The Best Spaghetti and Meatballs You'll Ever Make (Restaurant-Quality)

I'm Frank Proto,

professional chef and culinary instructor,

and today I'm gonna show you the best way

to make spaghetti and meatballs Frank style.

We're talking tender and flavorful meatballs,

a deep, rich tomato sauce,

perfectly cooked pasta

that will put a smile on anyone's face.

This is Spaghetti & Meatballs 101.

I prefer my meatballs fairly small, like golf ball size.

The outside is browned off first.

The inside is super juicy and tender.

This is a close approximation of my grandmother's recipe.

I think it makes a nice, consistent, delicious meatball.

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If you go to Italy and ask for spaghetti and meatballs,

they'll look at you like you have three heads.

It's not really served together.

This is actually a classic Italian American dish.

I have some ground beef. I have my ground pork.

I know that my grandmother would put ground veal in this.

I'm just trying to simplify a little.

Make sure your ground beef is at least 80/20.

That means 80% meat, 20% fat.

If they're too lean,

they tend to be a little on the dry side.

I'm hitting this with some fresh garlic.

I have pecorino romano cheese. Pecorino is sharp.

It has a lot of flavor to it in a small amount of cheese.

You can use Parmesan if you want.

I'm using plain breadcrumbs, not seasoned.

I want to control the seasoning.

For this recipe it's about a cup and a half.

The breadcrumbs make your meatballs more tender.

Sometimes people will add milk to this, right?

And that's kind of a classic Italian American thing as well.

I don't think that it needs the milk.

I like to use just eggs, and I use a fair amount of eggs.

I have four here for this amount of meat.

Back when my grandmother was a kid,

meat was a little harder to come by.

Meatballs were a way of them taking that little bit of meat

and extending that.

You add breadcrumbs that are cheaper, you add cheese,

you add eggs that are cheaper than the meat,

and you're making this really nice thing

that instead of just feeding one or two people

that you can feed five or six.

Don't forget the seasoning.

Lots of fresh cracked black pepper

and then a fair amount of salt.

The breadcrumbs, the eggs, and the cheese here

make your meatballs more tender.

They actually grab onto a lot of those juices.

If you just use a little bit of breadcrumbs

and not a lot of eggs or cheese,

you're gonna get a really meaty meatball

that actually tends to be a lot drier, a lot more crumbly.

And what I like to do is just break up my yolks

and start to mix

some of the dry ingredients together on top.

And then I bring my meat in

and I'm gonna start to work this.

A lot of people say, Oh, don't work the meat.

It's gonna be tough.

No, no, no, no.

We wanna work this so it's really mixed well.

People tend to think you can overwork meatballs.

We're not gonna harm this from working it.

This feels like it's a little wet to me. So what do I do?

I get my breadcrumbs and I just add a little more.

If you look at the side of the bowl, it's kind of wet.

I want side of the bowl for the meat to pull away from it

and not to be sticky.

If I pick a piece up now, it's super sticky.

So I want this to firm up a little more.

So let's mix those other breadcrumbs in.

It's starting to look a little drier.

It's forming one big nice mass,

almost like kneading it like a bread.

This is the texture I'm looking for.

It's slightly sticky,

but when I roll my meatball, it holds its form.

That is a nice mixture.

So I'm gonna cook a little taster

before I actually ball up my meatballs.

And this is just to ensure

that I have the seasoning and the texture right.

This is one of those steps

that a lot of home cooks will skip

that I find is super important.

Just put a little olive oil in your pot.

We're gonna get a little piece of meat, flatten it out.

It goes right in the pan.

This is what makes restaurant chefs

different from home cooks,

is we're constantly tasting,

we're seasoning, we're adjusting.

And that's what you do here with meatballs.

Alright, let's taste this

to make sure the seasoning is good.

But I think I need a little more salt. Don't go too crazy.

A little more pepper.

Don't be afraid to take the two minutes

and make a tester, okay?

Get in there, remix and we'll be good to go.

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One of the other things I do as a chef

that makes my meatballs super consistent and the right size

is I use an ice cream scoop.

This ice cream scoop is definitely smaller

than your average ice cream scoop.

This is actually called a disher.

It's a portion scoop that they use in restaurants.

This is a good trick to make sure

that your meatballs are uniform.

