Meatballs Baked In Tomato Sauce. Step-by-step Recipe With Photo

Are you used to stewing meatballs in a saucepan or pan? Let's try to bake them in the oven. You will like this way of cooking with its greater simplicity and new taste. The meatballs baked in tomato gravy are tasty, beautiful, do not fall apart, keep their shape perfectly. And how to achieve this effect - I will tell you further.

Quantity: 20 meatballs

Ingredients for meatballs baked in tomato sauce

• 400 g minced meat;
• 1 cup dry rice
• 1-2 onions;
• 1-2 carrots;
• 2 tbsp. l. tomato paste;
• 2-3 st. l. flour;
• 6 glasses of water (2 for rice and 4 for gravy);
• Salt, ground black pepper, peppercorns - to taste;
• Parsley, dill;
• 1-2 bay leaves;
• Sunflower oil - for frying vegetables and greasing the mold.

Minced meat can be taken from meat or chicken. Chicken fillet meatballs will be more dietary. I suggest that you make them from the assorted minced meat - a mixture of pork and beef.

And tomato paste, diluted with water, is great to replace with homemade tomato juice.

Method for preparing meatballs baked in tomato sauce

Pour rice with water in a ratio of 1: 2, salt and cook, stirring occasionally, over medium heat until boiling. We move the lid to the side so that the rice does not escape. When it starts to boil, reduce the heat and simmer for a few more minutes until the cereal absorbs the water. Turn off, let the rice stand for 5-10 minutes under the lid. Even if it remains a little raw, it will reach a condition in meatballs. Put the rice on a wide plate to cool down, while preparing the gravy.

We clean and rinse the vegetables. Finely chop the onions, and three carrots on a coarse grater. Heat the sunflower oil in a frying pan, saute the onion for a couple of minutes, then add the carrots and lightly fry together until soft.

Put half of the fried vegetables with minced meat and rice. Salt, pepper, you can add chopped greens.

And in the second half of the frying, add tomato paste and a glass of water - let it boil all together for 3-4 minutes. Turn off the gravy and begin to form meatballs.

Knead the minced meat well and roll up small balls the size of a ping-pong ball with our hands moistened with water.

To make the meatballs neat and keep their shape well, we will apply an interesting culinary trick. First, roll them in flour on all sides.

And put the gravy in a saucepan and add another 2-3 glasses of water. Bring the gravy to a boil and quickly dip each meatball in turn in a boiling sauce, immediately take it out and put it in a baking dish greased with vegetable oil. I used a 22x32 cm glass pan. Ceramic and disposable foil, or just a cast-iron pan, even a little smaller, will do - just put the meatballs tightly together.

Having laid out the meatballs in neat rows, pour them with gravy (which becomes thicker and more appetizing from the flour).

We put in the oven and bake at 180-200 ºС for 35-40 minutes. If suddenly it starts to burn on top - cover the form with a sheet of foil.

At the end of cooking, you can add bay leaves and a dozen peppers to the gravy, and sprinkle with dried or fresh herbs (dill, parsley or basil).

We serve meatballs, decorating with leaves of greenery, pouring sour cream or cream, with a side dish of potatoes, rice or pasta.

This is a basic meatball recipe that can be varied and varied, each time you get a new dish! For example, put a piece of cheese or pitted prunes in the middle of the balls of minced meat - and your family will be surprised by interesting meatballs "with a surprise". Instead of rice, you can add buckwheat - it will be original and also very tasty. And if you replace tomato paste with sour cream, you get meatballs in white sauce.