There must be hundreds of millions of words written in cookbooks and across the internet about Italian American meatballs — you know the kind, soaked in red sauce and often found atop a giant spaghetti swirl. Many of those words are fairly bossy advice about how to handle the meat mixture as you roll it into balls: Treat it gently, use a light touch, don’t overwork it, don’t pack it too tight.
But now, here’s Christian Reynoso offering up craggy no-roll meatballs, a new recipe that, along with its accompanying article, dares to question what all that rolling even gets you. Instead, he argues for just scooping well-seasoned meat mixture into the skillet to sear in hot oil.
This method doesn’t deliver smooth, bouncy meatballs, but instead gives you something looser, messy and irregularly shaped, with more bits for browning and crevasses for soaking up tomato sauce. (Those sauce-grabbing crevasses really do make a difference. That’s why the writer Samin Nosrat instructs you to tear bread for homemade croutons by hand, rather than slicing it with a knife. Dressing clings better to those roughly torn sides.)
“Craggy” really is an irresistible word in the broader language of food. It signals a certain kind of perfect imperfection. Maybe the food in question is intentionally rustic; maybe it’s meant to be tidy but it’s slightly mussed, a clue that it was made by human hands.
1. Craggy No-Roll Meatballs
Christian Reynoso’s no-roll recipe is particularly nice for a weeknight, eliminating a messy step and handing you back at least 10 minutes of precious time. If you don’t want pasta, serve it with thick pieces of toast (ideally that would be a little craggy, too).
2. Chile Oil Dumplings With Noodles
Hetty Lui McKinnon’s recipe brings dumplings and noodles into a single bowl so that she can dress it all with a fiery, chile-crisp-anchored sauce. Baby bok choy is an easy, tender green. Choose chile crisp and freezer dumpling brands you especially like for this one.
3. Sticky Chicken and Brussels Sprouts Stir-Fry
Ali Slagle’s latest article for New York Times Cooking shares tips for cooking brussels sprouts that maximize their strengths and avoid their weaknesses. This recipe from her is a great example of how to do just that: The heat and speed of stir-frying means the brussels won’t turn to mush. Instead, they sear on the outside and get tender within.
5. Sheet-Pan Grilled Cheese
I hope this recipe — grilled cheese for a crowd — is just what you need in the weeks ahead, when you have to feed guests or just your normal crew, and you don’t want to stand at the stove, flipping and flipping and flipping. It’s by Ali Slagle, and it’s perfect with tomato soup.
