I made healthier meatball subs for my kindergartener’s birthday. What makes these meatball subs a little lightened-up compared to the restaurant version? I used homemade no-salt-added tomato sauce, homemade bread, and 96% lean beef baked meatballs, which significantly lower the fat and sodium content.
Important note: You’ll need to plan ahead for this. Although no-knead bread is easy (requires like zero effort), it takes many hours for those gluten strands to set up if you aren’t going to knead the dough. Make the dough first thing in the morning, or the night before.
The good thing about making the bread yourself is 1) fresh-baked bread is mind-blowingly delicious and 2) you can control the sodium content. Bread often contains a shocking amount of salt. With the cheese and the sauce, your meatball subs will already have plenty of salt.
Part-skim mozzarella cheese is awesome because it’s naturally lower in fat than many other types of cheese.
Meatball Subs
Ingredients
Sub rolls
- 1½ cups all-purpose flour
- ½ teaspoon salt
- ⅛ teaspoon active dry yeast
- ¾ cup tepid water
Meatballs
- 1 pound 96% lean ground beef
- ½ cup very finely-chopped onion
- ¼ cup wheat germ
- ¼ cup skim milk
- 1 teaspoon dried basil
- 1 teaspoon dried oregano
- ½ teaspoon garlic powder
- 1 pinch ground black pepper
Tomato Sauce
- 1 teaspoon olive oil
- 2 tablespoon finely-chopped onion
- 1 garlic clove (minced)
- 1 6oz can tomato paste
- 2 cups canned tomato sauce
- 1 teaspoon dried basil
- 1 teaspoon dried oregano
- 1 pinch ground black pepper
- 4 ounces part-skim mozzarella cheese
Instructions
Make the sub rolls
- Make the sub rolls: Whisk together the flour and salt in a large bowl.
- Measure ¾ cup of lukewarm, tepid water. The water should feel neither hot nor cold when you stick your finger in it. Add the active dry yeast to the water, and allow the yeast to sit and dissolve for 5 minutes.
- Stir the water/yeast mixture into the flour mixture. You might need to add a few more tablespoons of flour or water to reach the correct consistency (you're aiming for a dough that's about the same consistency of an earlobe.)
- Cover the dough with plastic wrap and leave it out at room temperature for at least 12 hours, or overnight — up to 24 hours.
- When it's time to bake the sub rolls, preheat the oven to 400 °F
- Cover a large baking sheet with foil and spritz it lightly with nonstick spray.
- Form the bread into four cigar-shaped logs and lay them out on the prepared baking sheet.
- Pop the bread in the oven for about 15 to 20 minutes, until just lightly browned.
Make the meatballs and sauce
- Meanwhile, make the meatballs: Keep the oven at 400 °F . Line a second baking sheet with foil, and give it a light spritz with nonstick spray.
- In a large bowl, stir together the ground beef, the wheat germ, milk, onion, basil, oregano, garlic powder and pepper.
- Form the beef mixture into about 20 little balls, and arrange the meatballs on the prepared baking sheet.
- Once the bread comes out of the oven, you can put the meatballs right into the oven for about 15 to 20 minutes, or until a thermometer registers an internal temperature of 165 °F
- Make the sauce: Heat the olive oil in a small saucepan over medium heat. Cook the onion and garlic until fragrant.
- Add the tomato sauce, tomato paste, basil, oregano and black pepper.
- Turn the heat up to medium-high and bring the sauce to a boil.
- Turn the heat down to low or medium-low, and let the sauce continue to simmer while the meatballs are baking in the oven.
Arrange and toast the sandwiches
- When the meatballs come out of the oven, LEAVE THE OVEN ON!! Turn the oven down to 350 °F , and leave it on for sandwich-toasting.
- Slice open the bread and arrange on the same foil-lined baking sheet. Arrange meatballs on top of the bread (you'll end up with about 5 meatballs per sandwich) Spread the tomato sauce over the top of the meatballs, and finish with 1 ounce of shredded mozzarella cheese per sandwich. Put the baking sheet with the sandwiches back into the oven for about 3 to 5 minutes, until the cheese melts.
- Fold together the 2 halves of each sub roll and enjoy!
