More Than Meatballs

More than fifty recipes that celebrate the versatility of meatballs, fritters, and other bite-sized rounds of deliciousness!

“I love meatballs!” people say around the world.

Round morsels of bite-sized savory foods—meat, poultry, fish, grains, and vegetables—have never been more popular. In Turkey alone, there are more than 150 traditional recipes for meatballs. It’s nearly impossible to get a seat in New York City’s Meatball Shop, and food trucks that feature an enormous array of meatballs are popping up all over the United States and beyond.

More Than Meatballs offers dozens of recipes, from classic Italian polpetti and French boule de viande to Spanish and Mexican albondigas, Moroccan merguez meatballs, Sicilian arancini (stuffed risotto balls), and carrot fritters. A final chapter features meatballs in traditional and contemporary contexts, with soups, salads, tacos, sandwiches, and, of course, spaghetti.

In addition, the book offers natural options for gluten-free meatballs and practical suggestions for making your kitchen meatball friendly.

Highlights of the recipes include:

Roasted Garlic Meatballs
Fresh Herb Meatballs with Fried Padrons & Aioli
Lamb & Chard Caillettes
Carrot Fritters
Dirty Rice Boulettes with the Devil's Mustard Sauce
Chef John Ash's Chicken & Shrimp Meatball Soup
And many more!

Skyhorse Publishing, along with our Good Books and Arcade imprints, is proud to publish a broad range of cookbooks, including books on juicing, grilling, baking, frying, home brewing and winemaking, slow cookers, and cast iron cooking. We’ve been successful with books on gluten-free cooking, vegetarian and vegan cooking, paleo, raw foods, and more. Our list includes French cooking, Swedish cooking, Austrian and German cooking, Cajun cooking, as well as books on jerky, canning and preserving, peanut butter, meatballs, oil and vinegar, bone broth, and more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

Michele Anna Jordan has written nearly twenty books about food, including the highly acclaimed Vinaigrette and Other Dressings. She has received numerous awards for her writing, her radio show, and her work as a chef. She was the winner of the James Beard Journalism Award for Magazine Feature Writing in 1997. Today, she writes for the Santa Rosa Press Democrat and also produces and hosts Mouthful, the Wine Country’s Most Delicious Hour on KRCB-FM. The show has been nominated for a James Beard Media Award four times. She resides in San Francisco, California.

"More Than Meatballs is the perfect book about a pretty darn perfect food. Michele Anna Jordan once again gets to the heart of a beloved and delicious tradition of food and cookery in useful and enlightening ways. She offers more proof that one of the greatest treasures of farm country is a writer who can translate the better bits of life for everyone, who can stay up to date with the great wide world while wandering out in the fields and farms.

"As with all great cookbooks, More Than Meatballs is more than the sum of its parts. Michele gives valuable common sense advice about everything from how to hold a knife to where to get good meat. And if this book helps bring back the use of caul fat she will be my hero for life!

"But most of all, this is a truly delicious and smart collection of rock solid (but appropriately tender) recipes – from someone I trust, and some other food friends I love and admire – that makes me think I could just possibly live a lifetime on nothing but meatballs . . . with salad and fruit, of course. Oh, and ice cream. But really, I’m in Meatball Heaven. And you will be too. Buy this book and extra copies for anyone for whom you have even the slightest degree of fondness."

—Clark Wolf
Consultant, Writer, Radio/TV Host
Sonoma County, California


"More Than Meatballs: From Arancini to Zucchini fritters and Everything in Between provides over fifty recipes that take the meatball theme and expand upon it. While those who somehow still expect the result will be meatball-oriented meat dishes (despite the subtitle's warning) may be disappointed, there are plenty of meatball cookbooks on the market right now - and few holding the wider vision of the idea than this. Dishes come from around the world and feature all kinds of ball-shaped dishes from appetizers to main courses, non-meat balls for soups, salads and pasta, and fritter-type arrangements made with carrots and other vegetables. Liza Gershman's color photos throughout lend to a survey of mouth-watering themes based on meatballs. What's in a meatball? That which is called by any other name makes for a different approach that broadens not only the definition of meatballs, but their uses - and that's what makes More Than Meatballs more substantial than most of its competitors." —Midwest Book Review