Community Cookbook: Joe Curcio’s Mother’s Meatballs

Greenpoint native Joe Curcio is a bit of a Greenpoint expert. 

Using the name Joe Kirsch, Curcio literally wrote the books about Greenpoint, titled Ah-Shpet: 101 Words You’ll Need to Survive the Neighborhood and Welcome to Greenpoint.

Kirsch was the founder of greenpointusa.com, a predecessor to the current site greenpointmusic.com, which he says was the first website totally dedicated to Greenpoint and was once Brooklyn’s most popular website getting over 350,000 hits per month. On the site, Kirsch also created The Greenpoint White-Wall, an early version of Facebook for Greenpointers.

Greenpoint has changed since Curcio’s childhood. When he was growing up, Curcio’s family owned a luncheonette called The Red Rose, named after his grandmother, Rosina Carlo. The Red Rose was located next door to his grandmother’s house on Withers Street near Woodpoint Road. 

Growing up, when Curcio walked down Withers, he would be able to smell Italian pasta sauces cooking in kitchens from the street. “The air on these few square blocks on a Sunday was once infused with the aroma of sausage, braciole, and meatballs simmering in a family size pot of gravy sitting on top of the white porcelain stove,” Curcio told Greenpointers. 

Though the aroma of Sunday sauce doesn’t exactly permeate the air on Withers Street anymore, Curcio is still here making meatballs with his family’s recipe. Even though he now lives “on the other end” of the neighborhood, one block away from Manhattan Avenue near 3 Decker Diner (695 Manhattan Ave.), Curcio still heads to Williamsburg near his childhood home to pick up ingredients for the recipe.

Curcio buys the beef for the meatballs at Model-T Meats (404 Graham Ave.), which he refers to as Fernandino’s butcher shop. “My mother and the Carlo family shopped there for years,” he said. He buys Locatelli cheese, used in his grandmother’s meatball recipe, at Emily’s Pork Store (426 Graham Ave.), while he buys bread at Napoli Bakery (616 Metropolitan Ave.).

For this week’s addition to the Community Cookbook, Curcio has shared his mother’s meatball recipe. “‘My mother’s meatballs are better than your mother’s meatballs,” Curcio claims. 

“I gotta warn you that you’re going to have to adjust as you go,” Curcio explained. “It all depends on the meat, and the effect of the ingredients as you add them. In other words, it’s all in the hands. The key is to mix with your hands until it doesn’t stick to your hands – got it?” 

Learn how to make Joe Curcio’s Mother’s Meatballs below and find last week’s Community Cookbook recipe here.

Got a recipe you’d like to share with us? Reach out to [email protected].

Joe Curcio’s Mother’s Meatballs

Yields about 15 meatballs per pound

Ingredients

2 pounds of ground beef, chuck-chop (Forget about that 80/20, 70/30 stuff)

3 slices of white bread

Chopped fresh parsley (More than a nice large palm full, maybe 1/2+ cup of leaves only, no stems)

1⁄2 – 3/4 cup of Locatelli Pecorino Romano grating cheese

5 garlic cloves, chopped (Chop it as fine or big as you like it. Sometimes my mother would chop it larger so that if people didn’t like garlic they could remove it. But usually then my father would throw those people out.)

3 large eggs

1 cup of plain breadcrumbs (Start with about 1 cup, but you may have to adjust as you mix the meat. If it sticks to your hands as you roll then add more breadcrumbs.)

Note: Once in a while, Curcio’s mother would give the mixture about a tablespoon of good olive oil and a few small shakes of garlic and onion powders, and a little salt to taste.)

Directions

1. Squish bread slices it into a ball and give it a quick rinse in the sink for 3 seconds.
2. Using your hands, mush and mix together all ingredients (including the squished bread).
3. Take a small piece of the mixture and roll into a ball that is about 1.5-2 inches in diameter. 
4. Continue rolling pieces into balls until you have used all of the mixture. (Sometimes Curcio puts the mix in the fridge to “tighten it up a little.”)
5. Add canola or vegetable oil to a skillet and heat it. (To test the oil, roll a small pea-ball and toss it in. If it sizzles with bubbles around it, the oil is ready.)
6. Submerge the meatballs about halfway into the oil.
7. Don’t play around with them; just wait until they’re a nice dark brown (a little more than golden) and then give them a single turn with a fork. 
8. After they are dark brown on the other side, they are ready to enjoy. 

Note: Curcio suggests tossing a couple meatballs right out of the pan and into a slice of fresh, folded Wonder bread. “Squeeze the bread, take a bite and just think about the many families who enjoyed these very same meatballs since the turn of the the 20th century,” Curcio said.