Sauced, Souped, and Sandwiched: 16 Meatball Recipes We Love

There are few foods as comforting as a juicy, tender meatball. There are also few dishes asdiversely represented around the world, which is why we've spent the last week paying tribute to meatball styles, stories, and recipes. From soups and sandwiches to sauce-doused entrées, here's how to make some of our favorite meatballs at home.

Soups

• Sopa de Albóndigas (Colombian-Style Meatball Soup): Colombian-style meatballs are simple to make with the food processor and cook directly in a hot, seasoned broth. They're flavored with a mixture of onion and tomato known ashogao, along with capers.
• Chicken-Stuffed Matzo Balls: These chicken meatballs are designed to be stuffed inside matzo balls, but they're also good to eat on their own once you simmer them in chicken soup.
• Homemade Chickarina Soup: A flavorful meatball that's soft, smooth but meaty, with some spring in the bite—perfect for a homemade version of the Progresso classic.
• Sopa de Albóndigas de Pollo (Chicken Meatball Soup): This is an assertive dish, punctuated with pungent culantro, spearmint, and chunks of hearty root vegetables like yucca and taro.

Sandwiches

• Italian-American Meatball Sandwiches: The perfect meatball sandwich first needs perfect meatballs and great sauce. Once you have those two in place, the rest is a matter of construction and detail.
• Grilled Meatball Parmesan Hero: With a delicate balance of sauce to meat to cheese, this sandwich gets toasted to crisp up the edges of the meat, eggplant, and bread.

Entrées

• Tender and Juicy Slow Cooker Meatballs
• Lasagna Napoletana (Lasagna With Sausage, Smoked Cheese, and Meatballs): This lasagna comes stuffed with an insanely meaty and savory red sauce, small meatballs, slices of sausage, and not one, not two, not even three, butfourtypes of cheese.
• The Best Meatball Pizza: Two Italian-American favorites, all rolled into one spectacularly comforting dish.
• Juicy and Tender Italian-American Meatballs in Red Sauce: A plump and juicy ball of highly seasoned meat that's so tender a spoon can pass right through it with almost no resistance.
• Swedish Meatballs With Rich Gravy: This mix of pork and beef is lightly spiced and served with a rich gravy. Our version is as good on a plate with buttery potatoes and lingonberry jam as it is speared on a toothpick.
• Tsukune (Japanese Chicken Meatballs): Japanese chicken meatballs are seasoned with fresh ginger, garlic, scallions, and sesame oil, while egg and panko breadcrumbs bind the meat to allow it to cling to a skewer and stay together on the grill. A brushing of a tare sauce at the end gives the meatballs a glistening sweet-and-salty glaze.
• Super Simple Friday Night Meatballs: This isn't the most complicated meatball recipe around—quite the opposite in fact. Our goal here is a recipe that anyone can make, no practice required, and get great results.
• Spaghetti and Parmesan Chicken Meatballs: Chicken isn't only a wonderful meatball alternative, but its lighter characteristics succeed at elevating a simple, rustic dish like spaghetti and meatballs into something a bit more refined.
• Pork Schnitzel Meatballs: For this meatball version of pork schnitzel, a simple blend of thyme, lemon zest, and parsley is combined with ground pork; the mixture is then formed into balls, rolled in flour, egg, and panko and then deep-fried until crisp. The crunchy panko shell gives way to a juicy schnitzel interior—just like its cutlet counterpart.
• Pearly Meatballs (Chinese Pork Meatballs with Glutinous Rice): Juicy meatballs covered in a delicate layer of sticky rice, so light and fluffy that the whole thing sort of melts in your mouth (as much as ground meat can melt, that is).