Are you used to stewing meatballs in a pan or pan? And let's try to bake them in the oven. You will like this way of cooking dishes with its greater simplicity and new taste. Meatballs baked in tomato sauce, get tasty, beautiful, do not fall apart, perfectly keep their shape. And how to achieve this effect - I will tell you further.
- Quantity: 20 meatballs
Ingredients for meatballs baked in tomato sauce
- 400 g minced meat;
- 1 cup dry rice;
- 1-2 onions;
- 1-2 carrots;
- 2 tbsp. l tomato paste;
- 2-3 tbsp. l flour;
- 6 glasses of water (2 for rice and 4 for gravy);
- Salt, ground black pepper, pepper-peas - to taste;
- Parsley, dill;
- 1-2 bay leaves;
- Sunflower oil - for roasting vegetables and smearing forms.
Ground meat can be taken from meat or chicken. Chicken fillet meatballs will be more dietary. I suggest you cook them from assorted minced meat - a mixture of pork and beef.
And tomato paste, diluted with water, great to replace homemade tomato juice.
Method of cooking meatballs baked in tomato sauce
Fill the rice with water at a ratio of 1: 2, salt and boil, stirring occasionally, over medium heat until boiling. The cover is shifted to the side so that the rice does not run away. When it starts to boil, reduce the heat and boil for a few more minutes until the cereal soaks up the water. Turn off, let the rice stand for 5-10 minutes under the lid. Even if it remains slightly raw - in meatballs it comes to condition. Put the rice on a wide plate to cool, and in the meantime, let's prepare the gravy.
Clean and rinse vegetables. Onions finely cut, and three carrots on a large grater. Heat the sunflower oil in the pan, passeur the onions for a couple of minutes, then add the carrot and fry slightly, until soft.
We spread half the roasted vegetables to minced meat and rice. Salt, pepper, you can add chopped greens.
And in the second half of the roast we add tomato paste and a glass of water - let it boil all together for 3-4 minutes. Turn off the sauce and take the form of meatballs.
Knead the stuffing well and with hands moistened with water we roll up small balls the size of a ping-pong ball.
To make the meatballs tidy and keep their shape well, apply an interesting culinary trick. First, we roll them down in flour from all sides.
And we put the gravy in a saucepan and add another 2-3 glasses of water. We bring the sauce to a boil and each meatball in turn is quickly dipped into the boiling sauce, immediately take out and put in a baking dish, greased with vegetable oil. I used a glass form of 22x32 cm. Both ceramic and disposable foil, or just a cast-iron pan, even a little smaller size will do - just put the meatballs closer to each other.
Putting the meatballs in neat rows, pour them with gravy (which becomes thicker and more appetizing from the flour).
We put in the oven and bake at 180-200 ºC for 35-40 minutes. If suddenly it starts to stick on top - cover the form with a sheet of foil.
At the end of cooking, you can add bay leaf and ten peas to the gravy, and sprinkle with dried or fresh herbs (dill, parsley or basil).
Serve meatballs, garnished with leaves of greens, pouring sour cream or cream, with a side dish of potatoes, rice or pasta.
This is the basic recipe for meatballs, which can diversify and vary, each time getting a new dish! For example, in the middle of the minced meat balls, put a piece of cheese or prunes without stones - and interesting surprise “meatballs” will surprise your home. Instead of rice, you can add buckwheat - it will be original and also very tasty. And if you replace the tomato paste with sour cream - you will get meatballs in white sauce.
