Seriously? I could eat a big bowl of these, then go back for more. I’m not saying that I have a meatball problem. Yet.

Made with traditional Asian flavors, these meatballs get a satisfying, subtle heat from a generous amount of chili flakes, ground ginger, and fresh garlic. The sweetness of the sausage balances out the hotness nicely. The best part? Once you’ve made them, they fry up in a few minutes flat, and develop a lovely caramelized crust in the process.

Sizzling Hot & Spicy Meatballs: Serving suggestions

Now, I made my meatballs on the larger side this time. To make them more cocktail-party friendly, make them smaller (the size of a marble) and stick 2 or 3 on a short skewer for easy nibbling.

Here are some other ideas for serving:

+Serve on top of udon with a little sauteed bok choy and baby spinach
+Roll a few up in a rice paper wrapper with fresh lettuce and bean sprouts
+Serve on top of stir-fried veggies and jasmine rice

Sizzling Hot & Spicy Meatballs: A note on ingredients

For the sausage, I buy it already ground because it’s easier. If you can’t find it that way, you could certainly buy fresh sausages and remove the casings. More work, but pretty much the same result.

Ground sweet Italian sausage

Be sure to buy lean ground beef. You’re using ground sausage, which contains a fair amount of fat, so you want to be sure you don’t add too much extra fat. Using lean ground beef will help keep your meatballs flavorful and juicy—not overly greasy.

Lean ground beef

If you can find them, definitely use panko instead of regular breadcrumbs. Panko are Japanese breadcrumbs made from crustless bread, so they’re lighter than regular breadcrumbs. This helps give these meatballs a really nice texture. Get them at your grocery store, Asian markets, or buy them online.

Panko breadcrumbs

Oh, and salt? Don’t add any. (At least until the end, when you make your test meatball to check the seasoning.) Between the sausage and the mushroom soy, your meatballs will likely already have plenty of salt.

Sizzling Hot & Spicy Meatballs

1 1/2 lbs. ground sweet Italian sausage
1 1/2 lbs. lean ground beef
2 cups panko breadcrumbs
2 eggs
3 scallions, plus more minced for garnish
3 cloves garlic, mashed
1 tsp. ground ginger
1 tsp. Chinese five spice powder
1 Tbls. chili flakes
1 Tbls. mushroom soy

Makes about 50 golf sized meatballs

Sizzling Hot & Spicy Meatballs: Make the meatball mixture

Grab your sausage and ground beef. Put them in a large mixing bowl.

With your hands (use rubber gloves if you like), mix the meats together to combine. You’re aiming for a fairly uniform mixture, like this:

Add the panko and the eggs to the bowl.

With your hands, mix the egg and breadcrumbs in well to combine. This may take a minute or two, but keep going until your mixture is uniform.

Chop up your scallions. I cut up the 3 that go into the bowl, then did a few more and set them aside for garnish.

Add the 3 chopped scallions to the bowl.

Toss in the garlic, ginger, five-spice powder, chili flakes, and mushroom soy.

Mix again with your hands to combine and distribute everything. (You don’t want to wind up with little clumps of spice in the middle of your meatballs…)

If you like, fry a test meatball to check the seasoning. Just fry a little bit of the mixture in a pan. Taste it and correct the seasoning if need be.

Sizzling Hot & Spicy Meatballs: Form the meatballs

When you’re happy with the seasoning, you’re ready to form your meatballs. Line a sheet pan with wax paper or foil and set it aside nearby. Then grab a little blob of the meatball mixture.

Roll it between your palms to form a ball (just like you would with Play-Doh). How much meat you use is entirely up to you—and how big you want your meatballs to be. I made mine about the size of a golf ball.

Set your meatball on your prepared pan.

Repeat with the rest of the meatball mixture until you’ve used it all up. You’ll wind up with a little meatball army:

Sizzling Hot & Spicy Meatballs: Cook the meatballs

I usually cook a handful of meatballs immediately, then freeze the rest. (Just lay them in single rows in a gallon-size zip-top bag and freeze flat so they hold their shape.)

To cook, set a non-stick pan over medium-high heat for a minute to heat up. When the pan is hot, drop in however many meatballs you like.

Fry for a few minutes like this on one side.

When the meatballs have a nice brown crust on the bottom, flip them over.

