Fish meatballs, and especially cod ones, are a delicious option to prepare meatballs at Easter, when it is common not to eat meat. Find out how to easily make them at home.
As you surely know, especially and more specifically if you usually tend to enjoy this religious festival, it is usual that at Easter, especially on Good Friday, meat is not eaten, replacing it with other foods such as fish or seafood.
The reason for this tradition or custom is found in the teachings of the Catholic Church, who defend that eating meat, especially red meat, represents the body of Crisco crucified, so that for a long time it has been common to avoid meat Ash Wednesday, the first Friday of Lent, and Good Friday.
For this reason, the so-called Easter meatballs are actually delicious fish meat balls, and are prepared according to tradition to eat them on Good Friday.
They are meatballs that are prepared with cod, although it is true that also with any other fish. The Easter meatballs can be made to taste alone or made in a broth as is the case in the recipe that we provide.
The recipe that we provide in this post is the recipe for Easter meatballs in Priego, Córdoba. Place where we have also told you about another equally popular recipe: the traditional Priego hornazo.
Cod meatballs recipe
If we are going to use salted cod to make these meatballs, we must remember two days before, do the soaks and water changes every 8 or 10 hours until we are going to cook it to desalt it.
Ingredients:
- 500 grams of desalted cod, hake or other fish.
- 4 cloves of garlic without skin and minced.
- About 4 sprigs of minced parsley.
- 2 bay leaves.
- A few threads of saffron.
- 5 eggs
- One egg yolk.
- Salt.
- Bread crumbs.
- Virgin olive oil to fry the meatballs.
- A splash of virgin olive oil for the broth.
- Water for the broth (enough to cover the meatballs).
Elaboration:
- Cook the fish in a cauldron with water and a little salt. When it starts to boil, we lower the heat and cook the fish for about 10 more minutes. We turn off the fire, remove the fish from the cauldron and reserve the water.
- We let the fish cool down, we crumble it and put it on a tray.
- We beat the eggs well and put them on the tray with the fish, half the minced garlic cloves, half the minced parsley, a pinch of salt, and the breadcrumbs.
- We mix everything and form the dough into balls, which will be the meatballs.
- We put the oil in a pan over the fire to heat. Once hot, we fry the meatballs.
- Brown a little on both sides. We are putting the fried meatballs in a cauldron.
- Then we add the water to cook the fish that we had reserved, a little more water to cover the meatballs, the rest of the garlic cloves and minced parsley, the bay leaves, the saffron threads, a little bit of olive oil. Virgin olive.
- We put everything to cook with moderate heat, once it begins to boil, we lower the heat and cook for 30 minutes.
- A little before removing the meatballs from the heat, beat an egg yolk well and pour it over the meatball broth.
- We stir a little, cook about 5 more minutes and remove from the heat. Once they are warm we can eat them.
Bon appetit and Happy Easter to all!
