Italian Meatball Subs

The meatballs that I usually make are just simple ones; I make them like my mom did when I was a kid. They are made with cracker crumbs, an egg, a little milk, along with salt and pepper to taste, served in a brown gravy. Now some of you will say that these sound boring, but my family like them this way and we think that they are quite tasty. But since the spaghetti challenge when I made meatballs with a little more flavor, I have been thinking of different ways to make meatballs, one that would be more exciting than the ones I mentioned earlier.

A couple of weeks ago on a Saturday night we had decided that we would have meatball subs so that I could  try a new recipe that I had found. I had wanted to use ground pork for these meatballs, but I ended up settling for ground beef. In the future I would like to try these with ground pork or maybe even ground turkey. The meatballs had a variety of ingredients, one of the ingredients was red wine, so this is the second time now that I have used wine in my cooking. If you have followed me at all you will know that my cooking style is quite simple, so using wine is stepping out of the box for me. The first time I used wine was the spaghetti cooking challenge that I spoke about earlier in this post.

Believe me these meatballs had a lot more flavor than the one that I make and served with brown gravy. We served these meatballs on French bread, with spaghetti sauce, and mozzarella cheese. After the sandwiches were assembled we put them under the broiler so they would be a little toasted and cheese was nice and melted. Believe me when I say this was a wonderful sandwich and it will not be long before we make them again. Now I will not make you wait any longer for the recipe that I adapted from my Joy Of Cooking cookbook.

Italian Meatballs for Sub Sandwiches (Adapted from the Joy Of Cooking Cookbook)
Combine in a large bowl:
1 pound ground beef
1 garlic clove, minced
1/2 cup chopped parsley
1/4 cup Parmesan
1 medium onion, finely chopped
1/2 cup panko (Italian style)
1 large egg, beaten
3 tablespoons red read wine
1 tablespoon spaghetti sauce
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 teaspoon oregano
1/2 teaspoon fennel seeds
1/2 teaspoon basil
Loaf of French bread or hard rolls

Mix with your hands until all is blended. Shape into meatball the size you want. Heat a little olive oil in a skillet and heat, add the meatballs and cook until meatballs are nicely browned and almost done cooking. Remove the excess fat, add spaghetti sauce, and continue cooking until meatballs are completely cooked through to the center.
While the meatballs are finishing cooking, slice French bread to desired sizes and turn on the broiler.  Place desired number of meatballs onto each sandwich top with mozzarella cheese. Arrange sandwiches on a backing sheet and place under the broiler. Watch carefully so that the sandwiches don’t brown too much.