Korean Meatball Sub

An Italian-American classic with a nod to Korea

🎉 Welcome to my newsletter, The Boy Who Bakes, a subscriber-supported newsletter, dedicated to all things baked. For more bonus posts, like this one, filled with exclusive recipes, you can become a paid subscriber for the weekly newsletter, Second Helpings. It costs just £5 a month and, as well as the weekly recipes, that also unlocks access to the full archive of past recipes. To subscribe, to either the paid or free newsletter, click the link below.🎉

Hello, Happy Friday!

Can I complain for a second, and tell you how much I hate my kitchen at the moment. Not the idea of being in the kitchen (although burn out is real) but my actual physical space, the kitchen of my nightmares. I am not sure if I’ve mentioned this on the newsletter yet, but I recently moved house and a kitchen upgrade - it was not! To stay in the area, where we currently live, but to get a little bit more space, we decided to buy a complete wreck, crumbling walls, decoration from many decades ago, damage from damp, gross carpeted bathroom and an ongoing list of other issues. It was truly the house no-one else wanted. The property hasn't been touched in, probably, 50 years and the neglect is incredibly noticeable. The kitchen is a particular sore spot, for me especially. Decorated in a mishmash of 1970’s wallpaper, in the under-stair storage, floor to ceiling tiles, which were seemingly laid directly atop the previous owners existing tiles, and a dark and depressive wooden ceiling, it isn’t just the oppressive decoration, it’s the actual design and layout of the space. Whilst the plan is to slowly renovate the house, doing so over a number of years so we can save up and do it bit-by-bit, the kitchen needs to happen sooner rather than later, so, in autumn of this year, fingers crossed, we will hopefully be able to start work on creating a kitchen I really enjoy working in; the first time in almost 15 years of doing this job that I’ll have a kitchen I designed. But until that day comes, I will continue to make do.

As an aside I would love to know if you’re interested in the kitchen renovation? It will be quite a dramatic transformation so I have considered documenting the process a little here on the newsletter, what do you think?

The reason the state of my kitchen comes to mind is because, as I was working on this weeks recipes, it really solidified how a badly designed kitchen can make your cooking, your baking, even just being in the space, more stressful than it really needs to be. A lack of counter space, or in our case a lack of counter space and a woeful lack of storage, has led to cluttered countertops, which can really make baking anything more than the simplest of recipes, a total pain, especially when you're not the tidiest of bakers (I prefer to call it creative chaos). This was made incredibly clear to me this week, as I worked on the three elements for this weeks recipe, a simple meatball recpie, a spin on a marinara style tomato sauce and an accompanying bread recipe, a subway roll to be specific. I had a very specific result in mind for the bread so I tested it more than was probably necessary and the kitchen soon started to fill up, subway rolls slowly taking over the space. Thankfully, by the end of the week, I was incredibly happy with the resulting recipes and I think you’ll genuinely love them. If so, that makes the hours of washing up and the cluttered kitchen all worth it.

The idea for this weeks recipe came from the duality of, first, craving a meatball sub, and then second, wanting to use up the leftover gochujang in my fridge, in a recipe. In the past I have used this fabulous ingredient to flavour Italian ragus, cheesy garlic bread buns and more traditional Korean recipes like tteokbokki, made with wonderfully chewy rice cakes. For this weeks recipe, I decided to put a slight Korean twist on a classic Italian-American recipe, the meatball sub. The Korean influence comes more in use of ingredients rather than any similarities to actual Korean dishes. The marinara sauce is made with the addition of Gochujang, a fermented chilli paste, to add a nice hit of spice and the meatballs themselves are made with gochugaru (korean chill flakes) as well as garlic, ginger, soy sauce and sesame oil.

For the bread I wasn't looking to make a soft subway roll like the sort served at the Subway chain of sandwich shops, I wanted something little bit more substantial, with a light crisp crust and a soft interior. What I wanted was more like a hoagie. Hoagies are bread rolls used in the Philadelphia and South Jersey area of the US and they are used to make many sandwiches including Philly cheesesteaks and all manner of subway style sandwiches. I haven’t ever looked into a recipe for Vietnamese style baguettes, but I think this recipe would also make excellent bread for Banh-Mi, with just a slightly adapted shaping.

Korean Inspired Meatballs with Spiced Marinara Sauce

Serves 4-6

125g fresh breadcrumbs

150ml milk

300g pork mince (about 20% fat)

300g beef mince (about 20% fat)

1/2 an onion, finely diced

1 large egg

1 tbsp sesame oil

1 tbsp soy sauce

2 tsp gochugaru

1 tbsp finely minced garlic

1 tbsp finely minced ginger

Gochujang Marinara Sauce

2 tbsp olive oil

1/2 an onion, finely diced

2 garlic cloves, finely crushed

1 tbsp gochujang

1x400g can chopped tomatoes (I like the Mutti finely chopped tomatoes as they’re less chunky)

To assemble

Sliced mozzarella

Sliced spring onions

For the meatballs add the breadcrumbs to a bowl and pour over the milk, pressing onto the bread with a wooden spoon to encourage it to soak up the milk. Set aside for 10-20 minutes to soak.

Preheat the oven to 210ºC (190ºC Fan) and pour a thin layer of oil into a large roasting tray. Place the tray into the oven whilst you make the meatballs so that the oil is nice and hot.

To a large mixing bowl, add the meat, the soaked breadcrumbs and the remaining meatball ingredients. Use clean hands to mix everything together, using a squeezing motion to ensure everything is evenly distributed. Divide and roll the meatball mixture, into balls that are a little larger than golf balls and set onto a tray until you’ve made all of them. These meatballs are moist and to help them form a crust, and to prevent them falling apart, I like to coat the outside in a little flour. I dredge the meatballs in flour, as if I were about to coat them in egg and breadcrumbs ahead of deep-frying. You don’t need a lot of flour, just a very light coating all over the meatballs.

Remove the roasting tray from the oven and carefully transfer the meatballs to the tray. Bake in the oven for about 10-15 minutes or until the meatballs are evenly browned.

Whilst the meatballs are baking, make the tomato sauce. Add the oil to a saucepan and place over low/medium heat. Add the onion and cook until soft and translucent, about 10 minutes. Add the garlic and cook for about a minute before adding the gochujang and stirring together until evenly mixed with the onions. Add the tomatoes to the pan and then fill up the can with water and add this to the pan as well. Cook at a simmer for about 15 minutes or until the sauce has reduced and has a thick pasta sauce-like consistency. Once both the meatballs and the sauce are ready combine the two and stir so that the meatballs are completely covered in sauce. Because the meatballs are being served as a sandwich, the sauce should just be enough to coat the meatballs, if serving with pasta you can double the sauce recipe.

Korean Meatballs Edd Kimbre

25.6KB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

The recipe for the hoagie rolls is below for paid subscribers, to get access to this recipe and the entire newsletter archive consider becoming a paid subscriber.