These keto meatballs marinara start from Italian sausage, which means they need no breadcrumb and barely any seasoning, just egg and parmesan to bind. Baked bite-sized and served in a from-scratch sugar-free marinara, they come in at about 4 grams of net carbs and work as an appetizer or over zucchini noodles for dinner.
I love eating bite sized food. For me it makes me more cautious of my portion sizes. Kind of like when I was a kid at Halloween the bite sized candies were just as satisfying as the full-sized bar. This is also the case for me with meatballs. I have never been a fan of the giant meatball. I feel they have so much more flavor when they are small. This recipe couldn't get much easier since I chose to use italian sausage. The sausage already has so much flavor in it that you simply need to just add eggs and parmesan cheese for the binding. For this recipe I chose to use Kraft parmesan cheese. It works as a great replacement to bread crumbs or flour for that matter. I also bake my meatballs. Yep, no slaving over a scorching hot pan for me! It also allows me to cut out a lot of oil that I would need if I were to sauté them in a pan. The marinara sauce that I made to go with the meatballs is even more simple. Believe me you will never buy sugar-free tomato sauce ever again after you learn this recipe.
Italian polpette al sugo, lightened
A bite-sized meatball simmered in tomato is polpette al sugo, the Italian home-style version that predates the giant spaghetti-and-meatball plate Americans know. The traditional polpetta is bound with bread soaked in milk; here the sausage and parmesan do that job, so the carbs the bread would add are gone. Using sausage instead of plain ground meat is the shortcut that makes this easy: the grind is already seasoned and fatted, so the meatballs stay juicy without a long ingredient list. For the molten-cheese version of the same idea, see my cheese stuffed meatballs.
Skip the jarred sauce
The reason to make the marinara from scratch is sugar. A lot of jarred sauces, even ones not labeled sweet, carry 8 to 12 grams of sugar in a half-cup serving, which adds up fast on a plate of meatballs. This one is diced tomatoes, paste, garlic, and olive oil blended smooth, with nothing added, so the whole dish stays around 4 grams of net carbs. The same sauce layers into a zucchini lasagna, and these meatballs are one of the make-ahead mains in my low carb comfort food dinners guide.
Sources
USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service, safe minimum temperatures for ground pork and poultry.
Italian polpette references, on the home-style meatball in tomato sauce.
Sugarfreechic test kitchen, low-carb Italian notes.
