- Today, I'm gonna make
(upbeat lively music) spaghetti meatballs, which is
a classic dinner in my house. But these aren't just
any old meatballs. These are Davison
house meatballs. And if you come to dinner here on spaghetti and meatball
night, this is what you get. And I love 'em because
they're insanely easy to make. You could have this whole dinner
done in less than an hour. Now I'm also gonna
carve it up a bit and throw in some
homemade garlic bread. And we're gonna start
by toasting the garlic for the garlic bread. That just mellows its flavor and makes it a little
easier to work into a paste. So you're gonna need 9
or 10 cloves of garlic. And you can see I've
separated the cloves from the head of garlic, but
I've left the papery skins on. We're gonna toast the garlic
on the stove in their skins. So here I have a little skillet. And I'm just gonna add
again, 9 or 10 cloves. One, two, three, four,
five, oh, come back here. Five, six, seven, eight (laughing) 8, 9, 10, all right. And I'm just gonna toast
these over medium heat. Takes about 8 to 10 minutes. I'm gonna give this skillet
a good little jostle every now and again. And the garlic's gonna soften and those papery skins are
gonna get spotty brown. And that's how you know your
garlic is nicely toasted. All right, while that's going, let's get started on the
easiest meatballs in the world. Now I helped develop this
recipe 20-some years ago. And I loved it because
it was super fast. You could get these meatballs
in the skillet in minutes. And that's what
we're gonna do today. Now it's starting with turkey. But of course over the years, I've found you can
use any kind of meat. We often make 'em with all beef or a combination
of beef and pork. But Turkey's really nice,
especially if it's a weekday. All, right, and so this
is the magic right here. A container of pesto. This is a seven ounce
container of pesto. And this is the pre-made
stuff, obviously. So this pesto is from the
refrigerator and that's key. You don't want the
jarred stuff on the shelf in the grocery store. You want to get
the chilled stuff. Usually next to the hummus,
if you're in my grocery store. And you're gonna add
the whole container, seven ounces of pesto, to
a pound and a half of meat. And now for the binder,
we're just gonna use panko. That is Japanese breadcrumbs. We're gonna add 2/3 of a cup. This helps absorb
some of the moisture and also makes a bit of a panade with the moisture in the pesto. That's 1/3 of a
cup, 2/3 of a cup. We're gonna add a
little bit of salt, just half a teaspoon
of table salt. And a little bit of pepper. And now the fun part. Get in there with your
hands, take your rings off. I took my rings off already because you're
gonna use your hands and just knead this together. Now, of course you could use
a spatula if you wanted to, but it's more fun to
get your hands in there. And actually I think your
fingers do a better job of incorporating all
those ingredients. All right, so if you
think about that pesto has garlic, has
Parmesan, has some nuts, and of course it
has all that basil and a little bit of olive oil. And all that flavoring
just makes it so easy to make a flavorful
meatball with half the work. I'd say less than half
the work, all right. So there we have it. Now I'm gonna portion
the meatballs. Now, different days, I get
different size meatballs. Sometimes the meatballs
are really big. Sometimes they're really teeny. Usually I wind up with
about 16 or so meatballs. I like using a
spring-loaded scoop. It helps me portion
a little bit better. And at the end of the day, it doesn't matter how
big the meatballs are as long as they're the same size so that they cook
at the same rate. Using the scoop to
help me portion, roll it into a meatball,
and then you drop it. Oh, those look different. See, that's not gonna
cook at the same rate. So at this point I decide
which size am I going for? I think I'm gonna go
for the smaller size. Those are better, all right. So that's the size
we're going for today. Let's see how many we get. So we started making
these meatballs when my daughter
was really young, just 'cause they're
so blissfully easy. And actually my husband Ian has taken on most of the
meatball cookery these days. And he's twisted
this recipe a lot. He, as I mentioned, he likes to use a
combination of meats and sometimes he sneaks
some other stuff in there he hasn't even told me about. His secret meatballs. But either way, these
