I was watching Jacqueline and Rhonda roll meatballs the other day. For those of you who don’t know already, the meatballs we sell from the freezer use our secret meatball recipe that has been handed down for generations in the Schinkel family.

Ok, not really.

It’s just a really good recipe that everyone agreed was good enough to serve to our customers. It uses a beef/pork combination with some chopped onions and peppers along with some crumb and seasonings. We make an enormous batch of it and then start rolling.

And Rolling, and rolling, and rolling.

These two ladies are phenomenal in their endurance, let me tell you.

Thousands of meat balls rolled in a morning. Hundreds of thousands over the years, I’m sure. Maybe even a million?

Let’s give them a break.

So, I started to feel a bit guilty about their poor spinning hands and tired backs and I thought I could just leak the secret recipe and then all of you can make them yourselves in all your free time. Brilliant, right?

Secret is in the quality ingredients

Like so many of our made in store products, the secret has always not really been a secret. We try to go the extra so that you get the extra. So in this case, it’s not just ground beef, but a beef pork mixture (50-50 split) so that the meatballs are juicier and tastier than just beef. So, I thought I’d start with that.

Oops.

Forgot the ground pork when I was doing groceries. I keep swearing that is the last time I go grocery shopping without a list. Someday.
So, this time we will just go with beef.

That’s ok, I’m sure it will be just fine.

Next, the Meatball Recipe calls for frozen fajita mix. This is a frozen mix we sell out of the freezer that has chopped peppers and onions. I figured I would just use fresh and chop them up really fine. Especially since I didn’t have any fajita mix in my freezer. Probably should put that on my list next time, too.

Great idea in principle, not so great in practice. Turns out, it would have been easier and better to use the frozen mix. First off, the veggies kept falling out when I finally got around to rolling the mixture. And second, they were rather crunchy in the cooked meatball when they finally came out of the oven. And third, now I was left with all these bits of pepper and onion I don’t really need for anything else.

So, next on the list was bread crumbs and then seasoning salt, black pepper, garlic powder and Worcestershire.

Dang.

Ok, out of that list, I have bread crumbs and Worcestershire. Is regular salt ok to substitute seasoning salt? And then I have a pepper grinder, so I had to spend quite a bit of time grinding. Not really black pepper, though, it’s a mix of colours. Hope thats ok. And only had garlic salt, no powder. Maybe I really should have brought a list.

Oh, well

So, then I had to mix it together. Since I don’t have a handy commercial mixer like the one they have at the store, I had to just use my hands, the way my Mom taught me all those many years ago. A little ick, but I can always wash my hands after. And then I started rolling. And rolling. and rolling. Sheesh. I only had 2 lbs of meat to roll, and I was kinda bored after 5 minutes. After 10, I got distracted and made a coffee. When I got back to the bowl and finished up with the last meatball, I was rather tired of rolling.

Into the oven they go.

Had to cut one in half at the ten minute mark, but it was still pink, so a few more minutes.

When they came out of the over, I was pretty impressed with myself. They were pretty tasty (obviously, not all of them were going to end up in the freezer bag) and even though the veggies were a little crunchy, if the kids don’t eat them, there will be more for me.

So, there. I did it. Copied and shared the Schinkels’ Meat Market Meatball Recipe. Sort of.

Feel free to make your own anytime to help take the strain off Jacqueline and Rhonda’s tired arms.

However, after all that work, mess and rolling, I think I’m just going to go back to buying them out of Schinkels’ freezer section.