (45 to make pure paste without any texture).
Mix breadcrumbs, panko, and milk together.
Mix ground pork, chicken, eggs, Parmesan, spices, and wine together by hand.

Pop garlic cloves out of the head. Chop or smooth into a paste.
Add garlic and breadcrumb mix to the meat mix. Combine by hand until combined.
Cut cheese sticks into about 5 cheese chunks per stick.

Form meatball mixture into disks, add a cheese chunk and mold meat around it.

Bake meatballs on a sprayed cooling rack on top of a sprayed baking sheet.

Bake 20 minutes, rotating once.

These were fun! I left them in too long (shoot for 20, not 30 minutes like I did. The meatballs were super moist and flavorful, but the cheese started to escape! I’ve used cheese sticks to stuff arranchini because it is much easier to work with then shredded cheese.

I served the meatballs with penne in a creamy marinara, salad. Sis brought garlic bread and Mum brought cherry pie and vanilla ice cream.

It was a fun dinner and we caught up after a busy month. I’m glad I paired the meatballs with other easy elements. I made sure not to overcook the pasta. All I did for the sauce was add some cream cheese into the sauce. It added a great creaminess and extra extravagance to the meatball dinner. I make my own croutons but was glad not to also tackle dessert.