are the only meatballs my daughter will eat. Even if we go to like a
really nice Italian restaurant and they have amazing
meatballs, she'll be like, "Nope, this is not my meatball." So these are these pesto
meatballs super fast. The only meatball she'll eat. So these meatballs are
ready for the stove. And that's one of the reasons
why I love this recipe. You can make the meatballs and just start cooking
them right away. So here I have my favorite
12 inch non-stick skillet. I'm using non-stick on purpose because I want the browning
to stick to the meatballs, not to the pan. To the skillet I'm gonna
add about tablespoon of oil. Gonna heat this up
over medium heat. When that oil begins to shimmer is when I know the pan is hot
enough to brown the meatballs. Now duly noted, these meatballs will not
stay round as they cook. They will flatten on both sides and almost look like
one of those poofs. Which, I don't care. You know, they're gonna taste
just as good and it's fast. If you do want to round
meatball, however, it is easy to attain. Simply tack on about 20 minutes. Throw this tray into
the refrigerator, let those meatballs firm up and they'll hold
their shape better. The pan looks good and hot. Let's brown the meatballs. I know, I'm giving one
last roll as I put 'em in. Just maybe this time they'll
stay a bit more round. I know they won't, habit. It's also a habit to put things
in the pan counterclockwise. Why? I don't know,
just makes me happy. I mean, yes, if you're
cooking scallops, it's good to put them in the pan so you know which
went in the pan first. This sort of thing, it
doesn't really matter. All right, so those meatballs will take 8 to 10
minutes to brown. I'm gonna roll 'em
around, shake the pan, try to get them brown on
as many sides as possible. And they brown really quickly. Again, 'cause it's Turkey
'cause it's white meat, so that browns quickly. And also all that
pesto and all that oil will really help it brown. So I'm gonna turn
the heat down a bit and really watch it so
they don't get too charred. (upbeat rock music) Okay, so meatballs are
browning, the garlic's toasted. Look at that, that's beautiful. You can see it looks
burnt, which is perfect. It's not burnt on the inside. It'll be a little charred. It's soft, hot. I'm gonna let these
cool a little bit. Then we'll peel
them and mash them with a little butter for
the garlic bread later. And the only other prep
I really have to do is deal with the tomato sauce, because you need tomato
sauce for the meatballs. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna use three
cans of tomatoes here. And they're the 14 1/2 ounce, the little guy, diced tomatoes. And I like using diced tomatoes because I want two
textures in the sauce. I want a nice, smooth sauce,
but I want bits of tomato. So what I'm gonna do
is take two of the cans and I'm gonna process them
'til they're nice and smooth. But I'm gonna leave
this third can as it is. That way you'll get a
nice variety of textures. You can use a food processor. I think a blender's
a bit easier. (blender whirring) All right, that's
it for the tomatoes. That is good browning. So what I'm gonna do is try
to get that same browning all over each meatball. All right, and the last
bit of prep I have to do is simply to chop an onion to
give a little base of flavor to the tomato sauce. I'm gonna cut it as
small as possible because my 12 year old does not
like to see chunks of onion. So the smaller, the
better in her world. All right, so I'm just gonna
finish chopping up this onion, browning the meatballs, and
then we can make the sauce and make the garlic bread. Take a look at these meatballs. Whoa, maybe I should start
calling them meat poofs, 'cause they're not
really balls anymore. This one's almost got
a pyramid shape to it. All right, so I'm gonna
take them out the pan. They're not all the
way cooked through. They're just nicely browned. I'm gonna finish cooking
them in the sauce. That way they'll cook through and the sauce will
get more flavor. Take them out of the pan. You can see a lot
of oil has come out of these meatballs
'cause I used a lot of pesto. We're gonna save
some of that oil 'cause that oil is really
good flavor for the sauce. But depending on
the brand of pesto, you get different amounts
of oil that come out. And that's just a
bit too much for me. A little goes a long way. So I'm gonna pour it all out
