Easy Meatball Sub Recipe | Quick Family Dinner Idea | Hot and Homemade Sandwich

Welcome back to Hillside Farm! I’m Ruth McKeaney, and in this episode of our Fall Series, I’m joined by my best friend Heather to make Meatball Subs — the perfect recipe for busy weeknights!

We wanted to share a meal that’s simple, comforting, and family-friendly. These meatballs come together quickly with ingredients you probably already have on hand: ground beef, garlic, egg, and a few pantry staples. The best part? We add shredded carrots for extra moisture and hidden veggies your kids won’t even notice!

GET THE FULL RECIPE:
https://www.hungry4home.com/blog/meatballsubs

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#MeatballSubs #FallRecipes #FamilyMeals #EasyRecipes #familydinner

Welcome to Hillside Farm. My name is Ruth McKini and we are in the fall series with my dearest friend Heather who’s going to show us yum how to make meatball subs from scratch. And uh you’re not going to want to miss this one. We’ll see you in a minute. Welcome to Hillside Farm. I’m Ruth McKini, mother of five, wife to Bob, lifelong host, and a passionate believer that any space can feel like home. Here at our 307year-old family home, hospitality is more than a meal. It’s about loving others well, making them feel seen, heard, and deeply welcomed. [Music] We invite you to subscribe to our channel, Hungry for Home, to discover beloved family recipes, meaningful conversations, gardening tips, decorating, and to always feel at home. Welcome to Hillside Farm. My name is Ruth McKini, and we are in the fall series, which is my favorite time of year. I don’t know if it’s Heather’s. We argue over what the best time of year is. She likes it hot. I like it cold. But I’ll take a little bit of fall. I know she will. So, we were talking about dishes we love to make in the fall. And she brought up one that I have personally never made. So, I said, “Why don’t you come teach me?” We were talking about what can you have when your kids are getting out of sports and you need to throw something together quickly? And meatball sandwiches came up. Well, you said meatballs because I think you do a variety of things. do, but I and I do a lot of different types of meatballs, but this I love this recipe because I feel like it’s so simple. You usually have everything on hand. Okay? And it comes together really quick because we bake it in the oven and you can use it for pasta. You can throw it in sauce for pasta, for spaghetti and meatballs, or my kids actually prefer a meatball sandwich. So, that’s what we’re doing today is a meatball sandwich. All right, take it away. What What ingredients do you need to have on hand to start this? One pound of ground beef. Okay. And I almost always have a pound of ground beef in my fridge or my freezer. So, one pound of ground beef, one egg, two garlic cloves. We’re going to do a uh I think it’s a half of a teaspoon of each of, believe it or not, soy sauce. That’s surprising. It’s that gives it some salt. Yeah. And the red wine vinegar. Okay. We’re going to have some red pepper flakes, Italian seasoning, salt, and this is the crazy thing, shredded carrots. That’s okay. So you’re even going to get vegetables in the meatballs. Making a veggie for your kids and that adds some moisture. I was going to say that’s got to keep it really moist. Yeah. So, and my kids have never even questioned it. No. So, they don’t even probably know that it’s So, what she did already just to speed things along was take a carrot and shred it in your box. I did a box grater and it’s about about one carrot. It might even be a half a carrot depending how big the carrot is, but it’s about a half a cup. And we’ll write all this up and you can be on your And then also we have a third of a cup of Parmesan and a third of a cup of panko breadrumbs. And are you like me? I always use panko only because they stay crunched and they just have more girth than like regular I like panko. So okay, what are we doing? It really So we also have this. So somebody who watches I mean how gracious is this? She actually sent myself one of these and you one of these got one and they’re for eggs. She has a farm down in North Carolina and she said, “So, I’m going to use this for the first time.” So, it’s an egg cracker and you crack the egg and then you’re going to pour the eggs out and it’s good especially when you have farm fresh eggs because occasionally you get a bad egg. And have you ever had I have never had a bad egg. I had a bad long time. I had eggs on my farm now for years. Well, I was with a friend one time and we were at her house and she had chickens. Yeah. And she opened up an egg and it when you then she must have found an egg that had been in there for like it was terrible. So anyway, so we crack it. We open it here and look. We’re going to pour it out. Look it. It’s like the perfect size for one egg. And we’re going to pour that into our ground wheat. I love it. Thank you so much, whoever sent it. My goodness, that’s so cute. I love this. They sent you one. It’s adorable. All right. And you’re going to you’re going to do that with the garlic. You’re going to do uh I’ll scoot this over a little bit. Chop the garlic. Chop two