Back in the day when I would make homemade meatballs, I would buy a little tin of canned mushrooms, an onion or two, and a jar of pepper rings and cheese crackers. Sometimes, I would buy hot ones, and other times it would be the mild ones. I also used hot sauce.
I would slow-cook this stuff for hours. It was always worth it. Oh. I forgot about the egg wash. I would start buying that after a few instances of the meatballs falling apart, and it was just a kind of goulash at that point. It was still delicious.