and then just add some back. Whoop, all right. Add a little less
than half that back. Into the hot pan goes the onion. Always gonna add a little
bit of salt with the onion. Just a pinch or two. And this onion, oh, turn
the heat down a bit. That should be on medium heat. Skillet's pretty hot because
it's been browning meatballs for the past 10 minutes. So we're gonna let
these onions cook down, eh, about five, seven minutes. All right, that means it's
time to turn our attention to the garlic bread,
which is quite frankly my favorite part
of this whole meal. I don't make it every
time I make meatballs because it's a lot of
carbs, but man is it good. And this recipe is an
oldie, but a goodie. It's well over 20 years old,
and it was originally developed by my dear friend Adam Reid, who is the gadget guy on
"America's Test Kitchen". I've worked with him
for over two decades. And it's just so simple. And it's just a loaf of bread. Now, obviously this
is one of those Italian football style loaves. It's a supermarket loaf. It's squishy. It doesn't have a thick crust. It is not an artisanal loaf. And that is what you want. You want supermarket
Italian bread for this. All right, so obviously
we're gonna cut it in half. Use a sharp knife. Now cutting it in half
is harder than it looks. So what I do is I go slow. I stand it on end. And I really make sure I
look through both sides 'cause you really don't want
the top to be too thick. So go slow. Slice it through. There you go. All right, set those aside. Now we've gotta make
the flavorful butter that's gonna go on top. And here I have six
tablespoons of unsalted butter. I know it's a lot of
butter, so sue me, but it's a lot of bread. Now to the butter
we're gonna add garlic. And here's the toasted garlic. You see, I'm gonna peel this
off, peel off this outer paper. And you can see that
the cloves underneath still have a little of
that browning on it. That's good caramelized
garlic flavor. I love that. So I'm gonna peel off
all the papery skins. And they kind of just
fall off, really. There is all of
our toasted garlic. All right, now I'm gonna
chop up the garlic, but I'm gonna sprinkle it
with a little bit of salt. That salt just adds a
little bit of texture, almost like sand on sand
paper to make it easier to chop up the sticky garlic. You can see how
soft this garlic is. I'm gonna chop it
into rough pieces and then I'm actually
gonna scrape it against the side of the board
to make a nice garlic paste that'll meld really
well with the butter. Now it's not as soft
as roasted garlic. That's much softer and has
a much more roasty flavor. This is toasted garlic. So it a little has a little
bit of that raw flavor, which is perfect for
this garlic bread. Never happened. Never, oh, it's so good. All right, so there's
the garlic paste right into this bowl
of unsalted butter. Again, that's six tablespoons. I use unsalted because salt
amounts in salted butter vary so much based on the
brand of butter you buy. So if I buy unsalted butter, I can add the salt
myself, which I prefer. I'm gonna add a
little more salt. Last but not least
gonna add some Parmesan, about two tablespoons
there about. Maybe a little extra. Yeah, it's good. Oh look, a piece fell off. I hate it when that happens. All right, so that's
the garlic bread. So I'm just gonna take
about half of this and I'm gonna spread
it on the bread. I'm using this
very stiff spatula that I think was a freebie. I think this came like with the
food processor or something. And when it came in
the box, I thought, "Well, who'd want a
spatula that's that stiff?" Well, it turns out it
has a couple good uses, for this and for getting
dog food out of a can. That's its other
good use we've found. And so when my
husband feeds the dog. He's always looking
for the white spatula. All right, let's put
this on a sheet pan. And this is ready for the oven. Now I'm not gonna put it
in the oven right away. It bakes in about 10 minutes and it tastes so good when
it's fresh out of the oven. So I'm gonna time it so
we can put it in the oven right before we eat so
it's good and fresh. But I like getting it
ready ahead of time. All right, let's take
a look at these onions. Oh look, nice and soft, getting a little brown and
caramelized around the edges. Just perfect. Those caramelized bits
add a lot of flavor to an otherwise
pretty simple sauce just made with canned tomatoes. All right, to this we're gonna
add a little bit of garlic, some pepper flakes,
