This meatball stew recipe is a great example of just how versatile meatballs can be. You can treat them as a main course in their own right, as party appetizers or (of course) serve them with spaghetti, but here they take a comfort food turn.
Most stews start with a tough cut of meat that needs long, slow cooking. Meatballs are a much better choice for a quick weeknight stew like this one, because they’re already tender. With just 15 minutes of hands-on time, you can have your stew on the table in well under an hour.
Ingredients for Meatball Stew
- Egg: The egg in this recipe combines with the bread crumbs and onion to moisten the meatballs and make them tender. It also helps bind the meatballs together, so they don’t fall apart during cooking.
- Bread crumbs: Bread crumbs in a meatball or meatloaf recipe aren’t just filler to make the meat go further. They give the ground beef a softer texture and help the meatballs retain moisture.
- Onion: The finely chopped onion brings a distinctive savory flavor to the meatballs, and it also adds moisture to the mix.
- Marjoram and thyme: The dried herbs lend a savory note to the meatballs, without overpowering the natural flavor of the beef.
- Ground beef: Ground beef is the largest single ingredient in the meatballs, and it lends its flavor to the finished stew.
- Tomato soup: The condensed tomato soup flavors and thickens the stew’s broth, making it heartier.
- Beef broth: The condensed beef broth reinforces the flavor of the meatballs and combines with the tomato soup to create a rich but not overwhelmingly thick “gravy” for the stew.
- Potatoes: Potatoes are a core ingredient in a lot of stews, and they help to bring out those comfort food vibes. The starch in the potatoes also helps to slightly thicken the broth.
- Carrots: Carrots bring a low-key sweetness to the stew, as well as a welcome hint of color. They’re also a vegetable that almost everyone likes, which makes them a safe choice.
- Onions: Small onions of various kinds are a staple in lots of traditional stews, but peeling them is tedious. Buying them in a jar keeps things simple.
- Parsley: Parsley doesn’t have an assertive flavor of its own, but it does make the foods around it taste better. Its bright green also makes it an effective garnish, which is its role here.
Directions
Step 1: Prepare the meatballs
In a large mixing bowl, combine the bread crumbs with the egg, chopped onion, salt, marjoram and thyme. Crumble the lean ground beef over the bread mixture, then mix them together well. Shape the mixture into 24 meatballs of roughly uniform size.
Step 2: Cook the meatballs
Heat the oil in a Dutch oven and brown the meatballs in small batches, setting them aside to drain on paper towels as they’re cooked. Once all the meatballs are browned, drain any excess fat from the Dutch oven.
Step 3: Complete the stew
Return the meatballs to the Dutch oven. Add the soup, broth, potatoes, carrots and whole onions. Bring the pot to a boil, then reduce the heat and cook at a low simmer for 30 minutes, or until the meat is no longer pink. Garnish the stew with parsley before serving.
Meatball Stew Variations
- Go beefier: If tomato soup isn’t your thing, you can omit that and double down on beefiness by swapping it for canned or homemade gravy. Garlic and a bay leaf are optional, but they’ll bump up the stew’s flavor.
- Bring the mushrooms: Mushrooms and beef go beautifully together, so mushrooms make a great addition to the base recipe. Saute the mushrooms in the same pan you’ve used to brown the meatballs (they’ll pick up some beefy flavors that way), then simmer them with the rest of the ingredients. You can leave the broth as-is or swap the tomato soup for cream of mushroom, either canned or homemade.
- “Pot pie” it: Stews are comfort food by nature, but that doesn’t mean they can’t be even more comforting. To dial up the comfort factor by a notch or two, put the stew into a baking dish and top it with dollops of drop biscuit dough, individual cut biscuits, a sheet of puff pastry or whatever crust you usually use for pot pies. We even have a straight-up meatball pie recipe you can crib from, if you favor a classic two-crust approach.
How to Store Meatball Stew
Any leftover meatball stew should be transferred to a food-safe storage container with a tight-fitting lid and refrigerated as soon as possible. Dividing it between smaller, portion-sized containers is even better, because multiple small containers will cool more quickly than one large container (important for food safety).
How long does this meatball stew recipe last?
Like most leftovers, the meatball stew should be perfectly fine for four or five days in the refrigerator. The important thing is to refrigerate it as soon as possible after the meal, because the less time it spends at room temperature the longer it’ll stay food safe.
Can I make meatball stew ahead of time?
Only if you want to improve it. We’re joking, but like most soups and stews, this one actually does taste better if it rests overnight. That gives the flavors more time to develop, blend and mellow. You can prepare the stew further in advance, if you wish, but its refrigerator life is only four to five days in total, and each day it’s in the fridge before serving is one day fewer for any leftovers.
Can I freeze this recipe for meatball stew?
Absolutely. Stews that are starch-thickened are iffy for freezing and thawing, because sometimes their texture will be inconsistent when they’re reheated. In this case, the condensed soup gives it all the thickening it needs, so it just needs an occasional stir as it reheats.
Meatball Stew Tips
Can I substitute the tomato soup for something less processed?
Tomato soup is the convenient option because it’s already got balanced seasonings, but you can replace it with pureed tomatoes or passata (a sort of strained tomato puree). That will give the stew a more assertive tomato flavor, so you may need to mellow it with a splash of heavy cream. Taste the stew as it simmers, and if you find it too tart you can moderate its sharpness with a generous pinch of sugar. Alternatively, you could whip up a quick batch of homemade creamy tomato soup, and use that in place of the canned variety (any leftover soup can be served with your next grilled cheese sandwich).
Do I have to use all beef in my meatballs?
No, you can feel free to mix it up. A lot of meatball recipes call for a mixture of beef and pork, or ground lamb, and if you live in an area where hunting is popular you may even have some ground venison in your freezer. Any of these will work perfectly well in this recipe. For that matter you can swap in any meatball recipe you already know and like. If you don’t have a current favorite, we have dozens of meatball recipes you can choose from. Pick one, and then follow the rest of this recipe to turn them into a stew.
What other vegetables would work in this stew?
Potatoes and carrots are a safe base to work from, but you can choose from plenty of other stew-friendly vegetables. Think in terms of root vegetables like parsnip or rutabaga, or green vegetables including green beans and fresh (or frozen) peas. If you’re partial to greens, you can add chopped kale at the beginning of the cooking time, chard in the middle, or spinach toward the end. With long-cooking root vegetables you might need to add them first and give them a few minutes’ head start, then return the meatballs and add the potatoes and carrots to the pot.
