Quinoa and riced cauliflower bound with egg and breadcrumbs, then fried until the outsides go properly golden. They hold their shape in sauce, which is the thing most meatless meatballs get wrong. Most of them collapse the moment they meet liquid.
Caramelize the onions first. It is five extra minutes and it is the difference between these tasting like meatballs and tasting like vegetables.
A chicken cutlet, meatballs and sauce, then a second cutlet on top — the sandwich uses no bread at all. The cutlets are breaded and fried in about ten minutes.
The meatballs are the three-hour part, so they are worth making the day before. Stir them gently every half hour while they simmer; they are soft in the sauce and a rough spoon turns them into bolognese.
These sweet and sour meatballs are made with Beyond Meat instead of beef, and the sauce is the part people ask about: four cans of tomato sauce, a can of cranberry sauce, a handful of raisins and lemon juice. The cranberry is what makes it sweet-and-sour without any sugar going in. Grate the onions rather than chopping them so the meatballs stay tender, and give them the full three hours at a low simmer — they firm up and the sauce reduces into something glossy. Three pounds of Beyond Meat makes a crowd’s worth.
A weeknight bolognese, which means it starts with a jar of marinara and nobody apologises for it. The work is in the onions — take them all the way to golden before the meat goes in and it tastes like it simmered far longer than it did.
Turkey, chicken or beef all work. Half a jar of sauce is enough for a pound of meat; more than that and you’re eating pasta with sauce rather than bolognese.
A pinch of chili flakes with the salt and pepper does more for it than any other single thing.
Ground turkey, a caramelized onion and half a jar of marinara — one pan, about twenty minutes. It goes over pasta, rice or spaghetti squash equally well.
The garlic goes in twice, and that is deliberate. Whole cloves cook alongside the onions for the full ten minutes and turn sweet; the minced garlic goes in at the end and stays sharp. Each one does a different job and the dish wants both.
Gondi are Persian-Jewish chickpea-flour dumplings — Friday-night food, poached in chicken soup with carrot and dill. Pureed onion and ground chicken go into chickpea flour with cardamom and turmeric, and the dough then has to sit in the fridge for at least four hours to firm up enough to roll. Wet your hands before shaping or it sticks to everything. They simmer for fifty minutes with the lid on, and the instruction is to not open the pot — that trapped steam is what cooks them through.
Recipe loosely followed from @epicurious
The sweet in sweet and sour comes from a can of cranberry sauce and a handful of raisins, cooked down into four cans of tomato sauce. Three pounds of meatballs go in raw and simmer for three hours.
Grate the onions rather than chopping them. Grated onion disappears into the meat and keeps it tender, where chopped onion stays in pieces and the meatballs break along them. Matzah meal and breadcrumbs both work.