Meatball Sandwiches

I had a hankering for meatball sandwiches. I had not cooked meatballs by boiling them in tomato sauce before. So I figured this would be a good opportunity to give it a try. 

Tomato sauce was on sale at the grocery store. While I have made tomato sauce in the past, it is quite an undertaking. So I settled on store bought sauce. At any rate, whenever I get store bought sauce, I soup it up. 

So, I put two jars of store bought sauce in a large pot. I added a can of diced tomatoes. I then added one half of an onion, diced, one half of a green pepper, diced, and one clove of garlic, sliced thinly. I also added Italian herbs (this was a blend I bought at Aldi's), pepper and salt. I heated it at low to bring to a boil. 

I didn't measure out the meatballs. I used about a pound and a half of ground beef. I added half a cup of bread crumbs. Then Italian spices, paprika, cumin, salt and pepper. I mixed it all together along with an egg. The egg is used as a binding agent. 

When the sauce was at a boil, I added the meatballs, and cooked for about 25 minutes. 

I took a roll, sliced down the top length-wise. Then I removed some of the inner bread. Once the meatballs were down, I carefully spooned the meatballs into the bread. 

My one son does not like cheese. For him, this was the end. 

For everyone else, I preheated the toaster oven to 350, and turned it to broil. I placed 2 slices of provolone cheese on top, and sprinkled Italian spices on top. 

I heated in the toaster oven until the cheese was melted, and voila. We had meatball sandwiches.