Slow Cooker Cheese Stuffed Meatballs.

Thank you Paula Deen, you are my hero!

I have been toying with the idea of Cheese Stuffed Meatballs for a while, so when I came across this recipe on her website, I was eager to try it. It's basically meatballs stuffed with Mozzarella Cheese, cooked in the slow cooker, and you can choose whichever sauce you'd like to go along with it. Obviously, meatballs suggest Spaghetti, and so I used 2 jars of our usual tomato based sauce. They were fantastic! They held their shape, didn't crumble on me, they didn't shrink at all and tasted wonderful. The tomato sauce, because it was cooked over a period of 5 hours, slowly simmered down, but oh my god! The tomato taste was SO intense! Just wonderful!

Ingredients.

• 1 lb. ground beef
• 1 lb. ground pork
• 4 tablespoons fresh parmesan cheese, grated
• 1 to 1 1/2 cups Italian dry bread crumbs
• 3 large eggs
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
• 2 cloves garlic, finely minced
• 1 tablespoon fresh basil, finely chopped
• 1/4 cup fresh parsley, chopped
• 1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
• 4 oz. fresh mozzarella, divided into 12 pieces
• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• 2 jars of your favorite red sauce
• 2 pounds spaghetti, cooked al dente

In a large mixing bowl combine ground beef, ground pork, parmesan, eggs, salt, pepper, garlic, basil, parsley and dried oregano.

Add bread crumbs 1/2 cup at a time until mixture is not to wet and can be formed into balls easily.

Form mixture into 12 balls using your thumb to press a hole in the center. Insert a piece of the fresh mozzarella into the hole and close the hole by pushing the meatball mixture around it to secure the mozzarella inside each ball.

Heat a large saute pan over medium heat and drizzle olive oil into it. Add meatballs and cook until just browned.

Using a slotted spoon, transfer meatballs into a slow cooker. Pour red sauce over the meatballs and cook on LOW for approximately 5 hours.

Serve the stuffed meatballs and sauce over spaghetti.

While it seems to be a lot of preparation work, it's well worth it, and besides, squishing all those ingredients around into the meat mixture is a great way of working out any stress or frustrations lol.

Till next time, keep cookin'!