4 - 6ouncesthinly sliced cheddar or pepper jack cheesecut into 1" square pieces
Instructions
Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Combine the beef, pork, and bacon in a large mixing bowl. Use your hands to crumble them together. Add the breadcrumbs, eggs, salt, pepper, and onion powder. Mix everything together with your hands or a large spoon. Scoop and shape into small 1" meatballs and place on two foil lined baking sheets. Bake for 18 minutes.
Remove meatballs from the oven and increase the oven temperature to broil. Top each meatball with a small square of cheese and broil an additional 90 seconds to 2 minutes, just until the cheese has melted. Enjoy!
Notes
My first choice for meatballs is almost always a mixture of ground beef and ground pork. It keeps the texture a little bit lighter and the combined flavor is great too. If your preference is all-beef, feel free to sub additional ground beef for the ground pork. The little bit of bacon added to these creates a slight smokiness along with the bacon flavor and it doesn't make the meatballs greasy at all.I use panko breadcrumbs most of the time when I make meatballs, however I was out of them last week. So, I simply grabbed a crusty loaf of bread and grated a chunk of it to create the amount of crumbs that I needed. Feel free to use whichever binder or crumb that you like best.