garlic. I’m going to put my carrots in. I will say when when we go to places, my husband and son will order meatball subs. I just have never made them. Well, I have three boys and my boys love meatballs. And see, that’s it. Andrew was all excited when he found out we were doing meatballs cuz you don’t usually do meatballs. So here I this is true confessions because originally she was going to make another recipe for me that I have never made in my entire marriage and that is meatloaf. And I she was going to teach me how to make a meatloaf that I would be willing to eat. And maybe it was just a bad experience I had with meatloaf. My kids meatloaf too. I know it was the breading and and and then you know some people do it with like onion mix and things like that. I usually do a red pepper red pepper and tomato chutney that I put into my meatball mix which also adds moisture similar to the carrots. So I’m doing 1 and 1/2 teaspoon of red wine vinegar. Okay. Do I put this in there? Yep. You’re going to put the chopped garlic. Everything goes in. And then 1 and 1/2 teaspoon of soy sauce as well. Here’s the great thing about having a best friend. They come over and see what you’re missing in your kitchen. And um for your birthday, you might just get one of those things. You never know. You never know. You never know. All right. What do I Did you already do the salt? Yep. We can just do I just do a teaspoon of salt. So, I have one side. I did not. You can do that side, which I did not get wet. I love salt sellers. I don’t know if y’all realize that, but I collect. And then leave that out. And I’m going to do one teaspoon of Italian seasoning. Salt. And this. The other thing I will say about the Italian seasoning, I often at home have a lot of uh my herbs from my garden from the summer and I dry them. So I often this is a good time of year September, October to use my spray to to use to to use all your fresh dried herbs. Yeah. And that’s a great resource for that. Fresh dried herbs. Fresh well fresh I’m kidding. I’m kidding. Dried herbs. Recently dried herbs from the summer. And I do just a shake, you know, a shake or two of crushed red pepper. May I ask you a question? Yeah. What do you have the oven preheated at? 425. 425. Yep. 425. And I have a baking sheet here with parchment paper. You can do parchment or you could spray it with olive oil, whatever your preference. And you know me, I I like to wear the gloves. She wears gloves in the kitchen. I’ve never worn gloves. wear gloves in the kitchen when I use meat just because you know when you have a busy household, someone’s going to call, someone’s going to, you know, come in the house and I don’t have to wash my hands right away. I can just take off the gloves. I love it. Yeah. All right. So, crunch everything in there. Get everything nice and combined. And I know you’re supposed to not overm mix your meatloaf or your Does it make it tough or what does it do supposedly? I’ve never had that issue, but it’s what every single okay recipe I’ve ever read has told me to not overwork your meatball mixture. But that was easy to put together. It’s really and and we’re just doing one pound. Now, the other thing I will say is often I will double this. And another great tip for fall and busy schedules is I will double it. make one batch for tonight and then the other meatballs I will cook and then I will freeze them. I will let them cool, put them in ziplockc bags and freeze them. So the freezer lock bags kind of like I do my cookie balls and then you keep them in the freezer and then my kids can go in there and grab a couple at a time, reheat them and make a sandwich as they wish. I love it. I love it. I love it. Yeah. And the other thing I do is I use an ice cream scooper. So that means every time it’s uniform. So, you’re just going to press What size scooper is that? Cuz people will ask. It’s the same size as the one I have. And I never know what exactly to tell people. I know. I should know this. I want to say it’s a 1 and a half or 2 in. It’s pretty small. I actually like them small. And then you can you can always add more to it. So, what I usually do is I’ll go through and do this and then I’ll go back and form my So, if you wanted you could do that or you can do this part. Yeah, you tell And then I will do this. Give me a jar. I like to do the pre-measure just so that they all end up being uniform. But you’re going back through and you’re reworking them. Roll them up. So Heather and I were really um fortunate and blessed. A lot of our experience of learning how to cook came from a dear friend um named Jillian. And we were out with Heather’s mom. She was best friends with Jillian who was English and she had a catering company that both she and I worked for at for fun at different periods of time. And her mom the other day at lunch gave us something from Jillian. I know. She gave us two beautiful silver pieces that Jillian used to use. These sweet little silver serving pieces that she would use for catering events. And she had only two of them and she thought we should each get one. And what I love is I’m telling you, and I’m telling you, I don’t care how old you are, uh whether you’ve got grandkids or whether you’ve got young