Mary Berry loves a sneaky shortcut, as seen in her midweek lasagne recipe (after all, who wants to knock together a roux on a Thursday?).
Pro chefs have even been known to blanch their broccoli ahead of cooking it, so it only takes seconds to prepare when it’s needed. So, it makes sense that culinary legend Nigella Lawson has her fair share of hacks and shortcuts, too.
The chef and TV icon told NPR, “I do love cooking, and I would love to spend hours in the kitchen. But my life doesn’t really mean that I can afford an awful lot of time. And I don’t want to eat less well just because I’ve got less time at my disposal.”
The philosophy extends to her “shortcut meatballs,” it seems.
Nigella wrote, “Instead of making up a meatball mixture with minced meat or meats, parmesan, garlic and egg, I simply squeeze the stuffing out of about half a kilo of Italian sausages and roll it into cherry tomato-sized balls.”
In the BBC recipe she shared, she used about 450g of Italian sausage.
She suggests we “Squeeze out the sausage meat from the sausages and roll small cherry tomato-sized meatballs out of it, putting them onto a cling film-lined baking tray as you go.”
After that, you should have about 40, she says.
Then, you can simply fry them like you would regular meatballs ― “as they become firmer, nudge them up in the pan to make room for the rest if you can’t fit them all in at first,” Nigella advises.
Not necessarily. It makes sense to use a “flavoured” sausage, though ― that keeps you from having to mix in any herbs or seasonings.
Nigella explains in a separate post that “Italian-style sausages usually have a slightly coarser texture than a regular British banger.”
“They are also flavoured with fennel, garlic and red wine. The ‘hot’ version of the sausages are also spiked with chilli,” she adds.
But if you can find a flavour mix you like in a non-Italian sausage, go for it.
The dish freezes well, by the way. Once you let it cool, you can “Place [them] in the freezer and you will always have tasty meatballs on standby. This dish will last in the freezer for two months.”
Did anyone else’s stomach just rumble...
