Cooking Grand with Joanne Carr:
Enjoying meatballs without high cholesterol

Grand Island Dispatch, January 19, 2007
Lewiston Porter Sentinel, January 20, 2007

One of our daughters-in-law wrote me after reading last week’s column on Aunt Clara’s Swedish Meatball Supper. She said that the recipe had always been a favorite in her family, but she no longer made it. She and her husband have been tested and they both have high cholesterol readings. It has limited their eating of ground beef.

This really saddened me. I thought of all the good meals that our family had enjoyed – meals that were flavorful and so thrifty – those “poverty pocket” meals that sustained our brood as they were growing up.

This, of course, means no more hamburgers barbecued over the grill, no more spaghetti and meatballs and no more meatloaf for her family – none.

Just a minute! Let’s be innovative and think this through.

If her family shops at a supermarket that is akin to the one I shop at – and they do – then they can do as I do.

The very accommodating butchers at our supermarket will gladly take the roast beef I have picked out, and, when I ask, will trim off the fat, return the excess fat to the bottom of the package, then grind the beef twice.

I grind that fat in my food processor and put it in a suet feeder in our back yard. We have five seed feeders there, as well, so even the birds have a choice of vegetarian or meat.

The best time to buy that roast beef is when our supermarket has its meat sale. If I can buy a roast or a steak for around $2 a pound, I’ll buy as many as our freezer can hold.

Our supermarket was founded by the present owner’s family as a meat market, so the meats are exceptionally fine, reasonably priced and varied.

When I sauté any ground beef, there is absolutely no fat visible in the pan. The great flavor of the cut of beef that was chosen comes right through.

There is a trick to use to preserve the flavors when I buy more meat than I will use after shopping that once-a-week time. I have it down to a science after so many years. It is especially useful nowadays with just two of us to feed – except when we host a daughter or son’s family for dinner.

So, get out that packaged roll of multipurpose sealing wrap in the bright yellow, 70-square-foot roll. Find a flat tray – a cookie sheet will work – and wrap and seal burgers, chicken, pork chops or what ever bargain-of-the-week it may be. A week or a month from that time, when you reach into the freezer, the meat will look precisely as it did the day you froze it.

I hope that our daughter-in-law can begin to enjoy ground beef again. It has always been such a versatile choice for us, and it really must be so for many hurried or harried cooks of today.

Italian Meatballs

1-pound ground beef
1/3-cup unseasoned bread crumbs
1-teaspoon salt
1/2-teaspoon pepper
1 to 2 tablespoons dried, ground onion
1 tablespoon dried basil leaves
1 egg

Lay out one of your chopping mats or use a large mixing bowl. Put the ground beef on the mat and spread it out a bit. Make an indentation in the center and add ingredients as they are listed above.

Shape into 1-and-1/2-inch meatballs.

Spray a medium-sized fry pan with non-stick cooking spray. Cook over a medium heat, turning over each until browned and cooked through.

If you have fewer than four at the dinner table, count on having spaghetti and meatballs two days in a row. Or, freeze half of the meatballs for another meal, later or much later.

If you have questions or comments about this column or if you have a recipe you’d like to share, contact Joanne Carr c/o dispatch@wnypapers.com.