Side note: You should never have meatball sandwiches when you're trying to impress someone. It's pretty hard to impress when you have cheese stringing out of your mouth and sauce dripping down your face. There's just no pretty way to eat meatball sandwiches or sliders until now.
This has the mozzarella cheese tucked inside a flavorful meatball tucked inside pizza dough. It doesn't get much better or easier to eat than this. We had these for dinner, but they would make a great appetizer, too.
Meatball Rolls
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1/2 recipe pizza dough (recipe makes 2)
1/3 cup Italian bread crumbs
3 tablespoons fresh parsley
Pinch red pepper flakes
3 garlic cloves, minced
1/4 teaspoon onion powder
1 egg
2 tablespoons ketchup
2/3 cup grated parmesan
salt and pepper
1 pound ground beef
2 string cheese sticks cut into 12-14 pieces
1-2 tablespoons olive oil
Italian seasoning
Grated parmesan cheese
Preheat your oven to 400 degrees and lightly grease a 9-inch pie plate or cake pan.
In a large bowl, combine the bread crumbs, parsley, red pepper, garlic, onion powder, egg, ketchup, parmesan, and salt and pepper. Add in the ground beef and mix until everything is well combined.
Scoop out 1 tablespoon of the meatball mixture. Place a piece of cheese in the middle and roll the meat around the cheese so the cheese is sealed inside. Repeat until you have 18-20 balls. (You can form the rest of the meat into larger balls and freeze them to use later in spaghetti or meatball sliders.) Refrigerate the meatballs for 10 minutes.
Divide the pizza dough into 18-20 pieces. Take a piece of dough, place the meatball inside it, and wrap the dough around it, pinching the seams to seal. Place the balls seam side down in your pan. When you have all the balls in the plate, brush with 1-2 tablespoons of olive oil and sprinkle italian seasoning and parmesan cheese on top. Bake for 20 minutes.
Meatballs adapted from Giada.