Keep frying and flipping like this until your meatballs are evenly browned and are cooked through in the middle. This can take anywhere from maybe 5-8 minutes, depending on the size of your meatballs. Cut into one to check for doneness. It should be brown throughout, not pink.

Depending on how fatty your sausage is, your meatballs will give off a fair amount of fat. When they’re cooked, fish them out of the pan with a slotted spoon. If they’re exceptionally fatty, let them drain on a rack or a paper-towel lined plate.

Garnish with chopped scallions and a little crushed red pepper.

Serve and enjoy!

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

This is the perfect kind of sandwich to throw together on nights—like tonight, at the Mouse House—that you don’t have a lot of time to spend in the kitchen.

You can use almost any combination of sausages and cheese. In this case, I had a package of Brice Aidells smoked chicken & apple sausages and a hunk of brie in the fridge.

These sausages are great in a pinch. They’re pre-cooked, so all you have to do is heat them up and brown them.

The combination of the creamy brie with the apples in the smoked sausage is out of this world. (Thanks to my favorite movie reviewer Colin Boyd for reminding me how well they go together.) Thinly sliced red pepper and sweet onion cook down into strips of jammy, caramelized goodness.

This sub is hearty and satisfying, and will give you plenty of fuel to power through a few hours or work—or play.

Chicken & Apple Sausage Sub with Caramelized Onions, Peppers & Brie

1 Tbls. butter
1/2 of a sweet onion
1/2 of a red bell pepper
kosher salt
freshly cracked black pepper
2 chicken & apple sausages
french bread
brie

Chicken & Apple Sausage Sub: Cut your veggies into thin slices

Grab your pepper and sweet onion.

Slice the onion as thinly as you can.

Cut the red pepper into thin strips. (Discard the seeds and trim off the white, inner ribs.)

Chicken & Apple Sausage Sub: Fry the veggies

Put the butter in a non-stick frying pan on the stove over medium-high heat. Wait for the butter to melt. Then pick the pan up and tip it around to coat the bottom with melted butter.

Toss the onions and peppers into the pan.

Stir to combine and coat with butter.

Add a little kosher salt and freshly cracked black pepper (to taste).

Cook for a minute or two over medium-high heat to soften up the veggies a little. Stir occasionally.

Chicken & Apple Sausage Sub: Add the sausages

While the veggies are cooking, grab your sausages.

Make a few shallow cuts in the skin of each sausage. This will keep them from popping as they fry.

Add the sausages to the pan with the peppers and onions. Lower the heat to medium at this point so you don’t burn your veggies.

Cook the sausages on medium heat for maybe 15-20 minutes, turning them frequently. (Remember, they’re pre-cooked, so you’re just trying to heat them through and brown them.)

If your veggies start to burn at all, scoot them to the outskirts of the pan, like this:

Flip your sausages often to brown them on all sides. While they’re frying, toast your bread.

Chicken & Apple Sausage Sub: Toast your bread

Cut your bread to a length that will fit your sausages.

Slice it in half lengthwise.

Now, this is going to sound silly, but I scoop out some of the bread.

This is a big sandwich for a little mouse to eat, and I’d rather lose a little bread so I have room for the sausages, cheese, and veggies.

Scooping out some of the bread also helps hold your sandwich together better as you eat.

Toast your bread.

Spread each side of bread with brie.

When the sausages are browned to your liking, turn the heat off.

With tongs, put the sausages on your roll.

Nestle them in next to each other, then smoosh them down a little with your tongs.

Heap the peppers and onions on top of the sausages.

Top with the other half of your roll.

Press down gently on top of the sandwich. This will help the cheese to melt and keep the sandwich together, especially since you hollowed the bread out a little.

Chicken & Apple Sausage Sub: Slice and serve!

Slice your sandwich in half diagonally. Serve and enjoy!

***
Copyright 2008-2009 The Hungry Mouse™/Jessica B. Konopa. All rights reserved.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

This is another incidence of me combining homemade bread with pork products. If it happens again, I might just have a problem. I can admit that.

While it’s not necessarily a fast thing to cook (you need a few hours to let your dough rise), this pizza is really easy to make. It feeds a crowd and is great reheated the next day.

About my method
Because the crust is thick, I prebake it until it’s almost done. Then I pop it out of the oven, drop on the toppings, and stick it back in until they’re golden brown and the cheese is bubbly.

