Next time you’re prepping a batch of meatballs, a little tomato sauce might be just the trick. Tomatoes lend an umami richness to the mixture while also making it a little silkier. You don’t want it to be soupy by any means, so add only a small amount at first (a tablespoon is a good place to start). For best results and smoothest incorporation, you’ll want to make sure the sauce is room temperature or colder. Mixing the meat with tomato sauce will also save your meatballs from becoming chewy. This is because the acid in tomatoes helps to break down the collagen in the meat, softening it. The idea is to end up with tenderer meatballs that meld seamlessly with the sauce.
You can certainly use a good-quality sauce from the store, but making basic tomato sauce is easy and requires just a few ingredients. Crushed plum tomatoes are the perfect base because of their relative lack of seeds. They’re cooked with olive oil, onions, garlic, and other seasonings. If you prefer a sweeter sauce, don’t be afraid to mix in a modest pinch of sugar. While the simplest tomato sauces can take as little as 20 minutes to come together, letting your pot simmer for a few hours can help those flavors marry together even better. Sauce also freezes easily, so if there’s any leftover from making tomato-infused meatballs, it can be frozen and defrosted at a later date.
