Ricotta Stuffed Sausage Meatballs
Looking for a quick and easy appetizer for the Big Game? These ricotta stuffed sausage meatballs are so easy to make. Your football friends will go wild for these quick baked ricotta stuffed sausage meatballs.
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Meatballs. The ultimate comfort food.
As is the case with many things I share on this blog, I always thought meatballs would be hard to make from scratch.
But the truth is, meatballs are fairly simple once you know the few key things that make a meatball work. Since making these, I've also ventured into making baked chicken meatballs and goat cheese, rosemary chicken meatballs.
First of all, you obviously have to have meat. Whether it be ground beef, ground turkey, ground chicken or, in fact, ground sausage, it all starts as the same base.
Then, you have to have something to bind everything together. All of my meatball recipes use the same two things for this. Eggs and bread crumbs. Usually, I forget that we don't have any bread crumbs and I end up making my own from scratch. But that's a recipe for another day.
But, I digress. The last thing meatballs need is a few good spices. And voila, or presto, I guess since these are Italian, technically.
These meatballs have a few extra goodies that make them to die for, if I do say so myself. Though, for the record, the rest of my family couldn't get enough of them, too!
Because sausage can have excess grease when it cooks, I thought adding a third binding ingredient would be helpful for holding everything together. So I added a bit of cooked white rice. It's actually the same kind that I used for this salmon rice bowl recipe. It's just sticky enough that it held the meatballs together perfectly. But any cooked white rice will do!
Then the ultimate final touch was stuffing these meatballs with ricotta. I had the flavor palate in my head but I knew if I just mixed the ricotta into the meatball mixture everything would be too wet to hold together. So instead, I stuffed them! So fun, right?
Turns out these meatballs would be the perfect appetizer for any party, but I'm specifically planning on these for the Big Game coming up in just a few weeks! Party food is best when it can be eaten with one hand or utensil. No one has two hands to use a fork and knife so these meatballs are perfect for either using a fork and dipping them into marinara sauce or for just grabbing one and popping it in your mouth sans utensils!
Ricotta Stuffed Sausage Meatballs
Ingredients
- 1 lb ground Italian sausage sweet, mild or hot depending on your preference
- 1 egg
- ½ cup Italian seasoned bread crumbs
- 2 tablespoons sticky white rice cooked
- 1 teaspoon of ricotta per meatball about 4 ounces total
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
- Place an oven safe metal wire baking/cooling rack on top of a cookie sheet. Spray with nonstick cooking spray. Set aside.
- Combine sausage, egg, bread crumbs and rice in a bowl.
- Form meatballs by hand, about a teaspoon of mixture at a time.
- Use your thumb to put a small dent in the meatball.
- Fill the dent with ricotta and add more meat mixture on top to make a meatball again.
- Place on oven safe wire rack.
- Repeat with remaining mixture to make about 12 meatballs.
- Bake for 25 minutes, or until sausage is fully cooked when you cut into the meatball.
what a creative meatball recipe! Ricotta, love it and great idea, thank you for this recipe, great for game day but also beyond for entertaining especially!
Thank you so much Sabrina! If you end up making these, share a photo on IG and tag me 🙂
Oh, girl. These meatballs look INSANELY delicious, and I am SO happy you shared 'em because YUM. I never thought meatballs were hard to make (because my mama makes such good ones, and I watched her for years), but I never varied my meatballs until married life. My mom's are so good, but we like to change things up sometimes. So clearly, I gotta make these, too!
I totally get that! There are a lot of things I haven't ever considered to be difficult to make because they were staples in our house growing up! I hope you'll try these 🙂
Stuffing meatballs with cheese? BRILLIANT!
I wish your little guy could eat these, Greyson gobbled them up!
These meatballs look so dreamy! I LOVE the ricotta in the center - nothing like cheese and meat to celebrate the Big Game 😉
I totally agree girl. ALL THE CHEESE.