Meatballs Recipe using Bread!

One of the problems of a small household is left over food! For example, a loaf of bread can last me almost two weeks. I don't want to admit this, but the last few slices of bread ended up in the birds' stomach most of the time.

The solution can be put half a loaf in the freezer, but I have this "thing" about frozen bread, therefore I generally don't do it. So, I always wonder what else can I use the bread for, other then toasts in the morning, sandwiches for lunch, bread with butter and sugar for afternoon tea, french toast as a supper? The answer is Meatballs!

I found a meatball recipe online using bread and eggs as the binding agent. I tried it out and the result is amazing. It is so easy and fun to make, I made it as a Meatballs with Tomato Sauce Pasta and it was very well received. The good thing is that it tastes great on its own as well, serve it with ketchup would definitely cheer the kids up!

Meatballs with Tomato Sauce Pasta that I made the other day.

Unfortunately, I can't find the recipe anymore, so here is my not very accurate Meatball recipe (this makes about 40 meatballs):

Ingredients:
500g lamb/beef mince
2 slices of bread
2 eggs, beaten
2 tbspns grated parmesan
2 tsps dried oregano
1 garlic clove, minced
1 big onion, finely chopped

Steps:
1/. Soak bread in beaten eggs for 5 mins. The bread is ready when it soaks up all the liquid without dripping.
2/. At the mean time, cook the chopped onion with a little bit of cooking oil in a frying pan until it is soft. Set aside to let it cool down a little.

3/. Once the bread is ready, pull it apart into small pieces (use your hands to do this) and put it in a big mixing bowl with the rest of the ingredients (including the cooked onion). Mix everything together using a spoon (I used a pair of chopsticks) in one direction. You will ended up with a mixture looking like this:

This is what the mixture looks like when it is ready to be made into meatballs.

(This photo is taken half way through my meatballs making process, so don't panic)

4/. Make meatballs the way you like it. If you don't know how to do it, Google is your friend. The way I do it is to put olive oil on my hands and put a spoon full of mixture in my palm and make a ball out of it. Then put some corn flour or flour on the meatballs so that they don't stick with each other.

Meatballs ready to be cooked.

5/ To cook the meatballs, heat up a frying pan with a bit of cooking oil. Cook meatballs in about 3 batches (depending on the size of your pan and size of the meatballs). Each batch takes about 5-8 minutes to cook, the only way I can be sure it is completely cooked is by tasting it!!

Give it a try, it is so much fun!! Or if you are extremely lazy or have absolutely no time, you can try the Jamie Oliver way of making meatballs - pull the meat out of fresh sausages and make it into meatballs, there you go, nice and easy!!

Sweet?!