Meatball subs

We've always had a bit of a southwestern palate, we like spicy, we like beans, so on and so forth. Lately we've been trying to diversify, which has caused me to pull out some recipes from childhood. One of those recipes was meatballs, something my Mom made pretty regularly and I learned how to make simply by helping her. Of course, as usual I added my own twist to it. What it involves is:

1 lb. ground sirloin
1/2 cup of ketchup
1/2 cup of crushed crackers
1 egg
1/2 of chopped onions (Mom always used dried minced onion)
2 tsp of minced garlic
Seasonings of your choice (I used basil, oregano, salt, pepper and Worcestershire)

You mix the above ingredients by hand and then form them into uniformed balls. Then you sear the outside before tossing them into a sauce to finish cooking.


But my sauce wasn't any old sauce, unlike my Mom who I'm pretty sure used jarred sauce, I went the purer route simply because I needed to get rid of some crushed tomatoes. The sauce started out with about 2 1/2 cups of crushed tomatoes, while in another pan I sauteed onions and red peppers.

Then I added the onion/pepper mixture to the sauce with a little garlic, basil, oregano and a touch of crushed red pepper, and gently stirred it together since it already had meatballs in it (yes, I was a little backwards on this one as I hadn't prepared the sauce ahead of time).

When all was said and done, we built some sandwiches on french bread and stuck them under the broiler with a slice of mozzarella cheese. The end result:

While Mom never served these meatballs to us in sandwich form, I wish she would have as they held a lot of flavor for such a use.

WW Pts. = 1 pt. per meatball (mind you that does not include the cheese or roll you use)