I just line up my meatballs like soldiers here.

I take the scoop, I get the meat in there,

I push it against the side and then scrape it,

basically packing it into the scoop.

And all my meatballs are uniform.

I think meatballs that are really huge

are a little offensive.

I like a two-bite meatball.

If you want them bigger, go for it.

If you don't want to use a scoop and don't have a scoop,

usually what I'll do is this.

So I'll take a meatball

and I'll kind of just put it into the cup of my hand

and then you pretty much use your hand as the guide.

The meatballs are kind of rough,

so just take a few seconds, roll in between your hands.

So this is just for looks.

You can easily just drop them into your saute pan,

a little bit better for presentation.

Meatballs are rolled out. Let's brown them.

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Browning your meatballs is a key step.

We're sealing the outside of the meatballs,

sealing that moisture and juiciness in.

We're also getting some browning in the bottom of the pan

and some fat from the meatballs.

So I feel it's really important

just to give you a full-flavored sauce

as well as a really nicely cooked meatball.

Some people will take the meatballs raw

and just throw it into tomato sauce.

I think that they fall apart

and you'll have more of a meat sauce than a meatball sauce.

This is the way my grandmother did it

and I think it makes a better-flavored sauce.

So I have some olive oil.

We're not frying the meatballs,

but I want some fat in the pan.

It's starting to get a little bit glistening.

We're starting to see ripples and a little bit of smoke.

So I'm at a medium high heat, and all we really have to do

is start putting our meatballs in

and I'm only gonna put them in on one layer.

This point is really just concerned with browning,

getting a nice crust on the outside of these meatballs,

creating layers of flavor.

I'm using a pot that's actually called a braiser.

It's a shallow sauce pot that's wide.

I love this pot. We can put a lot of meatballs in.

It's heavy cast iron with enamel on it. It holds the heat.

And I'm not too worried

about cooking all the way through right now.

If things are a little raw here, it's not a big deal

because these are going back in the sauce

and they're gonna cook

for a good 30 to 40 minutes in the sauce.

It's actually better if they're a little raw in the middle

because if you cook them too long in the fat,

you're actually gonna dry them out

and get a crust on the outside that gets way too firm.

So don't go too crazy with browning them.

Just roll them around,

and they stay nice and juicy and tender.

Notice how I'm using tongs. I'm not squeezing them too hard.

I'm just kind of delicately moving them around.

I don't want them to fall apart.

And I'm still over medium high heat.

If these are getting brown too quickly,

adjust your heat, lower it down.

I'm saving the pan. I'm saving all the fat in the pan.

Don't be afraid of this fat.

It's actually gonna make our sauce taste better.

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We saved our pot from browning the meatballs.

We have that beautiful brown bits on the bottom, that fond.

Our oil is still in the pan.

And what I'm gonna start with is the onions, right?

Onions take a little time to cook.

Onions lend a little sweetness to my sauce.

We're gonna cook our sauce for more than 30 minutes.

That lends sweetness as well.

My oil is all warmed up, I have it on about medium heat.

And then I can add my onions.

These are just chopped onions, fairly small.

For the most part, these are gonna fall apart

and melt into our sauce.

Just a little bit of salt.

It draws out the moisture, it starts the seasoning process.

So while my onions are cooking, I have basil

and I'm gonna pick the leaves off for later.

I want to use the leaves

to kind of like give my sauce a little bit of oomph,

but I'm gonna save the stems.

They have tons of flavor.

I get my bay leaf

and I'm basically gonna just bundle these together.

I get a little butcher's twine,

and I'm gonna make myself a bouquet garni,

which is basically just a bouquet of spices or herbs.

Tie these together.

And this is just one of those techniques

that I think that as a chef I've done throughout the years,

and it makes my sauce so much better.

As our onions go translucent and start to get soft,

we can add our garlic.

Once my garlic starts to smell a little toasty,

I can add my tomatoes.

This was my grandmother's brand that she used.

It's kitchen-ready.

I do not like skins in my tomato sauce.

I make sure that my tomatoes are always peeled.

So this goes right into your pot.

Get as much out as possible. Give it a quick stir, again.

What I do at this point is I'm gonna add some water.

And I used to think

this is just my grandmother being frugal,

but believe it or not, this has a purpose.

