porcupine meatballs

my mom used to make these when i was a kid.  they're a great weeknight meal.  they're named "porcupine meatballs" because of the way they look when you roll the meatballs in uncooked rice before cooking them, but autumn hasn't caught onto that yet and she's convinced she's been eating real porcupine all these years.  and who am i to spoil that for her?  *wink*

ingredients:

1lb lean hamburger meat (you really want to use lean, otherwise you will have greasy sauce)

1 28oz can tomato sauce or crushed tomatoes

1/2 sleeve club crackers (or saltines in a pinch)

worchestershire sauce

salt and pepper

garlic powder

1 egg

1.5 cups minute rice

make the meatballs

put the hamburger meat in a large mixing bowl.  add the club crackers, crumbling them with your hands on top of the hamburger meat.  add the egg, and plenty of salt, pepper, and garlic powder.  add some worchestershire sauce (about 1/8 cup, or 10 big dashes).

mix the hamburger meat well with your hands and form into 5 or 6 large meatballs.

in a separate shallow bowl or dish, pour the minute rice.  roll the meatballs in the minute rice and then set them in a large saute pan.

make the sauce

pour the tomato sauce into a large mixing bowl.  add another 1/8 cup or so of worchestershire sauce, plus more salt, pepper, and garlic powder.  if you're cooking for only grown-ups, you might add some tony's.  but watch out - this stuff is SPICY.  a little goes a loooooong way.

keep adding spices and worchestershire until it tastes right to you.  don't make the mistake i made the last time i made these - i mixed the sauce in the same bowl that i had mixed the meatballs, without washing it.  and i was on my second spoonful of taste-testing the sauce when i realized that there was still raw hamburger meat all over the bowl.  i literally paused with the spoon halfway in my mouth, panicked, and ran to the sink.  funny how i could eat sushi for every meal, but raw hamburger finds me rinsing my mouth out under the kitchen faucet.  i guess it's a hangover from my vegetarian days.

ANYWAY.  

cook

pour the sauce over the meatballs:

then cover the sauce pan and simmer for about 10 minutes, carefully spooning sauce over the meatballs every few minutes.  then carefully turn the meatballs over in the sauce, and simmer for another ten minutes.

most of the rice will actually come off the meatballs into the sauce, but that's cool.  they'll look about like this when they're done:

this day i served them with steamed squash and salad:

we are big salad eaters in our house. or maybe we're just big ranch dressing eaters, and lettuce is the best vehicle to get it into our mouths. 

well, i say that, but i'm not as big on ranch as jake and autumn are.  i recently found this dressing and i am in LURV with it.  i buy a new dressing every time i run out.  i'm extremely brand disloyal.  i never buy the same thing twice.  salad dressing, shampoo, toilet paper - i'm always changing it up.  which is not without its complications, because now that i actually share my household with someone else, jake is always saying, "why did you quit buying that ______ that i liked so much?"  and i'm like, "i have absolutely no clue what you're talking about."

anyway, my new salad dressing fave is Newman's Own Low Fat Sesame Ginger.  it tastes exactly like the salad dressing at Fuji sushi bar at 71st and memorial where brooke and i used to go every saturday for lunch after long nights out in college.  there's no amount of tequila that a volcano roll can't cure.

enjoy the porcupine meatballs - and messing with your kids about what they're made from.  that alone makes them worthwhile.