Our recipe tester called one of them “wonderful.”
This video and article are part of Cooking 101our series on the basics of the kitchen. Each episode covers a different technique, with tips and recipes from guest hosts who are experts at setting you up for success.
By means of Cooking in the DailyExpertNews
There are no strict rules for meatballs, like my 15 year old professional cooking experience at various magazine test kitchens and cooking for food photography shoots have shown me.
Meatballs are essentially just meat, seasonings and a binding agent. They can be mixed subtly or vigorously, made from a meat substitute, flavored with a variety of ingredients (herbs, spices, cheeses) and cooked in a variety of ways.
But while there's no one-size-fits-all formula, there are some ingredient principles and techniques that, once you learn them, will help you make better meatballs every time.
The three recipes below yield meatballs that are all quite different from each other, but each contains important lessons. Make them all, and chances are you'll become a meatball master.
I was taught that a classic Italian-American meatball should be a delicate ball. So my recipe is a mix of fattier ground pork and beef, lightened with Pecorino Romano and ricotta, which adds milkiness without the milk. If that sounds pretty rich, that's the point: fat creates tenderness.
Look for ground beef with a high fat content: 80 percent lean to 20 percent fat is good, but if you can find 70 percent meat to 30 percent fat, take it. And it should go without saying, but whole milk ricotta is preferred.
How you handle the mixture also matters, and for a classic Italian-American meatball, you should avoid overmixing. The more you mix meat, the more the proteins tend to bond, which, as my colleague Kenji López-Alt points out, can make the meat tough and dense. (That can be good or bad, depending on what you want to achieve.) Here we want a loose, tender meatball.
That's why in this recipe you mix the herbs, cheeses and eggs separately from the meat. Not only does it help prevent over-mixing, it also ensures that flavors and fats are evenly distributed. When you finally mix your meat in, remember that you want the inside to remain as loose as possible. Gently mix the two sets of ingredients, as if folding the egg white into a batter, as if it might deflate at any moment. Once everything is absorbed, a spoon is a great help. Use it to scoop out meatballs the size of a ping-pong ball. It's just another way to reduce how much you handle the meatball.
When you're ready to cook, searing the meatballs creates a seal and also adds flavor to the now polished crust. That good flavor ends up in the sauce when they all cook together.
Just like gentle mixing, vigorous mixing has its place. You need it for dishes that benefit from a dense texture and when dealing with lean meats. Both are true in my chicken meatballs recipe.
The reasoning is this: because there is less fat, the proteins need to be developed. Kneading the meatballs causes the proteins to stick together, preventing crumbling. Vigorous mixing also gets the fat out of the chicken and the water out, which can help bind, but I'm also a little unsure.
I add an egg, a classic binding agent, and cook the meatballs in the oven, a less invasive cooking method that keeps them from breaking. (And as with the Italian-American meatballs, I use a spoon to shape the meatballs, but not to avoid over-mixing. Instead, the spoon helps form a shape more easily from a sticky mixture.)
Basically, loosely mixed meatballs become delicate and crumbly, good for soaking up sauces, such as tomato sauce. But meatballs that are more mixed? They become springy and hold their shape better, making them great for frying and dipping (or if you just like a chunky meatball).
Ultimately, this recipe transforms ground chicken, which can be at risk of being a bit bland, into something wonderfully flavorful, full of warm spices, like paprika, cumin, and coriander, and fresh herbs, like parsley, mint, and coriander.
Different ingredients can bind and add texture. Understanding what certain binders do can help you manifest the type of meatball you want to eat.
Have you noticed that all the recipes here contain an egg? That's because it acts like a glue in the way it binds, but it also adds grease. You can also use fresh or dried breadcrumbs, which provide structure and absorb moisture, but can also bind cooked grains such as rice or quinoa and add a bit of bite. In these lion's head meatballs, silken tofu helps the egg act as a binder, making them light and springy, just like the tofu itself.
These meatballs are dipped in a slurry made from water, soy sauce, and cornstarch, which creates a crispy, flavorful crust when seared.
They are then steamed until springy, or QQ, a Taiwanese term for springy, pleasantly chewy texture. It's the best kind of meatball: one that warms from the inside out and tastes like home cooking.
