Freezer Meals: Meatballs

Prepared meatballs are great, and super handy for just about everything. Toss in pasta, sever over egg noodles, or CrockPot them with your favorite sauce.

Meatballs in a gallon freezer bag

Freezer Meatballs: Just like store bought but a 100 times better

• 2 lbs lean beef
• 1 16 oz tube of sausage – your choice – hot will give the meat balls a good kick, sage sausage will make them nice and savory, or Italian if planning on using them in pasta dishes. Since I wanted an around meatball I used half hot and half italian sausage.
• Dried bread crumbs (roughly 2 cups)
• 2 eggs slightly beaten
• 2 tablespoon dried spices – sage, basil, organo, thyme, etc. Use what matches the sausage choice. If using sage sausage don’t use sage spice, too much sage, but adding thyme or rosemary is delicious. If using pre-seasoned bread crumbs cut down on spices if added at all.
• 1 cup milk
• 1 onion, finely chopped
• salt and pepper

1. Mix beef, sausage, onion, eggs, spices and milk until well blended. Begin adding bread crumbs, continue mixing as bread crumbs are added until well blended and the meat mixture holds a ball shape well.
2. Make meatballs, use a table spoon to get meatballs with a uniform shape and thickness.
3. Place on a baking sheet, about a 1/2 to inch a part, so they are not touching each other.
4. Bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes. Checking for doneness and preventing over cooking.
5. Remove from oven, cool slightly, move to paper towel to absorb any grease that came out during cooking.
6. Place cooked meatballs on a cool baking sheet and place in freezer, once frozen package in Zip Lock bags. Freezing them on a baking sheet prevents them from freezing to each other.

Making the meatballs themselves do not take that long, but cooking and freezing can take up an entire day if one doesn’t have multiple baking sheets that can be used for cooking and freezing.