Growing up in New York, I’d never eaten a meatball pizza. Strike that. I’d never even heard of a meatball pizza. Actually, let’s go one step further: It never once entered my mind that a meatball pizza was even within the realm of possibility. To me, pizza was the thing you got by the slice after school and meatballs were what you’d eat at home on a weekend night if you were really lucky. Pizza is for eating out; meatballs are home cooking.
It wasn’t until I tasted the meatball pizza at Motorino and then at Best Pizza in Williamsburg that I discovered how great the idea is. It’s two Italian-American favorites, all rolled into one spectacularly comforting dish. But like all mashups, there’s a bit of finesse to getting it right. Here’s how I make mine.
Getting Sauced
The best part of meatballs are the meatballs themselves, and luckily Daniel has already put in the legwork for the most tender and juicy meatballs you’ll ever taste. But the sauce comes in a close second. As much as I love my all-day Italian-American Red Sauce, it’s still a sauce that tastes predominantly of tomatoes. The sauce you get with meatballs, on the other hand, should taste like meat.
One way to do it is to simmer meatballs in the sauce all day (this works, if you’re okay with eating tough meatballs really late in the day). My quick-and-dirty trick? I save some of the meatball mixture and instead of forming it into a ball, I brown it in a bit of olive oil.
From there, I add my basic sauce ingredients: minced garlic, oregano, a pinch of pepper flakes, and some whole San Marzano tomatoes that I crush by hand.
With a sprig of basil thrown in, the sauce cooks down at a simmer in just about half an hour. Does it taste like it was cooked all day? No, because it wasn’t. But it sure does taste meaty and comforting, and that’s all I ask of my sauce at this stage.
It’s especially nice for pizza as it adds bits of meat that can be spread over the entire surface of the dough, making every bite taste hearty, instead of just the bites where you happen to get a meatball.
Speaking of which, it’s time to address another question: When it comes to ‘balls, is bigger always better?
Size Matters
As Adam Kuban so eloquently pointed out in his article Hey, Pizza Joints, Why You Gotta Bust My Meatballs?, a meatball that’s been sliced or quartered or otherwise adulterated is no longer a meatball—it’s a sliced meat topping.
Still, I figured it was worth trying out a few different sizes and methods of ball application to see which tasted best. I made up a batch of meatballs in two different sizes: two inches (a little bigger than a golf ball) and 3/4 inches. I cooked both batches of meatballs by simmering them in a pot of my sauce on the stovetop. Even though I typically like to brown my meatballs in oil before simmering them in sauce, with the pizza it made less of a difference—there are plenty of browned flavors going on in a cooked pizza even without the extra step of browning the balls.
I applied the large meatballs in two ways: quartered and scattered, and sliced into 1/4-inch thick slices after simmering. Of those two methods, people liked the quarters more, but folks overwhelmingly preferred whole small balls in place of large split ‘balls.
I was afraid that small balls might end up drying out or taste too much like sausage chunks. While it’s true the large balls do offer more of the traditional tender interior that you get with a plain meatball, the little balls were still surprisingly moist and tender, even after simmering in sauce and baking on pizza.
Construction
There’s really not much more to say. Once you’ve made your sauce and simmered your balls, you stretch out a ball of dough (I used my New York-style Pizza Dough, though even store-bought will work fine) and top it with a layer of sauce.
I like to go a little heavier on the sauce than with a typical pizza, because to me those Sunday meatballs are nothing without their sauce. A layer of shredded mozzarella goes on top of the sauce, then the little meatballs, scattered evenly around.
Then it gets a drizzle of olive oil, a sprinkle of salt, and a few torn basil leaves before getting parked on top of a preheated Baking Steel (the ONLY surface you should be baking your pizzas on these days!) underneath a high broiler.
The pizza cooks in a matter of minutes, the ‘balls sinking slightly into the layer of sauce and cheese as the edges puff and the underbelly gets charred.
As with plain meatballs, I like to give the whole pie a sprinkle of cheese as it comes out of the oven. Either a sharp Pecorino Romano (what I used) or a good aged Parmesan will work.
And there you go. Pizza that eats by the slice but tastes like it came out of your grandma’s kitchen. If your grandma happens to be an Italian-American immigrant from Jersey. Mine isn’t, but a boy can dream.