Grandma's Homemade Italian Sauce and Meatballs Recipe

Directions

In a large pot combine tomato paste, water, garlic, bay leaves, basil, and salt. Bring to a boil, turn heat down to low and simmer.
In a skillet, brown pork chops in olive oil then place in sauce mixture. Saute onions and mushrooms in same pan that you browned the pork chops. Add these to sauce as well. Simmer sauce a minimum of 8 hours, stirring occasionally.
To make the meatballs: Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Combine beef, pork, veal, Romano cheese, salt, pepper, bread crumbs, garlic, parsley and eggs; mix well. Shape into balls. Place on a baking sheet that has been sprayed with cooking spray.
Bake meatballs for 20 minutes. Place meatballs in a serving bowl when baking is complete and place in refrigerator. About 2 hours prior to dinnertime pop the meatballs into the sauce.

Reviews (22)

Spokeytown

Jan. 9, 2006

"The meatballs for this recipe are fantastic, but the proportions for the sauce are all wrong. There's so much tomato paste, and so little of anything else, that the whole thing ends up tasting like t..." See moreomato paste. I would go with 30 ounces of paste and 18 ounces of tomato sauce, rather than 48 ounces of paste and no sauce. Also, throw in 2 onions instead of 1, twice as much mushroom, bay leaf, and basil, 6 (or more) garlic cloves, half a cup or so of parsely, and 2 teaspoons each of oregano and thyme. Stand by with some sugar (a tablespoon or two) if you need to cut it further. Also, when the porkchops simmer for 8 hours, they end up tasteless without adding anything to the sauce, so maybe put them in later. If there's less concentrated paste flavor and more other flavors, this sauce would be great. (Again, the meatballs are wonderful.) But as it is, it's not worth 9 hours of your time. (Also, this makes a lot more than 10 servings; I'd guess 15 or 20.)"

MZOJIBWAY

Nov. 1, 2003

"I made the meatballs only. Although I didn't care for the original recipe, my second batch was fabulous with a few modifications. ***I only used 3/4c. bread crumbs. I used 1/2# sweet Italian pork sa..." See moreusage rather than ground pork and veal. And I used an Italian Herb blend rather than just dried parsley.*** I did simmer them in jarred sauce. Both the meatballs and sauce improved each other! YUM, YUm, Yum, yum!"

COOKSIN

Jan. 31, 2005

"I just made the meatballs in this case, took advice from other user and only used 3/4 cup of italian bread crumbs, turned out very good, everybody loved them, will make again for sure. 5 star no probl..." See moreem"

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