Meatballs

Aside from being incredibly delicious, these are easy to freeze before or after cooking them.

Ingredients:

1) 1 lb. of ground beef

2) 1 lb. of ground pork (You can substitute this with another pound of ground beef.  I have made it both ways and both taste good, but the pork adds more flavor, probably due to the increased fat content.)

3) small yellow onion

4) 3 eggs

5) 1/3-1/2 cup of ground flax seeds (aka flax meal)

6) ground pepper

7) black truffle salt

8) extra-virgin olive oil

9) your favorite pasta sauce

10) sliced mushrooms (I like shittake)

11) curly parsley

Directions: 

1) Preheat oven to 350.

2) Put the ground beef and ground pork in a big bowl and let get to room temperature.  (If you don’t do this step, when you try to make the meatballs, your fingers will get super cold!)

3) Chop the onion into fairly small pieces and add to the bowl.

4) Chop up the parsley and put aside.

5) Add the flax meal and eggs into the bowl of meat + onions.

6) Season the meat mixture with about a 1/2 teaspoon of pepper and about 2 teaspoons of truffle salt (though you can really do however much you’d like for this).

7) Use your hands or a wooden spoon to mix up everything in the bowl and then form small balls.  (You can also skip the last part of this if you’d like and just scoop the mixture out in spoonfuls.  See note about this two steps after this.)

8) Place the meatballs on any dish that can go in the oven and cook them for about 10-20 minutes so that they are really solid in their ball formation.  It’s ok if they aren’t cooked throughout, because you’ll be cooking them more in the sauce.

9) In a rather large pot, heat up some butter and cook the sliced mushrooms in it.

10) Once the mushrooms are cooked, add the sauce to the pot.  Cook for a few minutes, then add the meatballs for a while.

11) When you’re all done, top with chopped parsley and add some more truffle salt if you’d like.