I got the inspiration to make this the other night while I was flipping channels on my remote, I came across a show on Food Network it was either “Unique Eats” or “The Best Thing I Ever Ate“, I can’t tell you which one it was but the girl was just raving about these Ricotta Stuffed Meatballs that she ate at some restaurant.

What caught my attention was the brilliant way in which the Chef stuffed them, he did it by freezing balls of ricotta, placing them inside the meat and them forming the rest of the meat all around it.

I couldn’t wait to try out his method, it sounded so easy!

Martha once had someone on her show who baked the meatballs first then took a apple corer and cut through the center of the meatball after which he took a pastry bag filled with ricotta and squeezed it into the hole, sounds like a lot of work to me plus you’re wasting some of the meatball, and besides I wanted my ricotta cooked.

There was no recipe, I just winged it, you’ll be amazed how easy it is to do.
Mix up your ricotta in a separate bowl, I added romano cheese, salt, pepper, chopped basil and parsley to mine, no egg.
The size of your meatballs will determine the size of your ricotta balls, I made a few giant meatballs, like one per person size and I also made regular sized ones, so I rolled my ricotta accordingly, placed the balls on a parchment lined baking sheet and into the freezer they went for about an hour.

While you’re waiting mix up your meat, I usually always add, garlic, onion, egg, grated cheese, moist bread, salt, pepper and fresh chopped parsley to mine.

When the ricotta balls are frozen and ready to go, take some meat in the palm of your hand, place the ball of ricotta inside, then cover it with more meat to form a ball, that’s it!

Although it’s hard to see the perspective in this photo, these were the giant meatballs I made, one was enough per person to fill you up.
I served these big ones with a salad and roasted cauliflower for our dinner.