The Giant Meatballs or Pearls Before Swine

Every year our school presents something called The Great Auction.  Morning classes are canceled, everyone heads to the gym, and various food items and culinary abominations are put up for bids, one at a time.  A real auctioneer is the master of ceremonies, and tribes of students pool their money to bid on the food.  Winning groups take their food to the cafeteria and eat it.  This goes on for hours, and all of the money goes to charity.  Yesterday we made over $5,000.  It's a nice albeit strange thing our school has done for almost fifty years.

Teachers, clubs, and classes donate these food items, and some of them are good (a huge tray of homemade cinnamon rolls), but most of them are the kind of horrible greasy junk food kids tend to love.  Literally buckets of it, as in, "Up next we have a bucket of Tater Tots from Sonic."  Or a trough of hot fudge strewn with gummi bears.  Or five pounds of just the white stuff from Oreos.  Or a cooler full of Nerds floating in Mountain Dew.  Or a bag of deep-fried Egg McMuffins.  Or sixteen sticks of candy-coated butter.  Or a vat of Little Debbie treats floating in a rich brown gravy.  I dunno.  It's possible that I made most of that up, but you get the idea.  Some of this stuff sells for $200, no joke.  I'm glad that I have junior high responsibilities in the morning so I don't have to watch the bacchanalia that ensues when a several hundred coddled children, whose parents provide them with seemingly unlimited funds, get to live out their Willy Wonka-est dreams in a land of pure imagination. 

So every year I brazenly provide food with some actual soul to this cavalcade of insanity: a crock pot full of big, cheese-filled meatballs swimming in homemade marinara sauce, along with rolls and Parmesan cheese (pardon my shaky iPhone photo above).  It's a KIT and it is awesome.  And one year it went for over $100 (an anomaly), but most of the time the teachers pity-buy it for something like $12 to $32.  It is sad, and I often find myself grumbling, "Pearls before swine*," as I surrender my delectable, unappreciated meatballs in the teachers' lounge.

About an hour later, the emails begin.  "I have three words for your meatballs: OH. MY. GOSH."  And so on.  Then the recipe demands roll in.  Freakin' kids.  Let them have their cookie dough sliders.  Here's some real food for adult human beings.

* And by swine I mean the kids, not the teachers.  :)

INGREDIENTS

• 1 1/2 lbs ground sirloin
• 1 egg
• 1/2 t crushed red pepper flakes
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 1/4 medium onion, minced
• handful chopped flat-leaf parsley
• 1 C Italian bread crumbs
• 4 good shakes Worcestershire sauce
• 1 t salt
• 16 small cubes of provolone cheese (1/4 pound or so)
• olive oil for baking sheet  

DIRECTIONS

Preheat oven to 425.

Combine meat, egg, red pepper flakes, garlic, onion, parsley, bread crumbs, salt and Worcestershire sauce in a large bowl.  Use your hands. 

Make 16 meatballs.  Here's what I do: I pat the mixture evenly over a large plate.  Using a knife, I divide this into 4 equal sections.  Each section should yield 4 big meatballs, each somewhat larger than a golf ball.  

Tuck a piece of provolone into the middle of each meatball and seal it up as much as you can.  There may be some cheese leakage later, but believe me it's OK.  Place meatballs on a nonstick cookie sheet brushed with a little olive oil.  Place cookie sheet in the oven and bake 12-15 minutes.

Meanwhile, make this sauce in a pot that's way too big for it.  Plop the meatballs in after they finish baking/roasting.  Consume now, or put all of this in a crock pot and refrigerate.  Reheat for a few hours on high the next morning, then surrender the crock pot to those freaks in the gym.

I'm pretty sure you can figure out some ideas for the meatballs, but how about trying them on sub rolls with some Parmesan cheese?  They're sensational and too good for kids.  Do not let them have any.  Their little minds don't have the capacity to appreciate such meaty, cheesy majesty.  Let them eat cake.  Funfetti cake drenched in Dr. Pepper and pancake syrup.

Comments

[Jim Rhino]

What an easy, but incredibly excellent looking recipe. I must try this. Tomorrow...or Sunday...but this recipe is being made in the Rhino den soon. Thanks for sharing!
Carpe 'Que,
Jim Rhino

[Kelly]

Jim! Dude! Do it and report back! Also, feel free to cut down on the salt a bit. I like a saltier meatball, but your mileage may vary.

[GinaE]

I'm making this for dinner tonight...I have all the ingredients.
Yummy, thanks!!! (I haven't heard Pearls before Swine in a long time, so funny!!)

[bj]

"pearls before swine" Hmmmm! Comes in handy at times.
Kelly do you buy organic? Not promoting it, just wondering as I consider my own grocery shopping habits.

[bj]

A thought on marketing those meatballs. Have you considered serving them skewered on a stick w/ sauce on the side, sorta like food-on-a-stick aka state fair greasy bad-for-you foods?
As any artist must, consider the audience (even swine if they be;-)! I predict mucho $$$$ next year. ;-)

[Kelly]

Nice idea, bj, but they're just not as pretty when taken out of the sauce. :D

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