albóndigas (meatballs) with 2 sauces

albondigas (1)
I started off with an urge to make some good old fashioned meatballs, but couldn’t decide on a sauce. Eventually I went with a traditional Spanish tomato sauce but then – oops – ended up making way to many meatballs for the amount of sauce I had. So I had to come up with a second sauce for the extra meatballs and decided to go with a sherry sauce. The original tomato sauce recipe I had called for pancetta, but I chose to use up some jamón and chorizo threads I had in the fridge instead and the result was very tasty. Then for the sherry sauce I used bacon bits. Just to say that the pancetta can be switched for something similar.

My first batch made about 30 meatballs (which is why I needed another sauce). I’ve halved the recipe to make 15 meatballs with one of the sauces, or you can double it and make both sauces. Frankly, it takes almost as much effort to make 30 meatballs as 15, and they freeze well, so I’d always opt for going with the larger batch.

Ingredients and instructions below…
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