The Perfect Meatballs and Tomatoes Recipe | Marcella Hazan | American Masters | PBS

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One of Marcella Hazan’s most famous recipes is simply meatballs and tomatoes. Watch teacher and writer Giuliano Hazan make it here and learn a little more about the history of the dish and what it meant to him and his mother, Marcella Hazan.

“American Masters – Marcella” premieres nationwide Friday, July 11 at 10 p.m. ET on PBS (check local listings), pbs.org/americanmasters and the PBS App.

Full Meatballs and Tomatoes Recipe:

Ingredients:
For 4 servings
A slice of good-quality white bread
⅓ cup milk
1 pound ground beef, preferably chuck
1 tablespoon onion chopped very fine
1 tablespoon chopped parsley
1 egg
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
3 tablespoons freshly grated parmigiano-reggiano cheese
Whole nutmeg
Salt
Black pepper, ground fresh from the mill
Fine, dry, unflavored bread crumbs, spread on a plate
Vegetable oil
1 cup fresh, ripe tomatoes, peeled and chopped, or canned imported Italian plum tomatoes, chopped up, with their juice

Directions:

1. Trim away the bread’s crust, put the milk and bread in a small saucepan, and turn on the heat to low. When the bread has soaked up all the milk, mash it to a pulp with a fork. Remove from heat and allow to cool completely.
2. Into a bowl put the chopped meat, onion, parsley, the egg, the tablespoon of olive oil, the grated Parmesan, a tiny grating of nutmeg—about ⅛ teaspoon—the bread and milk mush, salt, and several grindings of black pepper. Gently knead the mixture with your hands without squeezing it. When all the ingredients are evenly combined, shape it gently and without squeezing into balls about 1 inch in diameter. Roll the balls lightly in the bread crumbs.
3. Choose a sauté pan that can subsequently accommodate all the meatballs in a single layer. Pour in enough vegetable oil to come ¼ inch up the sides. Turn on the heat to medium high and when the oil is hot, slip in the meatballs. Sliding them in with a spatula will avoid splashing hot oil out of the pan. Brown the meatballs on all sides, turning them carefully so they won’t break up.
4. Remove from heat, tip the pan slightly and with a spoon, remove as much of the fat as floats to the surface. Return the pan to the burner over medium heat, add the chopped tomatoes with their juice, a pinch of salt, and turn the meatballs over once or twice to coat them well. Cover the pan and adjust the heat to cook at a quiet, but steady simmer for about 20 to 25 minutes, until the oil floats free of the tomatoes. Taste and correct for salt and serve at once.

From Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking: 30th Anniversary Edition by Marcella Hazan. Copyright © 1992 by Marcella Hazan. Foreword copyright © 2022 by Victor Hazan. Excerpted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

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Discover how celebrated cookbook writer Marcella Hazan shaped Italian cuisine in America. Arriving in New York having never cooked, challenged by a disabled right arm, she soon inspired millions of home cooks with the glories of Italian cuisine. Features interviews with Jacques Pépin, Danny Meyer, Lidia Bastianich, Hazan’s widower and writing partner Victor Hazan, and their son Giuliano Hazan.

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(joyful music) (meatballs sizzling) (pan clatters) (meatballs sizzling) – Hello, I’m Giuliano Hazan, and today I’m going to make a recipe of my mother, Marcella Hazan, for classic Italian meatballs, from her cookbook, “Essentials
of Classic Italian Cooking.” (light music) We have ground beef, have eggs, bread, onions, nutmeg, parsley. (light music continues) I’m going to begin with the bread. The bread needs to be soaked in milk, but we don’t want the crust of the bread. (light music continues) I’m going to put the bread in this bowl where I’m going to mix
all the ingredients in, and I’m going to add the milk. My mother, actually, in her recipe, warms up the milk in a separate pot, but then you have to
wait for it to cool down. And so, sometimes I try to take shortcuts. And when I tried this, I discovered that it worked really well, just mushing the bread in the bowl without having to warm
it up with the milk. So I just use my hands,
which is kind of fun also. And just mash up the bread, letting it soak up that milk, until I get a nice, even mush. And then press it down again to mash it. And now we’re ready to add
the rest of the ingredients. We have some ground beef. I like to use the 80/20 ground beef, the one that’s 80% lean. Also, my mother never
used really lean meat because if it’s too lean, the meatballs will come out dry. (light music continues) And then I have one egg. (egg tapping) (egg cracking) And then we need to do some prep. We need to dice our onion. And so this is my trick
for finely dicing onion with a minimal amount
of pain and suffering. You know, most of the pain and suffering comes from the fumes
that the onions give off. And the fewer cuts that you make, the fewer fumes will come out. I cut off the top, but I
leave the root attached because the root is going
to hold the onion together. And then I cut it in half right
through the root like this. (knife thumps) (light music continues) I want to make lengthwise cuts, but I don’t want to just
go straight down like this. I want to go around in an arc, following the shape of the onion, making small, narrow, little
wedges all the way around. And then all I have to
do is just cut crosswise as if I’m making thin, crosswise slices. Use your knife in a
slicing motion like this. And you see, I have
nice, finely diced onion with a minimal amount of cuts. (knife thumps) There, that’s good enough. And we’re going to add the onion. (lively music) So now I’m going to roll the
meatballs in some breadcrumbs. You don’t want to make them too big, maybe about an inch and
a half or so in diameter. Okay, we’re ready to cook our meatballs. And the first thing we’re going to do is to brown them in some vegetable oil. Come up maybe a quarter
inch up the side of the pan. There we go. And we turn the heat on, and we want to get the oil nice and hot. (lively music continues) So when my mother first
came to the United States after she married my father, she discovered meatballs
with pasta, with spaghetti, something that did not exist in Italy. When we eat meatballs, we
don’t eat them with pasta, we eat them with some nice, crusty bread. The best way. (lively music continues) Now it’s starting to sizzle. I can also feel the heat coming out. So we’re going to begin by browning them. (meatballs sizzling) And then put some tomatoes in, and put the meatballs back in. And then they cook for
approximately 45 minutes or so. (lively music continues) So our meatballs are done. And sometimes you’ll see
that there’s some extra oil that comes out. So, I usually like to skim that, so that they’re not too greasy. I use a little ladle like this. (lively music continues) Okay. And these are ready to eat now. (lively music continues) My mother would put these meatballs in a thermos for me to bring to school. And the other kids in
school were making fun of me that I was bringing this
strange, stuffed meat. You know, my mother said, “Oh, well, you can go to the cafeteria.” I tried that for a day,
and that was enough. And I went back to my thermos. And ready to dig into these. (lively music continues) Hmm. (lively music continues) Hmm. They’re so good. This brings back memories. I hope you’ve enjoyed watching
me make these meatballs and that you’ll want to
make them at home as well. (pan clatters) Thanks for watching. (lively music ends) (no audio) (no audio)