By adding water to our sauce,

we're actually slowing down the cooking process.

If we don't add water, the tomatoes reduce too quick

and they're gonna be acidic and not sweet.

If I didn't add the water,

my sauce would be too thick, too quick.

I want to give it time for those flavors to develop

and my sauce to reduce

and really kind of meld

with all the other flavors in the pot.

So at this point, you can see it's starting to bubble.

I'm gonna add my sachet. Get those herbs in there.

If you look on the side of the pot,

sauce always sticks to the side of the pot.

I am constantly getting my spoon in there

and scraping that down.

A lot of people will just leave it there.

It'll start to burn.

I like to scrape the side of my pot.

That's basically just reduced tomato

adding more flavor to your sauce.

I'm gonna season up right now, salt and black pepper.

I'm gonna go fairly light on the seasoning

because I want to season throughout.

So you can see that we're starting to get bubbles at top.

We do not want this sauce to boil.

Boiling leads to reduction.

We're gonna reduce it too quickly.

I want this to happily bubble away.

So we want this to go on low heat at this point,

and we can add our meatballs.

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So our sauce is bubbling away happily.

I bring it to a simmer, I lower it down,

and then it's time to add the meatballs.

And basically what I do

is I just get my meatballs and I slide them in.

If there's any juices on this pan,

if you see any juices, make sure you scrape that in.

That's flavor.

It's on medium low heat.

I make sure that they're all submerged

and I just let this bubble away happily,

stirring occasionally, scraping my sides

for about half hour to 45 minutes.

So we've got some reduction.

I can see that it's not as liquidy as it was.

I'm gonna take my sachet out.

This is not edible. Just get rid of that.

But I do want to taste it before I serve it.

Good.

It does need salt. It does need pepper, right?

This is a good time to add our basil.

This is gonna add a little pop,

a little freshness to our sauce.

So I just like to tear it.

It's looking good. I think we're ready to go.

All we need is a little bit of pasta.

We can plate it up and give it a taste.

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I'm gonna plate this kind of granny style,

the way my grandmother would've done it.

I'm gonna take some of my sauce,

put it in the bottom of a big bowl.

It's kind of family style.

Grab my cooked spaghetti right into the bowl.

So my pasta is just a really good quality box pasta.

We cooked it to al dente,

and then we're just gonna toss it in the sauce.

You don't have to go to fresh pasta

with spaghetti and meatballs.

Use your favorite box pasta and you're good to go.

Now I want you to look at what I got going on here.

All the pasta is coated, but it is not drowning in sauce.

This is classic pasta 101.

We don't want it to be swimming in the sauce.

It's easy to add more sauce.

It's near impossible to take any sauce away.

And then I'm gonna add my grated pecorino.

Don't be stingy. Use good cheese.

This is fresh grated pecorino romano.

Don't buy the stuff in the can or the shaker.

And then I'm just gonna take some basil leaves

just to accent that basil.

If they're really big, give 'em a tear.

So I'm gonna plate some meatballs here

just for presentation's sake.

And that is basically

my grandma style spaghetti and meatballs.

Typically, if I was having

a Sunday dinner at my grandmother's house,

this is how the setup would be.

We'd have the nice plated pasta with the sauce

and some meatballs and some garnish.

And then we'd have a bowl of sauce,

a bowl of meatballs and cheese

so that people can dress their plates the way they want it.

Time to plate this baby up and give it a taste.

I grab some pasta, get it on my plate.

I'm gonna get a meatball 'cause I want to taste.

So I'm gonna taste the pasta by itself first.

Get me a little bite to see how my sauce is.

What I love about this sauce is that it's cooked

but not cooked too long so it's not too dense or deep.

It still has that nice bright tomatoey flavor.

Of course, the pecorino cheese

every single time does it for me.

My meatballs are super tender.

You cut 'em with the side of your fork.

They're not falling apart.

They're cooked all the way through. They have great flavor.

We made sure they had great flavor

'cause we did our little test.

Meatballs are perfect.

You could serve this plate of pasta

to any Italian American grandma.

You might get a kiss, you might get a kiss on both cheeks.

Taking the time, putting the effort in

and making this sauce at home is well worth it.

You choose the ingredients, you choose the seasonings.

You can make it custom to what your family likes,

and you just can't do that with store-bought food.