Cheese-stuffed meatballs

These cheese-stuffed meatballs are really simple and tasty and are a good way of jazzing up spaghetti bolognese if it's a dish you make a lot or you have someone who isn't that keen on pasta (strangely enough there are people like that out there!). Somehow the idea of a cheese-stuffed meatball is so much better than spaghetti bolognese even though there's not all that much difference!

I made these to use up some freshly minced beef I made after buying chuck steak from the local butcher and trying out my Kitchenaid mincer attachment. You can mix the mince with whatever you like such as finely diced onion, garlic, oregano and other herbs and a little salt. Then cut cubes of hard cheese - I've used cheddar here, but you could also try halloumi. Form the mince into a ball around the cheese.

Roll into balls and place in the fridge for about half an hour to firm up.

When ready to cook, heat a frying pan and spray with Fry Light or a little oil and fry the meatballs on all sides until browned.

In the meantime cook some spaghetti according to the packet instructions. You can also make a tomato sauce from scratch if you have time, but here I just used passata as I didn't want to compete too much with the flavour of the meatballs.

As you can see, when you cut into the meatballs, the cheese is softened but still intact; it hasn't oozed out or melted into the meat. These went down very well with my boyfriend!

In fact because I made these for my boyfriend as I knew he would love it (more than spag bol) and because I love him (awww)  I'm sending this to Cheese Please, hosted by Fromage Homage, which has a theme this month of cheesy romance.

I'm also sending this to Pasta Please, as the challenge this month focuses on spaghetti and these meatballs go perfectly with spaghetti. The challenge is hosted this month by a blogger I haven't come across before, called Feeding Boys and a Firefighter, on behalf of Jacqueline at Tinned Tomatoes.