Spaghetti and meatballs is a classic easy dinner. It’s not hard to boil a pot of pasta, heat a jar of sauce, cook some meatballs, and put together a full meal. Serve a salad and some garlic bread and it’s worthy of serving on company night.
You can find all the ingredients for a spaghetti dinner at Aldi, from the noodles and sauce to garlic bread and salad. When it comes to meatballs, I usually buy a bag of frozen meatballs from the Aldi freezer aisle.
This week, though, Aldi is selling deluxe stuffed meatballs as one of their fresh meat specials. These feature beef and pork meatballs stuffed with mozzarella cheese.
Custom Made Meals Italian-Style Stuffed Meatballs are an Aldi Find, which means they’re only in stores for a short time. Each store gets one shipment, and after that sells out, they’re gone unless Aldi decides to bring them back later. You can’t order these online from Aldi if they’re sold out at your local store.
These cost $5.29 per pound at the time of writing. I bought a 1.11-pound package for $5.87. The package I bought contains six large meatballs, or six servings. That comes out to about 98 cents per serving.
When these are in stock, you’ll find them in the refrigerated case with the rest of the fresh meat. They need to be kept refrigerated until you’re ready to cook them. The package I bought had a use-by date of not quite two weeks out from my purchase date. If you don’t intend to serve them soon, you could probably freeze them.
These meatballs are not an Aldi private label house brand. The package states they are manufactured by Custom Made Meals, which is a Denver-based company that produces fresh, oven-ready appetizers and entrees for more than 15,000 grocery retail locations. Their website features products such as kebabs and spicy chicken. Their website doesn’t indicate where you can buy their products, but I did find a listing for Custom Made Meals Parmesan Chicken Breast Cutlets at Giant, and City Market (owned by Kroger) carries Custom Made Meals Potato Skins Stuffed with Bacon & Cheddar.
If you’re looking out for allergens, these meatballs contain milk, wheat, and egg.
Ingredients include beef, pork, mozzarella cheese, ketchup, onions, meatball crumbs, bread crumbs, egg, salt, garlic, and black pepper.
One meatball makes one serving. These do have some fat and sodium, not surprisingly. One meatball has 180 calories (90 calories from fat), 10 grams of total fat (15% DV), 4 grams of saturated fat (21% DV), 540 mg of sodium (22% DV), 11 grams of total carbohydrates (4% DV), less than 1 gram of dietary fiber (3% DV), 3 grams of sugars, and 11 grams of protein.
Nutrition information, ingredients, and baking instructions. (Click to enlarge.)
The package has directions for cooking these in a conventional oven or in an air fryer. These should be cooked to an internal temperature of 160 degrees as measured with a food thermometer. The package says not to microwave these.
To bake in the oven, preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Place meatballs on a baking sheet so the edges do not touch. Bake for 10 minutes. Turn over and cook another 8-15 minutes before serving.
To air fry, spray the fryer basket with nonstick cooking spray. Evenly space meatballs on the basket or rack for best results. Air fry at 370 degrees for 13-18 minutes. Let stand for 3-5 minutes or until fully cooked.
After air frying.
I cooked these in my air fryer. They reached 160 degrees after 13 minutes, and they leaked a little cheese in the process. They do contain a decent amount of cheese. These are well seasoned, and some of our taste testers noticed a mild ketchup flavor, as these do include ketchup. These were generally well liked among our taste testers.
The Verdict:
Custom Made Meals Italian-Style Stuffed Meatballs feature beef and pork meatballs filled with mozzarella cheese. These are large meatballs with good seasoning. If you’re looking for a way to make a classic spaghetti dinner a little fancier, give these a try.
