Giant Italian easy meatball recipe for healthy, large baked meatballs. No breadcrumbs and my kids think anything jumbo is the best – I tend to agree! Serve with your favorite spaghetti sauce over pasta, or make delicious meatball sandwiches with super easy homemade buns.
My kids love homemade meatballs… and ground beef taco meat (which is PACKED with veggies) and homemade breakfast sausage and the easiest burgers on the planet. So it didn’t surprise me when my daughter asked to make BIG meatballs. There was a restaurant we loved to eat at in California where you could order three giant meatballs as an appetizer. They were big, juicy and definitely filled your belly. She wanted THAT kind of meatball. So here’s what we did for a big, giant Italian easy meatball recipe!
Easy Meatball Recipe Ingredients
- ground beef (or your choice of ground meat)
- salt
- pepper
- onion powder
- garlic powder
- dried Italian seasoning
- fresh spinach or kale, chopped finely
- eggs
- flour (I used all-purpose)
- Parmesan cheese, shredded (using the rind, if possible)
I used two pounds of grass-fed ground beef (that I got from Butcher Box.) You can easily mix/match with whatever ground meat you have and/or love… veal, pork, venison, turkey, and chicken would all be good options. It is important that you use meat that has some fat on it for flavor, so I recommend subbing just one pound of ground beef for a super lean meat. Otherwise your giant Italian meatballs might come out dry, and that’s no fun.
Butcher Box delivers grass-fed beef, pasture-raised and organic chicken, and heritage pork directly to your front door each month. You can read my honest review on Butcher Box here, and my post on how to make Butcher Box worth the cost!
I added quite a bit of finely chopped spinach to these meatballs because, why not? You could probably add other vegetables, like grated carrot, onion, celery, mushrooms… You can also add non-vegetable items like oats or lentils or beans, if you’re looking to stretch your ground beef as far as you possibly can. (More tips on stretching your meat HERE.) I’d recommend pre-cooking your vegetables so that they don’t seep water in the cooking process (and thereby possibly making your meatballs NOT stick together).
Fresh spices are really great in dishes like rosemary olive oil flatbread, but we’re going the dried route in this giant Italian easy meatball recipe for three reasons:
- It’s easy.
- It’s cheap.
- They’re dry.
Obviously we’re going to go the easy route whenever we can. And we’re also going to go the cheap route too. We’re going the dry route to help maintain that proper moisture balance that is OH SO IMPORTANT when you’re making meatballs. Too much moisture up front means soggy meatballs. Too little moisture means dry meatballs. Neither of these two options are desireable.
Giant Italian Easy Meatball Recipe
Surprisingly, here’s really not a whole lot to this recipe. But then again, sometimes the super simple recipes (like slow cooker carnitas or slow cooker pot roast) are some of the best one. Still, let’s talk about what ingredients make these giant Italian meatballs so special.
My Restaurant Style Giant Meatball Recipe Finally Revealed
FAQ
What is a big meatball called?
What size is a large meatball?
Why are Italian meatballs so big?
What is a meatball?
Those rotund American specimens, though, are only the tip of the meat grinder. Like dumplings and snowflakes, meatballs come in a vast range of shapes and sizes or, more aptly, ingredients, applications, and cooking styles.
What is a boiled meatball called?
Taking their name from the Prussian city of Königsberg, these traditional German meatballs were renamed Kochklopse (boiled meatballs) after World War II. Owing to the fact that they’re served with gravy, these meaty morsels are also referred to as soßklopse (sauced meatballs).
What are Italian meatballs called?
Traditional Italian meatballs, called polpette, have very little in common with their American counterparts. For one thing, they’re quite a bit smaller than the meatballs most Americans grew up eating. Compared to the tennis ball-sized rounds served in America, polpette are about the size of a walnut shell.
What is a Swedish Meatball?
Country of origin: Sweden. Choice of protein: Pork and beef. Cooking method: Pan-fried. Typically made with a mix of pork and beef, Swedish meatballs are pan-fried and often, though not always, coated in white gravy made with dairy, flour, and stock.