Short-Cut Spaghetti and Meatballs

Home-cooked marinara sauce is divine, built from a combination of fresh tomatoes, onions, carrots, celery, garlic and spices that are slowly sauteed, simmered and pureed, and then simmered further until the flavor profile achieves the exact balance of tart and sweet. Making home-cooked marinara sauce, however, is an activity that few of us have time for more than a few times a year.

Prepared pasta sauces offer a wonderful alternative, but not all marinaras are equal. Yes, the $2.29 jarred sauce seems like a great value, but I promise you that the flavor is about one-tenth of that found among the slightly more expensive options. Your marinara sauce should not resemble a bright-red chunky salsa. However, I find time and again that the cheaper marinara sauces walk this line. If I'm baking a layered Italian dish like eggplant parm or lasagna that also includes cheese, meat, or other flavor-rich ingredients, I'll consider using a less-expensive variety because I know that there will be a lot of competing flavors in the dish, but when a pasta dish calls for a basic marinara that must stand on its own, I shell out a few more dollars for the higher-quality product offered from labels like Rao's and Lucini Italia (among many in this category).

With a quality store-bought marinara sauce and some spaghetti noodles in hand (and here I will vouch for Trader Joe's dried pasta, which is both affordable and of great construction when cooked al dente), I can focus all of my effort on the feature piece - the meatballs. For the most part, we've cooked our meatballs the traditional way, browned in a skillet and then finished in the oven. However, cooking ground beef in a skillet is messy business, and if you don't have a skillet that transfers well to the oven, you can end up using multiple dishes to complete one piece of your dinner, making clean-up even more laborious than usual.

Looking for an alternative, I recently discovered a meatball recipe that is cooked on a nonstick wire rack in the oven. The meatballs were quick to assemble, they cooked beautifully in the oven, they yielded little mess, and they offered a complexity of flavors that included garlic, parmesan, capers and sage. Now that I've discovered the wire-rack cooking method, I'm not sure I'll ever go back!

*OVEN-ROASTED BEEF MEATBALLS* (adapted from Rachael Ray's 30 Minute Meals)
yields 12-16 large meatballs

Ingredients

1 1/2 pounds lean ground beef (90% lean or higher)

1 medium sweet onion, grated

4 cloves garlic, chopped

1 egg

1/2 cup Italian bread crumbs

1/2 cup grated parmesan

1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg

3 tablespoons capers, drained and chopped

2 tablespoons chopped sage leaves, 4 to 6 sprigs

A generous handful of flat-leaf parsley, chopped

Salt and pepper, to taste


Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Line a jelly roll pan with foil and place a nonstick wire rack (often called a cooling rack) on top of the pan so that juices from the meatballs can drip onto the foil while cooking. 


In a large bowl, combine all ingredients along with a generous drizzle of olive oil. Mix the meat and form into a large ball at base of bowl. Score into four sections and divide each section into three or four meatballs, depending on preferred size. Place meatballs on wire rack and roast for 15 minutes, until firm but not hard. Serve over spaghetti noodles smothered in marinara sauce.