Trader Joe’s Homestyle ANGUS BEEF MEATBALLS

These ready to cook meatballs from Trader Joe’s are a fairly recent item, sold fresh in the meat section. I wanted to try them for while and finally got around to trying these.

Now it’s $9.99. Yes it went up as beef prices have skyrocketed. Still not a terrible deal. There are 12 meatballs in the package which is (24 oz or 1 1/2 lbs) Trader Joe’s has this to say about them:

“…Our supplier’s recipe starts with a base of tender, ground 100% Angus Beef, to which they add a bit of panko breadcrumbs…along with onion and garlic purée, a blend of aromatic herbs like basil and oregano, as well as grated Parmesan and Romano cheeses”

https://www.traderjoes.com/home/products/pdp/homestyle-angus-beef-meatballs-081242

Cooking: The box has instructions for cooking the meatballs in the oven (at 400 for 15-20 minutes) as well as for Air Fryer (at 400 for 10-15 mins)

I find it funny they don’t say anything about what I would call the traditional grandma method to cook meatballs: Brown them then simmer in a pot of tomato sauce. You can just put them into the sauce without browning, which is the way my mom used to make meatballs.

Its a little more work and mess to brown them, but I do like the flavor you get with browning. Plus you can get that tasty “fond” left in the bottom of the pan which will add a lot of flavor once you deglaze that and add that into your meat sauce.

Sauce: As you choose. You could use TJ’s very decent $1.99 jar of tomato basil MARINARA sauce (24 oz). Or for a bigger batch use two jars. Again, I would suggest the traditional browning and simmer method but thats your call if you want to bake these or Air Fry them and add sauce later depending on how you are serving the meatballs.

To cook them I did it the traditional Grandma way: browning them in olive oil on all sides, deglaze the pan, and then simmered in sauce for 15-29 minutes or so. We served them in the classic way of: Spaghetti and Meatballs. These are great for that of course.

If you want something really special for your sauce you could level up and use that $5 jar of TJ’s superb CARO SUGO sauce!

We used it to make “Spaghetti and Meatballs” for dinner, eat about 3 meatballs each and had enough left for another meal for later in the week out of the one package.

REVIEW: I would say these were pretty good. Of course I could not compare these to “Grandma’s homemade meatballs” but these were not bad at all. These were pretty tasty served up as spaghetti and meatballs. Flavor wise we did think they could have used a bit more of everything (garlic, seasonings, cheese…) Now I do make meatballs from scratch, which are great, but honestly I have not made meatballs in a LONG TIME! So I would call these the next best thing to home made and pretty easy. They had a good meatball texture, being neither too soft nor too firm. You can fix these up easily for more flavor.

FIXING THEM UP: You can easily improve these by adding a few things such as, Dried Herbs, Garlic. Cheese… I wish these had way more cheese but you can fix that by grating on a ton of Pecorino or Parmesan when you serve them. Fresh basil would be a knockout punch. The sauce you serve them with will help of course.

These would work for making “meat sauce” (break them up). Use them for making Heros or Subs like in the picture (Meatball Sub). Or match with any kind of pasta. I read somewhere that someone even used these to make “Italian Wedding Soup” (he made them into smaller meatballs). So get creative. Overall, pretty tasty even if they will not fool Grandma. Naturally you could do a few things to the uncooked meatballs. Reform them into either even smaller meatballs. Or bigger. Take make these about 1 and a half size. Or go the other direction : use these for a Meat Sauce, Ragu or Bolognese style sauce using either jarred sauce or making your own.

$9.99 (24 oz / 12 meatballs) – (I think they used to be $8 when they came out a year or so back?)

You could spend about $13 total to make a spaghetti and meatball dinner which would easily feed 4 people. Using these 12 beef meatballs, a pound of spaghetti, plus a jar of marinara . That works out to about $3 bucks per person which is not terrible for a super tasty meal. Meatball subs? Maybe a few bucks more for the hero rolls.

https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/90321/meatball-sandwich/

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