Sunday Night Dinner
One of my favorite ways to close one week and look forward to the next is gathering for Sunday dinner with family and friends.
When I was in college, Sunday night was “Dexter night”. I’d take a break from the chaos of my dorm room to spend a night at my brothers’ apartment. We’d hang all afternoon, chatting and drinking wine, and then cook up something great before all piling on the couch to watch our favorite show. I can still remember the rush I used to get when the opening montage of Dexter would start. (That show had the coolest opening credits.)
From growing up with Saturday night pizza, to starting Sunday night Dexter dinners in NYC, the tradition of gathering weekly with friends and food carried over to my summer breaks spent in Upstate NY. But instead of my brothers with dinner and Dexter, it was my Mom, Maria, a few more close friends, with dinner and board games or a movie.
Dinner. There is always dinner:)
While we’ve experimented with plenty of recipes over the years, there is one favorite that we can’t help but come back to again and again. It’s our favorite recipe not for its luxury, and certainly not for its aesthetic - but this favorite is our definition of comfort food. It’s so plain and simple that we laugh at just how much we crave it.
Cue: Porky Balls! (The name alone makes us laugh..)
We sometimes joke that it’s a meal we wouldn’t necessarily subject any unfamiliar guests to. Don’t get me wrong, it’s damn delicious, but it ain’t all that pretty... but BUT, don’t run away just yet! I’m not selling this well, I know, haha. Let me walk you through it..
It’s the perfect meal after a long week or busy weekend. One where you just want to settle in and enjoy each other’s company without too much fuss and muss. While commonly the foundation of hygge resides in the care of all day recipes, where its effort and time intensive nature gives you that hygge warmth of time spent on something special; we also understand the days where your hygge is found focusing on the friends that surround you and the twist off bottle of wine you share while lounging in the living room. Depending on the day, we believe you can go either way to enrich the hygge in your life.
In sharing this go-to recipe with you, we hope that you may start to cherish an unsung hero in your own recipe rotation. Things do not need to be instagrammable to bring you the joy and hygge we’re talking about. And you should feel good just the same, if not better, when you cook and bask in your meal’s comfort filled glory.
Any night of the year can be the perfect night for a meal like this when you need it. But in my day dreams: the first chilly fall weekend is coming to a close, and this recipe is the only thing I want to smell cooking over the stove.
As you take a look at this recipe we hope you’re inspired to try it, because we think you’ll love it just as much as we do. And even more importantly- we hope it makes you think of all the simple comfort recipes you gravitate towards in a new light. Not just as the routine easy recipes you whip up after a long week because they spare you some time and effort, but as the recipes that are the roots of what you love.
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Porky Balls
1 lb ground beef
1 box beef flavored Rice-A-Roni
1 egg
2 1/2 cups water
Paired with: Mashed potatoes (the good old fashioned “fake” ones will do!), creamed corn, and corn muffins.
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1. Open the Rice-A-Roni mix and set aside the seasoning packet.
2. Add the uncooked rice, 1 egg, and 1 lb ground beef into a bowl and mix well.
3. Form golf ball sized meatballs from the mixture, and place them in a large skillet on the stove.
4. Start cooking the meatballs over medium heat, turning frequently to brown all sides.
5. While the meatballs are browning, mix the Rice-A-Roni seasoning packet with 2 1/2 cups warm or hot water and set aside.
6. Once the meatballs are nicely browned, reduce the heat and pour the seasoning/water mixture into the skillet over the meatballs.
7. Cover the skillet and simmer on low to medium heat for around 30 minutes until all liquid is absorbed.
8. Remove from heat and serve.
