Easy recipe for meatballs in tomato sauce

Meatballs in tomato sauce is a classic Italian dish. Maybe it brings to mind Lady and the Tramp. Slap a red checkered tablecloth on the table, light a few candles and you have a romantic Italian dinner for the money! The great thing about this recipe is that it is incredibly easy to make. Almost as easy as recipe for pasta with oven-baked tomato sauce. This recipe could almost be called a "one pot pasta with meatballs in tomato sauce". But since the pasta has to be cooked in a separate pot, it doesn't quite work. Meatballs in tomato sauce is actually a simple recipe with few components. Meatballs, tomato sauce and pasta. But it can still be a tedious project when the tomato sauce has to simmer for hours, the meatballs have to be fried in a pan and the pasta has to be cooked in a separate pot (and maybe even made from scratch?!). You can almost avoid all of this with this recipe. Here, the tomato sauce is cooked in a deep pan, cooked pasta is stirred in, and then the "raw" meatballs are added to the sauce along with fresh mozzarella. After just 10 minutes in the oven, the meatballs are perfectly cooked, juicy and delicious. The pasta and tomato sauce have become extra flavorful, as if the sauce had simmered for a long time, because it just gets that extra heat in the oven. And then the whole thing becomes just a tad more luxuriously delicious because of the melted mozzarella cheese. 

TIP: Also try this recipe for authentic spaghetti bolognese or spaghetti carbonara or a delicious creamy fettuccine alfredo with chicken or vegetarian pasta with asparagus and peas

The best Italian meatballs

To make the Italian meatballs extra juicy and delicious, add a good amount of freshly grated Parmesan to the recipe. The cheese binds the minced meat together without making them too firm and dry, and adds a lot of "umami" flavor. In addition, the minced meat is mixed with a single clove of freshly pressed garlic, salt and pepper. You can also easily add various spices, fresh or dried. The recipe uses beef for the meatballs. Here you can vary the recipe by using a mixture of pork and veal or chicken meat. For example, you can use minced meat from chicken meatballs recipe as an alternative. 

TIP: Also try this recipe: vegetarian meatballs in tomato sauce or pasta with ratatouille or pasta with red pesto and chorizo

Spaghetti with meatballs in tomato sauce

For a true "Lady and the Tramp" version of this recipe, use spaghetti instead of pasta shells for the recipe. You can easily do that, and the method is exactly the same. Just as you can easily use spaghetti for your recipe for meatballs in tomato sauce, you can also choose other types of pasta. Fettuccine, penne, farfalle - it all works. You can also use alternative types of pasta such as lentils or legumes, if you want to make a gluten-free and slightly more protein- and fiber-rich version of the recipe.