some chili flakes. I always eye the
amount of chili flakes. That was actually a bit
more than I usually add. And we're gonna add some garlic. So this is three
clothes of garlic, raw garlic, not
the toasted stuff. And I'm gonna use
a garlic press. I love garlic presses. I know people, especially
professional chefs say, "Oh, a garlic press is no good." Well maybe they're not
making dinner on a Tuesday after they've been filming
all day, you know what I mean? Because, oh, it just
makes it so easy. I don't even peel
the garlic anymore. I just take the garlic,
I trim off the end. And I put it cut side
down in the hopper. And right over the
skillet, squeezing it out. Nothing but net. For midweek cooking,
that's the kind of tip that will save you a
good couple minutes. All right, don't need
to cook the garlic or the pepper flakes
for very long. Just until you smell them,
just for about 30 seconds. And I turn the heat way
down because the onions are starting to really
get nice and golden. I don't want to get
them too browned. All right, starting
to smell the garlic. Starting to smell
the chili flakes. Now it's time to
add the tomatoes. That's the can of diced tomatoes
that I did nothing with. And then here's the
pureed tomatoes. Ah, that's a tomato sauce. So we're just gonna
let this tomato sauce simmer for about 10 minutes before we add the
meatballs back to the pan. And over the years,
I've tried skimping on the simmering time just
'cause I've been in a rush, and I've regretted it every time because it takes a good 10
minutes for that tomato, that tinny canned tomato
flavor to evaporate. So give it 10 minutes, then we'll add the
meatballs back to the sauce. So the meatballs
can cook through and the meatballs can give
some flavor to the sauce. So all in all, it's
not very long, really. 20 minutes and the meatballs
will be done from here. Just give that sauce
about 10 minutes. Then we can drop the
meatballs in the sauce, drop the pasta, throw the
garlic bread in the oven and dinner is on its way. That sauce has been
simmering for 10 minutes. The garlic bread's
ready for the oven, and the pasta water is
ready for the pasta. Now I don't salt my pasta water
before I bring it to boil. Unlike my husband, who salts
it then brings it to a boil. So it's a constant
discussion in our house whether the water
hasn't been salted. But because I'm cooking,
it hasn't been salted. It's a big pot of water. The more water, the better
when cooking pasta really. And this is a
pound of spaghetti. This is my favorite
brand of spaghetti because it's on the chubby side (laughing) like me. And it kind of balloons up and
has a really good mouth feel. And it tastes amazing. This texture's not for everyone,
this thicker spaghetti. But like I said,
it's my favorite. All right, turning the
pasta back on high. Want to bring that water back to a boil as
quickly as possible. I remember growing
up, I used to watch Julia Child in the
kitchen all the time. I mean, who didn't, right? And she had this poker, she had like a hot
poker from the fireplace that she would heat
up on the stove. And after she dropped
the pasta in the water, she would stick the
poker in the water to bring it back to a boil. I haven't graduated to that yet. It's still a little scary. I'll try a lot of things. Maybe I'll ask for a
pasta poker for Christmas 'cause I kind of want to try it and see if it
makes a difference. All right, so I've
added all the spaghetti. I'm also just tossing it around. If you don't toss it around
right when it gets in the water, I think it tends
to stick together, especially this brand,
which is a bit thicker. So just gonna take a minute, stir the pasta,
separate it with tongs. All right, make sure
it's all submerged. I put the lid back on
just a little cockeyed, 'cause I want to trap
as much heat as I can to bring that water back. But if you put it all the way
on, obviously it'll boil over. So that's how I cook my pasta. All right, these meatballs,
ready for the sauce. Oh, yeah. (Julia singing) That song always
comes in my head when I'm making
spaghetti and meatballs. I don't know why. All right, so meatballs are in. Again, this is just gonna help
those meatballs cook through. It's gonna flavor
the sauce nicely. And so I'm just gonna
spin the meatballs around, make sure they're well
coated with sauce. Bring it back to
just a gentle simmer. And I'm gonna put the lid
on, help trap the steam, help warm the meatballs
