Today we’re continuing the one pot series. We’re making Italian meatballs with orzo. This is a great one.

Why You’ll Love This

This is a great dish. It’s very easy to make, and I’m going to show you how. Really quick, easy meatball, but really flavorful.

Ingredients

For the Meatballs

• 1 pound of ground chuck
• 2 teaspoons diamond crystal kosher salt
• 1/2 teaspoon of black pepper
• 2 cloves of garlic that are grated into a paste
• 1/3 cup of flat leaf Italian parsley that is minced
• 3/4 cup of Italian seasoned breadcrumbs
• 3/4 cup of grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese
• 1 egg

For the Sauce

• 1 large onion that is diced
• 1 (28 ounce) can of plum tomatoes, crushed
• 3 1/2 cups of low sodium beef stock
• 1 teaspoon of crushed red pepper flakes
• 1 pound of orzo
• 1/2 cup of basil
• 1 cup of ricotta cheese

For Cooking

• Extra virgin olive oil

For Seasoning

• A pinch of salt
• Salt and pepper, to taste

Instructions

1. Spread out the ground chuck.
2. Get our salt and pepper on there.
3. Dump in all the rest of these ingredients for the meatballs.
4. Mix the meatball mixture.
5. Put in this one egg.
6. Take a little bit of water on your glove every two or three meatballs and just grab.
7. Roll the meatballs.
8. Set these off to the side.
9. Heat it up to medium.
10. Coat this with extra virgin olive oil.
11. Let the oil get a little hot.
12. Put on a pinch of salt to help these release the water a little quicker.
13. Cook the onion till they get soft and translucent.
14. Lower the heat if you need to.
15. Add that teaspoon of crushed red pepper flakes in here.
16. Mix it around, get it in the oil, kind of bloom that out.
17. Take the canned, this is crushed tomatoes.
18. Add them right in.
19. Get the excess out of here.
20. Pour some stock in here.
21. Bring this to a simmer.
22. Rough chop the basil (quarter cup).
23. Give this a taste test.
24. Adjust with salt.
25. Put in some pepper.
26. Mix that in.
27. Put all that basil in.
28. Mix this orzo in first.
29. Lower the heat.
30. Mix this so it just like we’re coating the orzo with all that oil.
31. Add our meatballs in.
32. Drop them in.
33. Mix this around just a touch.
34. Cover this.
35. Set the timer right now for 15 minutes.
36. Check the orzo.
37. Check again in three minutes.
38. Take this off.
39. Turn this off.
40. Take this off the heat.
41. Do a tiny bit of a mix, like a little bit of a fluff.

Cooking Tips

So two cloves is good for this amount of meat.
We’re trying to make things as uncomplicated as we can for these one pot meals, but that preserve 99% of the flavor.
So this is 454 grams. This is six grams of salt. That is giving me roughly a 1.25% salt to meat ratio.
You can go down to like a half a percent.
Restaurant food in general will be much more salty than a home cook.
The chuck is going to give us enough moisture.
It’s different on any given day. Like it has to do with the moisture and the air. And the meat itself.
You should just use a recipe as like a jumping off point.
It doesn’t even matter really with them being dry. They’re the way they’re cooking with the moisture that’s in, in it and how they’re, how they’re being cooked.
Sometimes it’s good just to put a little bit of water on your glove every two or three meatballs.
If you have like cracks and crevices in your meatball, like they might open up a little bit. You could just take a touch more water on there and that’ll just kind of close up the cracks.
Some are going to crack anyway.
Having relatively small meatballs, you don’t need to go super small. It allows everybody to get some when you’re serving this.
If you had like giant meatballs in here, wouldn’t you run the risk of them not cooking?
This is a good amount and it’s still fine for, this is a big meal for, for four people. You could probably serve six people still.
Use that water. It’ll close up any gaps. If you have them again, you’re probably getting a couple of that break, regardless when you do this.
If you want to make this even simpler, you can make these a night before you can make them in advance. You can even throw this in the freezer and then they’ll harden up and then you can throw them all in a bag. And then they’ll keep separated that way. And then keep that ready to go and then pop it out, you know, an hour before when you’re going to make this recipe and then you could do it, do it even quicker.
You can use anything that is five quarts or more.
You want to make sure that you have a tight fitting lid.
You can use an eight quart Dutch oven, a five and a half quart Dutch oven. You can even use a heavy pot. Those would all be fine for this.
We’re cooking these not till they get brown, but till they get soft and translucent.
Make sure you’re using this and not cayenne pepper. If you use the teaspoon of cayenne pepper, it would definitely would be super spicy and probably ruin the dish unless you love spice.
It’s going to infuse that sauce.
This type of burner, you know, definitely has a hotspot in the middle here, but this, you know, this heavy pot might mitigate it a little bit.
You can use a plate diffuser. You can only use those diffusers when your heat is on low.
I got to tell you a lot, a lot of hardcore Italians will just drop their meatballs straight in sauce. They’re not like, they’re not frying them. They go right in the sauce and you actually get the softest meatball when you do it this way.
Do not think they’re not going to cook. These things are going to be cooked in five minutes.
The orzo is going to take 15 to 20 minutes. Meatballs will stay fine.
You’re essentially like steaming them.
Be careful with this diffuser plate too. It’s going to be very hot.
I don’t want to break my meatballs, but I do want to check it.
You can do a tiny bit of a mix, like a little bit of a fluff, even though this isn’t rice.
You are going to get a different consistency depending on what type of pan you use.
So many different brands of Orzo are different sizes. It’ll affect cooking time.

Serving Suggestions

I like to kind of get most of the meatballs like up top. So it looks more appetizing for everybody.
I love to just put some pieces like this, you know, some, maybe not the absolutely largest leaves, but some of these smaller ones, it looks really good just to get them all around.
You can either use a spoon for your ricotta, or you can just use a pastry bag like this.
You can just serve it and then people put on their own.
A lot of grated Parmesan cheese or whatnot.

It’s really good. So I hope you saw how easy this one was to make. It’s a relatively quick dish.