Yummy Spaghetti with Meatballs

This is Sunday-sauce spaghetti and meatballs, the kind that asks for a couple of hours and pays you back in flavor. The tomato sauce builds in three stages: an hour covered to soften and meld, half an hour with red wine stirred in, then half an hour uncovered to reduce and concentrate. The wine stage is what separates this from any quick weeknight pasta sauce.

The meatballs take a different route. They get a milk-soaked breadcrumb panade with onion, egg, parsley, and a slug of Worcestershire sauce for umami depth, then pan-fry until browned all over. Frying instead of simmering them in the sauce keeps a crisp crust on the outside while the inside stays tender and beefy.

Pro Tips

• Don’t skip the panade. Breadcrumbs soaked in milk are what keep the meatballs tender. Mix gently with your hands, overworking turns them rubbery.
• Stir the sauce occasionally to keep tomato from scorching on the bottom of the Dutch oven, especially during the final uncovered reduction.
• Salt the pasta water like the sea. The pasta itself needs seasoning, and the starchy water comes in handy for thinning the sauce at toss time.
• Drain the pasta but never rinse, the surface starch helps the sauce cling.

Variations

• Use half ground beef and half ground pork for richer, more nuanced meatballs.
• Stir a knob of butter into the sauce just before serving for a velvety finish.
• Drop a Parmesan rind into the simmer for a more traditional Italian-American backbone.