through, cook 'em through. But I don't want to evaporate
anymore of that sauce. 'Cause I want that sauce to
have really nice consistency. I don't want it
to get too thick. Last but not least, this
guy's ready for the oven. 500 degree oven, ripping hot,
as hot as you can get it. About eight minutes or so. Halfway through
we'll spin it around so that it browns
evenly on all sides. So, pasta takes
10 to 12 minutes. Meatballs take 10 minutes. Garlic bread takes
8 to 10 minutes. We're in the last
throws of cooking here. Next step we get to
eat and make a salad. Pasta is almost done. The meatballs are done. I'm actually gonna turn them off and they can just stay
warm in the hot sauce. The bread, let's take
a look at the bread. Oh, it smells good. Could use just a
few more minutes. Yep, just two more minutes
on the clock for that. It is time then
to make the salad. We need to have a little
something green on the table. And this is my favorite salad. It's not a recipe, really. Actually, I tried to
write it down as a recipe in a cookbook 15 years ago, in the big America's Test
Kitchen Family Cookbook. It was this big ring-bound
book, which you can still buy. It's no longer ring bound. It's a white traditional book. And I tried to write this down, and I managed to make
some instructions, but really it's by feel. And it starts with a good
wooden bowl and a garlic clove. And so I took the peel off this. There's a lot of
garlic in this dinner. So it's not vampire
friendly dinner. It's not meant for, or
maybe it is for Halloween. Keep the vampires away. But what you want to do
is put a little garlic. And I'm rubbing it in the bowl. And the wood of the bowl acts
kind of like sandpaper, right? And it's just flavoring
the bowl with garlic. So it's just a hint of
garlic on the salad, which is just really nice. Next we're gonna add
some salad greens. Here I have a variety
of salad greens. Some baby green leaf and a
lot of these micro greens. These are starting to be really
popular in the store now, these little guys. And you can get cilantro,
you can get mache, you can get all sorts of
flavors, sunflower seeds. I see some of them in there. That looks like a
little piece of chard. They're just
delicate and lovely. They add texture and flavor
to a really boring salad. And they're easy, right? Just wash 'em up,
add 'em to the salad. Next gonna add the olive oil. This is when you want to
pull out your good olive oil. Don't use a wimpy olive oil. Use a really nice
extra virgin olive oil. You just want to drizzle. Drizzle 'til it's glossy. That was what I wrote
in the cookbook, 'cause I couldn't figure out how to tell people how much oil. I mean as much oil
as you want, right? But if it's too
much, it's too much. Now believe it or not, this
was a salad growing up. Olive oil and salt. And it is delicious. It's like my first salad. But we're gonna add just
a little bit of pepper, gonna kick it up a little notch. And when pepper's
kicking it up a notch, you know, I'm cooking
really simply. And then last but not least is when you add a
little bit of vinegar. Put my thumb over it. I say vinegar, I
think in the recipe, I said, "Vinegar
'til it's sparkles." I don't really know
what that means, but I couldn't think of a better
term than 'til it sparkles. Now I like to mix
vinegar, red wine vinegar, which is what that is with
just a little lemon juice. That combo to me is perfection. Not a lot, just a little. All right, salad's done. Let's check the garlic bread. Oh, goodness, doesn't
that look terrible? I don't think I
should serve this. I think I should
eat it all myself. Little salt and pepper on
it right out of the oven. Oh, so good. I'm gonna let this
cool for a few minutes before I slice into it. Meatballs, as I said, are done. They're sitting
there nice and warm. Last but not least,
let's check the pasta. Only one way to check
if the pasta is done. And that's to ask your
husband to come in and taste it for you. I'm just kidding. Ian, just kidding. I see people throwing
against the wall. I've actually never
thrown pasta at the wall. I mean I know it doesn't work. Sounds fun, sounds like a
mess to clean up though. Only way to test pasta
is done is to eat it. I'm cooling it off right now. This is my patented method for cooling off spaghetti
before you taste it. Perfect. This is an old ATK trick. So in the sink I
have a colander. And in the colander, I have
