This twist on a classic meatball sandwich is perfectly kid-sized and fun for everyone. Plus, it comes together SUPER fast for a great weeknight dinner.
It was Monday, and it was getting dangerously close to the time I needed to make dinner or face the wrath of hungry, cranky kids. I’m usually pretty good about planning our meals ahead of time, but I hadn’t gotten around to planning that week yet. So I started wracking my brain. We had leftover Costco rolls from a family dinner the night before and some extra marinara sauce and mozzarella cheese from our homemade pizza party the week before.
What’s a mom to do? Improvise, of course.
That’s how this recipe was born. I whipped up some simple meatballs and turned them into these easy-peasy meatball sliders. They’re not strictly “from-scratch” (since I used store-bought rolls and sauce), but they’re too good and easy to keep to myself. As I was making them, I thought they would make a great addition to the “kid-sized food” series I’ve been doing on the blog. So, here they are! I hope you enjoy them.
Meatball Sliders
yield: 18 meatballs, which translates to 6-8 sliders depending on how many meatballs you put on each (we did 2 for kids and 3 for adults).
Ingredients
Meatballs:
- 1 pound lean ground beef or ground turkey
- 1 large egg
- 1/3 cup bread crumbs
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1/4 teaspoon pepper
- 1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
- 1/2 teaspoon onion powder
- 1 tablespoon milk
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
Sandwiches
- rolls
- marinara sauce
- mozzarella cheese
Directions
- In a large bowl, combine all the meatball ingredients, except the 1 tablespoon oil, and mix until well-combined. Form the mixture into meatballs about an inch in size (you want them small-ish or they won’t fit in the rolls well).
- In a nonstick skillet, heat a tablespoon of olive oil over medium heat. Add the meatballs in a single layer to the hot skillet and brown on all sides, turning with a pair of tongs. The meatballs don’t need to be completely cooked through, just equally browned on all sides.
- Pour the marinara sauce over the meatballs and gently turn the meatballs to coat them in the sauce. Bring the mixture to a simmer and cook about 10-15 minutes, stirring every once in a while to carefully turn the meatballs and coat them in the sauce, until the meatballs are cooked through. If the sauce becomes overly thick, add a tablespoon of water at a time to thin.
- Serve the meatballs and sauce on rolls sprinkled with mozzarella cheese.
Enjoy!
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Great idea! I’m making a list of easy-to-prepare meals to use after I give birth to my second child later this summer and this is a great one to add. If I used pre-prepared meatballs for convenience, these would take very little time to get on the table.
I thought about the possibility of using Costco meatballs for the future, and that would definitely make it super simple! I didn’t have those on hand when I made this so I did mine from scratch, but you could definitely sub store-bought. Good luck with the coming new baby, too!
I am sure my boys would love these, although I’d have to make them adult size at this point! Thanks for the inspiration! I don’t know why I never think of making meatball sliders for dinner…they’d be so easy!
This would be a great alternative to BBQ-ing, I’m betting! The taste of a hamburger, that you don’t have to wait for BBQ to enjoy! 😀
Absolutely! Super low prep for a summer party. That’s a really good point.