Spaghetti with Meatballs

This recipe came from Amelia Wuertz's sister, Anna Marie Heronema. Anna Marie married John Fabrizio who is of Italian descent and his family had the recipe. Grandma Amelia and my mom cooked it often. It will feed a lot of people and is delecious.

This batch makes about 25 to 35 meatballs - I use an ice cream scooper to form the meatballs.

Ingredients

MEATBALLS
4 lbs	hamburger
1 pkg	Saltine crackers - crushed fine
1	large onion (chopped fine)
4	eggs  beaten
1 Tbsp	salt
3/4 Tbsp	pepper
2 Tbsp	parsley
2 Tbsp	basil
2 Tbsp	garlic
1 Tbsp	oregano (optional)

SAUCE
1	large onion - chopped fine and put into pan with meatballs
2 tbsp	salt
3/4 Tbsp	pepper
3 Tbsp	parsley
3 Tbsp	basil
1 Tbsp	oregano (optional)
3 Tbsp	garlic
2 64-oz bottles	tomato juice
3 6-oz cans (18 ounces)	tomato paste
3 Tbsp	brown sugar

Preparation

Combine ingredients for meatballs. Shape into balls and put into a pan with a 6 cups of water and the chopped onion.  I use 6 cups of water in my huge stock pot. The water should be about 2 or 3 inches up from the bottom of the pand with the meatballs in the pan, to steam. You don't want to boil the meatballs. You want to steam the meatballs.

Simmer with lid till firm. 

Add remaining sauce ingredients. 
Simmer 2 hours on low without lid. 

Stir often.  Be careful not to burn.

Optional: Italian Sausage

You can also add Italian Sausage to sauce. I brown mine lightly first and then add directly to the sauce just a minimum amount of time before eating... maybe 1 hour... to simmer to get them to the required temp.

I used to boil the sausage first but that made them too dry.

I check temp of sausage before serving.

When using 48 ounce jugs of tomotato juice, I tried this. Make it with two 48 ounce jugs of tomotato juice (instead of two 64 ounce jugs) but then add one more 6 ounce can of tomato paste with 3 6 ounce cans of water. This all made 138 ounces of liquid vs 146 ounces using the larger tomato juice jugs. This doesn't count the water added to cook the meatballs.

 

Noodles

Cook between 2 and 4 ounces of noodles per person