kids, teaching women over food and eating, it’s it’s really important. It is important. And uh no, we we learned a lot of really valuable lessons from her about hosting, entertaining, and she used to do a lot of themes. We loved that. M she would do movie nights and we would do go see movies and then we would come back to her house and she would have already prepared a meal and we would all gather. It was really fun. And she was, you know, our parents’ age. Yeah. All right, we are almost to the bottom of this. All right. Yeah, it’s perfect. So, I I did notice you brought Amarosa rolls. You might not have amarosa rolls that I think they are the very best for any kind of so any kind of Italian Italian roll. They can be seated. They can be seated or they can be non-seated. It’s really up to you what your family prefers. And I mean listen I’ve used hot dog rolls because whatever whatever I have on hand if that’s needed it’s going to fill it’s going to do the job. Your boys aren’t going to care. My girls would look at that and say you want me to eat this salad. You think? I know. That’s that’s awesome. All right. Cool. That’s great. All right. So, we’ve got amorosa rolls. We have mozzarella. Yeah. So, when once I’m finished with these guys, they are going to go in. How long do they go in the oven? So, I will tell you, usually it’s about 10 to 12 minutes at 425. It’s not very long. Now, if you’re doing it for a spaghetti and pasta, what I also will usually do is you can undercook them a little bit and then put them in your sauce and continue cooking. If you’re going to serve it like this, you do want to check it and make sure that they’re nice and brown inside. Yeah. In the oven so that they’re going to be fully cooked all the way through. Are these the same kind of meatballs that are like done for Swedish meatballs? Yeah, Swedish meatballs usually are used. So, this is ground beef. And sometimes I’ll do ground beef and pork combo, which is really good. And when I do um I’ve also done chicken meatballs. I’ve done a chicken meatball with like a Thai flavor. That’s really good. You can add rice with that. Make it. So, you can do chicken and apple. There’s all sorts of You can change up what seasonings you put in meatballs. The mixture is usually the same. Change your seasonings. Okay. Well, so really, we just have to wait until they come out and then we’ll assemble. Yeah. Here’s a question. Do you toast these? I usually toast them. So, I open up, toast them first. Do you want to toast them in here? You can do it under Y. So, these are already pre-sliced, which is nice. I love Amarosa rolls. They’re good. Yeah, this is a classic in Philly, you know. Look it. We’ve got our Eagles. We’ve got our Eagle. It’s football season. It’s football season. Yes, it is. All right. So, Heather has one left in college. Yeah, we’ll just do We’ll just do two. Let’s just do two for now since often at often at my house it’s I do it I order up cuz whoever walks in the door you can quickly just quick put it under broil up the cheese. I do know you’re going to have Bobby Anders and Bob all fighting for those two. We’ll do three. There might not be enough meatballs for you to take. There should be. That’ll be fine. We’ll do three. Do half. Do half. That’s all we need is a half. All right, that’s fine. We’ll do three. We put three. Um, so Heather has two at home still. So, one at home who’s going into ninth grade, one in college, and then two out of school. Yeah. Two out. I know. So, it is It’s very different right now. My youngest is starting high school this year, and it’s hard to believe that this is it. The last one through. I know. I know. Yeah. It’s an adjustment. It’s a It’s a beautiful hard great heartfelt change. It’s good though. It’s good. It’s good. It’s I feel like each stage gives you something different to embrace and I’ve enjoyed having Ryder home last year and this year and we’ve been doing some new things to just focus on him and he was always the baby of the family and now he gets our full attention and so I’m appreciating it and hopefully he is. So Anders is the last one of five at home. We have a blast. Yeah, we have a blast. It’s a um it’s different, but we definitely took time to think through how to make things very special for the only one left. I will say he does get to choose the meal, which is the first time that he gets his first choice and doesn’t get out vote v voted by everyone else, which is really kind of nice. I think when it was time for the girls to go back to college, Andrew was like, I’m done. He’s like, I need my meat. I want my own space. All right, so we are going to toast these. I have the oven on broil. We’re gonna lightly We have to watch it. Do you put oil, anything on them or you just brown them? No. All right, we brown them. We already have mozzarella and we bought the mozzarella pre-sliced. We did. You can You can do whatever you want. You can do shredded. You can do um you know, a log of mozzarella. Cut it yourself. It’s a log. It’s a log. Cut it yourself. It’s a log. It’s a long um I mean honestly this is such a my kids sometimes I use proolone. It really depends on what they like and so you can I think mozzarella goes both with best with the Italian and