a liquid measuring cup. And what it does is when you're in the
rush of making dinner and you're always draining
pasta at the last minute, you always forget to save some
of the pasta cooking water. And that water is
flavored, it's starchy. And it is a great way
to loosen up a sauce if it's been sitting a while
and it's gotten too thick. So, the trick worked again. Taking some pasta water out
just in case we need it. This goes back in the sink. Now I get to drain the pasta. Another ATK trick,
how to drain pasta. Don't shake it. You just hold it
up for 10 seconds. Don't ask me why 10 seconds. But every time I count
to 10, 7, 8, 9, 10. 'Cause you want some of
that water left in there. That water is a good sort of
way to keep the pasta loose. All right, I'm gonna
take some of the sauce from the skillet, add
it to the pot of pasta. Now I know everyone likes to
put the Parmesan over the top. I like to mix a little
Parmesan in with the pasta just 'cause I can't
get enough Parmesan. Also, I think it helps
that first bit of sauce stick really well to the pasta. All right, so when serving this, you can serve it straight
from the stove top, obviously, especially if it's a weekday. But in our house we wind up
plattering a lot of things. And my husband actually worked
at this big spaghetti house here in Boston called Vinny
Testa's way back in the day. I mean, he might
have been a teenager. And so everything gets
pretty much served on a big white platter. Sometimes they're
oval like this one. I'm just gonna dump, oh,
that's how I style food. I don't style it.
(laughing) You know, I'm told if you spin,
if you really were into it, you can make spiny
things in the pasta. I swear, I've done
this a million times. It just gets covered
up by the meatballs. But you can play with
that if you want to. All right, next, the
meatballs go right on top. And actually this is a dinner that sometimes when neighbors
need a little helping hand or they need dinner brought
over, this is what we do. We make a big platter of
spaghetti and meatballs and garlic bread and salad and just bring the whole
platter right to their house. It's a really nice thing
to give to a neighbor who is in a rough
spot and just needs a hot dinner at the ready. Here I have some fresh basil. I don't chiffonade
basil in real life. I know I do it on TV and I
think it's fun and it's pretty. I also think it's a
little precious for home. I like big pieces of basil. And sometimes I don't
even take a knife to it. I don't want to beat
the basil up that much. So I'll just take my fingers
and tear off pieces of basil and leave 'em nice big hunks. If it's too small, it winds up
looking like grass clippings. All right, there's
spaghetti meatballs. Some nice basil on top. Last but not least,
this garlic bread. Just cut this up
into nice pieces so people can just grab
it right off the platter. I like leaving a few
big pieces for Mr. Ian because he likes
the garlic bread. And you know what I want to do is put a little more Parm
on the top of that pasta. There it is. I have like three of
these microplane zesters. I love them. And I use them for everything
from garlic and Parm. It's perfect for ginger. That looks good,
(energetic upbeat music) and that's dinner. Basically as easy as it gets and so fast for a midweek. Make up some plates
for everybody. All right, Marta likes the
centers, Ian likes the ends. I like the middle. Marta gets two meatballs. I like three meatballs and
lots of room for salad. I like jamming the
salad right on the plate with everything
else, old school. Of course you could serve
it separately in a bowl if you didn't want
to get all sassy. But getting a little of the
tomato sauce on the greens is kind of what
spaghetti dinner's about. Little salad for Marta. I always give her more
salad than she eats just in hopes that one
day she will love salad. One day, it's gonna
happen one day. Nice big portion for Ian. And that's an overflowing
plate of food. Just like we like it here
in the Davison household. Let's take a little taste
before they get here. Perfect meatball. Oh, and this bread,
are you kidding me? That fluffy bread. Perfection. All right, and that's dinner. Dinner is served at
the Davison house. Thanks for watching
and see you next time. Marta, Ian, dinner. Thanks for watching. What'd you think? Leave a comment
below and let me know what you're excited
to cook this week. And while you're at it
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