Do you like doing big batch cooking? If you haven’t made big batch meatballs, you may just love this recipe…
If you don’t do big batch cooking, here are a few reasons why you should…
- Economical: Buying items in bulk is cheaper. Also, if you have quick/easy dinners in your freezer you are less likely to eat out.
- Time saving: Ready made meals in your freezer can be a huge time saver. You only have to prep all of the ingredients once.
- Fun Family Activity: You can get the whole family involved and helping. We actually started doing this after my husband’s family had a get-together. We all got learn his Grandma’s Secret Meatball and Gravy recipe. Full disclosure, this is not her “secret recipe,” it is our own that we also love.
We try to have some homemade frozen meatballs in our freezer at all times. So when our supply is getting low we know it’s time to make another big batch. Our kids love them, and they are great on a mountain of pasta or on a toasted roll as a meatball sub.
Where I like to buy my ingredients…
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Costco is usually the first place that I do my bulk shopping. I like to purchase their organic ground beef and parmesan for the meatballs. Cases of organic tomato sauce, diced tomatoes and tomato paste for the sauce. I also purchase some of my other pantry staples here like organic pasta, olive oil.
Near our home we have a great little place called “The Pork Shop” this is of course where we get our pork.
For all of the other fresh ingredients we typically pick them up at our regular grocery store.
When it comes to spices, bulk is the way to go. Unfortunately Costco doesn’t carry a huge variety. We do have a Chef Store about 45 minutes away that we can get these at, but when we don’t want to make the long drive, AMAZON.
McCormick Culinary Onion Powder, 20 oz
Parsley Leaf – 100% Natural – 1 lb – EarthWise Aromatics
Amazon Brand – Happy Belly Granulated Garlic, 24 Ounces
McCormick Perfect Pinch Italian Seasoning, 6.25 Oz
Progresso Bread Crumbs Italian Style
Oh, and here is an ice cream scoop that works great for portioning the meatballs…
#20 (2 oz) Scoop by Restaurantware
Bulk Batch Meatballs: “Variations”
If you are wanting a gluten-free or low carb version you can omit the breadcrumbs and it is still delicious. Also, if you don’t want to mash with your hands you can use a meat masher tool. I have found that it works well but your hands tend to work better. Here is a link to the masher I use…
Farberware Heat Resistant Nylon Meat/Potato Masher
I am not going to bore you with all of the details, but I will tell you we always like to make a tester meatball before baking all of them. We do this in a skillet on the stove with a small amount of the meat mixture. If the seasoning isn’t exactly where we want it to be we can add what want and “fine tune” it. Added bonus, its a mid-cooking snack!
So if you notice the last picture of the meatballs, they are more red. When we make our big batch meatballs, we also make our big batch sauce. The meatballs (and cooked Italian sausages… see sauce recipe) go into the sauce. This helps flavor the sauce and keeps the meatballs moist and tender even after freezing.
Big Batch Sauce Recipe
What goes better with meatballs than a good homemade pasta sauce? Well below you can find the recipe for our family’s red sauce. We make a bunch at one time, eat it for dinner that night, then freeze the rest. It is a huge money saver and honestly after eating our own sauce for so long, store bought is not so good.
I should tell you that you do not have to make the big batch meatballs in order to make your own tomato sauce. You can totally make this vegan or substitute meatballs with a couple of bulk packages of Italian sausage. I usually find 10 packs of sausage for about $10 each, bake them and then cut into thirds.
Now your “Big Batch Meatballs” and sauce are ready for the freezer!
Our sauce yield was 12 x 32 ounce containers leftover after dinner that same day as bulk cooking.
In the picture below I also used my quart sized containers for storing the meatballs. I DO NOT recommend doing this, I normally use gallon freezer bags and am much happier with the results. Also since we make these pretty regularly I have invested in some reusable freezer bags that are great. Links to my favorite freezer storage items below…
Reusable Gallon Storage Bags – 7 Pack
Extreme Freeze Reditainer 32 oz. Freezeable Deli Food Containers w/ Lids – Pack of 24
As always thank you so much for reading, if you would like to see more of our big batch freezer recipes, let me know in the comments below.
-April aka ZonaMom