then any marinara I usually choose if you’re not going to make it yourself get a good one. Get a good one and rouse is a good one. Okay. So um but I sometimes if I’m in the mood I’ll make my own but honestly for again we’re talking about quick back to school. How often are you in the mood to make your own? Sometimes I do I like to make my own. No, I like pasta. All right, let’s put this in. And you definitely want to keep an eye on that. That’ll go quick. Okay, so Heather said we need to warm some of this. So, the easiest way to open that, by the way, is I use a bottle a bottle opener. I I use this. So, now you can choose either way. I know. And then a bowl. Yeah. Did you know that while I was gone, what my girls did for me? I heard about this. You did? That’s crazy. I was out of town speaking in North Carolina and I got home and two of my girls before they went to school behind you. Oh, you got it. Yeah. Oh, they’re done. Yeah, I knew that would go quick. They cleaned out my drawers, my pantries. They had 10 bags of trash. Let me be clear. Half of those, I’m sure, is water b I mean water bottles with missing lid. You know, they went through my Tupperware. I did that the other day. Oh, it was the sweetest gift. So, just put like enough that you’re going to like half. Yeah, there you go. Half the jar for right now. Oh, okay. Half the jar. That’s So, you heard about it, huh? Did someone tell you? That’s amazing. Did you see it on my Instagram? I saw it. Put it in the microwave. I was like super impressed. I’m like, “What’s that, girls?” Yeah. Always cover your tomato sauce in the microwave cuz the last thing you need is splatter blow up. Yeah. Oh, they’re bubbling. They’re getting there. But we probably need another five minutes. All right. Smelling good. I’m going to check. Oh, yeah. Theirs are good. Yeah. You just want to make sure they’re browning on the top. Do you want to cut one open? I think they’re going to be fine. We can try it, though. Sure, if you want. here. Just do it. Yeah. Yeah. Perfect. Those are fine. Okay. So, this is uber easy. You’re going to line up your rolls. And really, it depends how big your roll is and how much you want to fill it. But I usually just go enough to go Yeah. right down the line. And then I want you to put sauce on top. How much sauce? Enough to cover, you know, to cover the meatball. A little bit more than me. A little more. Yeah. You do the meatballs. I’ll do this. And then we’ll put the cheese on it. Yeah. And it’s avoiding getting the um bread all soggy. Yeah. And then put mozzarella. You know, I even put a little bit on kind of Yeah. Both sides. Why not? Like that. Yeah. Perfect. Okay. Yep. Yep. All right. You got it. I’m a little less careful on the number two. Yep. Listen, it’s all going to get melted. It’s all going to get melted. We have the um right now we have the oven on broil. Yeah. Again, it’s kind of helpful how I always wondered why do they cut these. It’s kind of helpful. I know. There you go. There you go. And we’re going to Oh, careful. It might be hot. Is it good? Yep. All right. We’re going to stick it back under the broiler. And you do want to keep an eye on it. It’s not going to take very long. So, keep an eye on it. You want that to melt but not burn. They could have dipping sauce. Yes. And you can I often I do that. I’ll have a little bit of warm dipping sauce, too. Um, but these are great even literally. I mean, they’d be fun for a football game with toothpick. I mean, there’s lots of things like I said and I’ve made these and I’ve done a variety of different instead of the Italian spices, I’ve put in like cilantro, okay? or you know some that’s more of a tie. Yeah. And then I’ve done um where I’ve done like a coconut broth and put them in like a soup. Okay. So that’s that too. That’s good too. Coconut broth soup little friend of ours Becca who is a great cook as well. What What kind did she do? She did. Is that like with a jelly? Yeah, she did the jelly. The jelly in the crock pot. That that was the classic toothpick. That was a very 1950s thing. All right. We’re repeating 1950s. Pick real quick. We’re not there yet. Another minute. Yeah. No. So, meatballs you can do. Yeah. So many different things. I love meatballs. They’re fun. They’re easy. And they’re quicker than doing a whole meatloaf. A whole meatloaf. But you are going to come back and do a meatloaf. I will do a meatloaf, mashed potatoes, the whole deal. The whole deal. I’ll do the mashed potatoes. You can do the meatloaf. All right. We’ll do that. Maybe that’ll be on the next fall season. I think it’s done. Okay. I can smell probably a little bit of burning toast, but that’s okay. That’s okay. We aren’t about perfection here. No. And no one’s going to care once it gets closed up. All right. These are gorgeous. You could actually even do like parmesan or you could put a little sprinkle of some more. Oh my gosh, these. Can you hear the crunch? I know. Yummy. These are awesome. So, you get some hungry boys after football practice and they’ll be very happy. You do. Thank you so much. Thank you for watching us making meatball sandwiches with Heather. And again, please subscribe where you’re going to have lots of fun recipes like this. Have a great day.