When my family gathers for holidays and other celebrations, we often serve easy crowd-pleasing meals that don’t take a lot of effort to prepare. That means a lot of taco / nacho bars, grilled burgers and hot dogs, baked spiral hams, or pasta buffets.
My brother and sister-in law hosted us not long ago and put together a fantastic pasta bar that included several different types of noodles, grilled chicken strips, and slow cookers filled with alfredo sauce, marinara sauce, and meat sauce. They served breadsticks and salad on the side to complete the meal. In addition, they baked a tray full of meatballs for people who wanted spaghetti and meatballs.
When I serve spaghetti and meatballs, I usually buy bags of frozen meatballs, which Aldi sells. They’re certainly convenient. After eating freshly baked meatballs at my family’s house, though, when I saw some pork meatballs in the fresh meat aisle at Aldi, I decided to try them.
Italian Meatballs at Aldi cost $4.09 for a 16-ounce package at the time of publication. The package contains 12 meatballs, which comes out to about 34 cents per meatball.
These are a Regular Buy, so you should be able to find them any time of year at Aldi.
These meatballs are labelled as mild and were previously handled frozen. They should be kept refrigerated, or they can be refrozen if you don’t intend to eat them soon after purchasing. I stored mine in the freezer for a couple of weeks before cooking them, and I thawed them in the refrigerator for about eight hours before baking them.
Ingredients are pork, water, Parmesan cheese, potassium lactate, salt, dried vinegar, spices, natural flavor, dehydrated parsley, extractives of paprika, BHA (a preservative), propyl gallate (another preservative), and citric acid.
These are not the healthiest because they’re loaded with fat, sodium, and several preservatives. If the preservatives are a concern, you might want to make your own meatballs from scratch. It also would be helpful if Aldi stated exactly what spices go into these meatballs.
If you’re looking out for allergens, these contain milk.
One package contains four 3-meatball servings. One serving has 270 calories, 22 grams of total fat (28% DV), 7 grams of saturated fat (37% DV), 75 mg of cholesterol (25% DV), 700 mg of sodium (30% DV), 1 gram of total carbohydrates (0% DV), no added sugars, and 19 grams of protein.
Nutrition information, ingredients, and cooking directions. (Click to enlarge.)
The package has directions for cooking the meatballs in the oven and suggests using a food thermometer. It recommends cooking the meatballs from a thawed state. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Place the meatballs on a baking sheet pan, leaving a little space around each meatball. Bake for 25-30 minutes. Turn the meatballs occasionally during cooking to help brown both sides and keep meatballs from sticking to the pan. Cook longer if necessary to fully cook and brown, until an internal temperature of 165 degrees is reached using a food thermometer.
Meatballs after baking.
These were done in my oven after about 25 minutes, and they do stick to the pan a little if you don’t turn them much, but it’s not too bad if you have a spatula to loosen them with.
I served these with cooked spaghetti noodles and Rao’s marinara sauce from Aldi, with some homemade garlic toast and a salad on the side.
Spaghetti and meatballs!
The meatballs are not spicy at all. They have a good pork sausage flavor. While they contain Parmesan cheese, I don’t think they have much of a cheesy flavor. My family liked these and didn’t feel like they were all that different from the frozen meatballs I usually buy. I think they have a firmer texture than frozen cooked meatballs, especially on the outside, which gets browned in the oven and takes a little pressure with a fork to cut into.
I’m not sure I’ll buy these often because they’re not that healthy. In terms of flavor, though, these made for a good dinner served with spaghetti noodles and marina sauce. These would also be good in meatball sub sandwiches.
The Verdict:
Aldi Italian Meatballs are sold in the fresh meat aisle. These feature pork with mild seasonings and even some Parmesan cheese, although we couldn’t really taste the cheese. We liked these served with spaghetti noodles and marinara sauce. They’re not very healthy, but they taste good.
I make my own meatballs and sausage from unsalted meats, where I can also control the fat. Chicken thighs get the best results and are a lot less expensive than beef or pork. Not a whole lot of work with a grinder attachment to my Kitchenaid mixer, $5 at an estate sale.
They have a pronounced Italian sausage flavor, as in it tastes like rolled sausage, not spiced like a traditional recipe
I found the unhealthy rating for 3 meatballs at 22g. fat/270cal. not fair unless your one who never eats fast food, drinks soda etc.
I have purchased these in the past but my Aldi doesn’t seem to have them in stock, anymore. Whenever I purchase them they are frozen. In fact, I am finding that most of the meats are shipped frozen so then I am hesitant to refreeze unless I cook the meat first.
I’m not a fan of all pork meatballs. I wish they would make them in beef.