I am about to lay down some wisdom right here. First of all, stuffed meatballs are so easy they should be criminal, and I’m not sure I can go back to regular meatballs. You can make them with fresh mozzarella, like I did, or your kids’ favorite cheese sticks cut into quarter-inch slices. The cheese might leak a little as they bake, but I found that as long as a reasonable effort was made to seal the meat around the cheese, most of the gooey goodness stayed on the inside… at least until we bit into them.

The second bit of wisdom is the most Sandra Lee-esque piece of advice you are ever going to hear from me, so hold onto your hats. If you are using jarred spaghetti sauce, after you have poured your sauce into a pan, rinse the jar out with some red wine to both get every last drop from it and add some depth of flavor. (The same trick works with white wine for jarred Alfredo sauce.) There is no shame in using prepared pasta sauce — the real thing takes a lot of time and patience, which are very dear commodities at times!

Mozzarella-Stuffed Meatballs

1.5 lbs of your favorite ground meat (I used half a pound each of beef, pork and veal.)

1.5 c breadcrumbs or crushed crackers

1 onion, chopped fine

2 eggs

1 tbsp Worchestershire sauce

1 tsp garlic powder

1 tsp parsley flakes

3/4 c grated Parmesan cheese

8 oz package miniature fresh Mozzarella balls, halved

Preheat oven to 350°F. In a bowl, combine meat with onions, spices, Parmesan cheese, egg and breadcrumbs. Grabbing a small amount of the meat mixture in one hand, form a small cup shape from it and place a piece of cheese in the indentation. Form the meat around the cheese, careful to seal it as well as possible before placing on a rack inside a baking sheet. Repeat until you run out of meat, cheese, or both. Depending on how big you make them, you should get about 34. Bake approximately 20 minutes or until cooked through. I like to add mine to my pasta sauce and bring it up to a simmer before serving.