A note on my sous chef
As I was frying the pork sausage for the pizza topping, Dexter, my Barking Sous Chef, went over and started nosing around the canister of pig ears we keep for him as a special treat. Call me crazy, but this beast knows his pork products. (Reeni, this one’s for you…on the subject fabulous four-footed kitchen assistants).

A note on rolling out the dough
The key to making this without making a huge mess is to roll it out on your pan. I use a 12-inch, straight rolling pin (the kind you’d use to roll out wonton skins), which just fits inside the edges of my sheet pan. You should be able to pick one up at any reasonably large Asian grocery store in the kitchen section.

Thick Crust Sausage & Cheese Pizza

1 Tbls. yeast
1 tsp. sugar
2 cups lukewarm water
3 cups flour
1 tsp. kosher salt
1 lb. mild ground Italian sausage
1/4 tsp. garlic powder
1/3 cup fresh basil leaves, cut into thin ribbons
ground, peeled tomatoes
shredded mozzarella cheese
Parmesan cheese
salt and pepper to taste

Line a sheet pan with parchment paper and set it aside.

Start the dough
Add the yeast and sugar to a large mixing bowl.

Pour in the water (it should be warm but not hot) and give it a swish with a wooden spoon to mix.

Walk away from the bowl for 5 to 10 minutes to let the yeast bloom (so you know it’s happy and alive). When it’s ready, it should look about like this:

The yeast will bubble up and rise to the surface of the water, forming a little raft of sorts.

Add the flour to the yeast and water in your bowl.

Stir to combine well until it comes together and forms a dough.

Your dough will be really, really wet. That’s OK. (It’s exactly what you want.)

Cover the bowl up with a few warm, moist paper towels. Let it rise, untouched, for about an hour, or until it has about doubled in size.

Fry the sausage
While your dough is rising, deal with the sausage. Put it in a large, nonstick frying pan over medium-high heat. Use two forks or a wooden spoon to break the sausage up as it fries, so it’s crumbled into small pieces.

Sprinkle on the garlic powder and stir to coat the sausage fairly evenly. Fry it until it’s nicely browned, stirring occasionally.

When it’s ready to take off the heat, it should look about like this:

Set the sausage aside to cool.

Roll out your dough
After an hour, your dough should have about doubled in size, and should be bubbly and look about like this:

Stir it around with a wooden spoon to get the air out of it and knead it a little.

Pour the dough out in a blob onto your prepared pan.

Flour your hands, then toss a little bit of flour onto the top of your dough blob.

Using your hands, spread the flour around on the dough and pat it down so it’s sort of flat. If your hands are getting sticky, add a little more flour until the surface of your dough is relatively dry.

Then, with a small rolling pin, roll the dough out so that it stretches to fit your pan.

If your rolling pin starts to stick, toss a tiny bit of flour onto the dough.

Your rolled dough should look about like this. Set it aside for approximately an hour to rise until it’s roughly doubled in size.

Prebake your crust
Preheat your oven to 425 degrees. When your dough is ready to bake, it should look about like this:

Put your pan in the oven at 425 degrees for about 20 minutes, until the crust is golden brown and makes a hollow noise when you thump on it with a finger. Take it out of the oven (but leave your oven on) when it looks like this:

Add the toppings
This part is approximate and is totally up to you, depending on your taste. Crack open your can of tomatoes and add 5 or 6 big soup spoons of tomato onto your crust.

Spread the tomatoes around with the back of your spoon fairly evenly.

Crumble on your browned sausage.

Sprinkle on the basil.

Add the two cheeses evenly to taste. (For thick crust pizza, I like a medium amount of cheese.) Add salt and pepper to taste. Go lightly if you’re not sure if you need more salt. Between the cheese and the sausage, you’ve already got plenty in there.

Finish baking and serve
When you’re happy with how the toppings look, put your pizza back in the oven at 425 degrees for about 12-15 minutes, until the cheese is melted, gooey, and browned the way you like it.

When you take it out of the oven, slide the pizza and parchment paper off the pan onto a large cutting board. Slip a spatula in between the crust and the parchment to loosen it. Toss the paper.

Slice your pizza with a butcher knife. Cut large squares for dinner-sized portions, or thinner strips for appetizers that’ll feed a crowd.

Enjoy!

***
Copyright 2008 The Hungry Mouse™/Jessica B. Konopa. All rights reserved.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.