Albondigas – Spanish Meatballs

I am a bit of an expert on Albondigas Spanish meatballs! One night many years ago a Spanish friend decided to take me on a bar crawl of the Spanish bars in Almerimar. This entailed one beer in eight bars, all of which just happened to be offering Albondigas as their first tapas of the night. Boy was that interesting! Never knew they could be done in so many ways, and didn’t appreciate how good a good one was until I tasted some of the truly horrible ones that were offered up.

About Albondigas

Albondigas are one of Spain’s most popular tapas or entree dish’s. They are very simple to make, but do require a little preparation and can be a little fiddly to cook.

As with many Spanish dishes there are a number of variations that you can try depending on taste. Since we have been living in Spain this has become our favourite recipe, but we do have a preference for plainer meals, and tend to have a lot of other tomato based dishes so don’t use tomatoes with our Albondigas
You can make them from fresh or left-over cooked minced meat. We always make them from freshly ground steak rather than pre prepared minced meat.

They can be frozen either before they are cooked, or cook them and then freeze them, and as the preparation time isn’t very quick it seems more worth while to make a double batch and have another ready home-made meal in the freezer.

Ingredients

For the Albondigas:

• Minced Beef
• Fresh Parsley
• Bread Crumbs
• 1 Egg

For the sauce:

• Olive Oil
• Bay Leaf
• Onion
• Garlic
• Red Wine

Preparation

For the Albondigas:

• Mix the Minced meat and chopped parsley
• Mix in the bread crumbs
• Beat in the egg
• Roll the mix into golf ball sized balls
• Shallow fry the Albondigas in a wok until golden brown

For the sauce:

• Using the olive oil left over from the Albondigas
• Add the onion and cook for 10 minutes
• Add the garlic and bay leaves
• Add the red wine
• Let it simmer and thicken to your own preference
• Add the carrot and potato (if you want)

Serving Suggestion

We tend to eat them as tapas so 3 meat balls in a cazuela, with a boiled potato and boiled carrots added to the sauce.

Alternatively we use them with spaghetti in a tomato and basil sauce.

Alternative Recipes

Albondigas
* 8oz plain flour, sieved, plus extra to dust
* 8oz lean mince beef
* 8oz onion, diced
* 4oz spring onion, chopped
* 4 cloves of garlic
* 2 tbsp soy sauce
* 2 ½ fl oz sweet sherry
* 2 tbsp spoon sugar
* 1 large egg, beaten
* 1 tsp salt
* 2 tsp freshly ground pepper
* Salt and pepper to taste
* Olive oil

For the sauce
* 1 onion, chopped
* 3 peppers, 1 red 1 green 1 yellow, roughly chopped
* 1 tin chopped tomatoes drained
* 1 courgette, sliced
* 4 oz sweet sherry
* 2 tbsp sugar
* 2 tbsp of soy sauce
* 1 tsp dried basil
* 3 cloves garlic

Albondigas & Sauce

* 600 grams Minced beef or pork
* 1 egg
* garlic cloves, at least four
* 2 sprigs parsley finely chopped
* 1 cup of flour
* 1 onion chopped up finely
* 2 bay leaves
* 1 tsp of salt
* Spanish virgin olive oil for extra authenticity
* 1/2 glass of wine

Other Spanish Cooking Videos

• Patatas Asadas
• Pimientos de Padrón
• Sailors Clams
• Habas con Jamón
• Dorada a la Plancha

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