The meatballs for this recipe are fantastic but the proportions for the sauce are all wrong. There's so much tomato paste and so little of anything else that the whole thing ends up tasting like tomato paste. I would go with 30 ounces of paste and 18 ounces of tomato sauce rather than 48 ounces of paste and no sauce. Also throw in 2 onions instead of 1 twice as much mushroom bay leaf and basil 6 (or more) garlic cloves half a cup or so of parsely and 2 teaspoons each of oregano and thyme. Stand by with some sugar (a tablespoon or two) if you need to cut it further. Also when the porkchops simmer for 8 hours they end up tasteless without adding anything to the sauce so maybe put them in later. If there's less concentrated paste flavor and more other flavors this sauce would be great. (Again the meatballs are wonderful.) But as it is it's not worth 9 hours of your time. (Also this makes a lot more than 10 servings; I'd guess 15 or 20.)
I made the meatballs only. Although I didn't care for the original recipe my second batch was fabulous with a few modifications. I only used 3/4c. bread crumbs. I used 1/2# sweet Italian pork sausage rather than ground pork and veal. And I used an Italian Herb blend rather than just dried parsley. I did simmer them in jarred sauce. Both the meatballs and sauce improved each other! YUM YUm Yum yum!
I just made the meatballs in this case, took advice from other user and only used 3/4 cup of italian bread crumbs, turned out very good, everybody loved them, will make again for sure. 5 star no problem
This recipe was good but not the perfect meatballs I have been searching a LONG time for.(I'm pretty picky about my meatballs;) Actually I think that all they need is a little more garlic. I must say that they did taste their best the next day and then the next day after that as most do. I will be trying them again with just a wee bit of modification to "Jess-ize" them. Thank you for sharing...
I only used the meatball recipe and made with my own pasta sauce. Everyone raved about the meatballs. Very good recipe.
I just made the meatballs. We really liked them and will make them again. Next time I will try the sauce.
I got this recipe for just the meatballs and they were horrible! Way too many breadcrumbs and they tasted like mush.
I'm not a huge meatball lover but I made these for my husband and he enjoyed them. I made a lot and froze them and they tasted good whenever I used them. I really liked the parmesan flavor. I'll make them again.
EXCELLENT!!!! Just like my grandma Palaia's recipe. She never used meatballs so that was an added bonus. Very good. I've never had bottled sauce in my life but I imagine it's bad. Nothing is like homemade sauce that has been simmering for hours!
