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Making the Perfect Meatball

Making the Perfect Meatballs: Best Practices

You’ve perfected your recipe, but your meatballs are still a bust. Our Johnsonville experts talk about technique to help you come up with the best ways to prepare this mighty mound of meat.

Meatballs aren’t just for spaghetti. Served with pasta, by themselves, or in a sandwich, many people love this humble creation. The key to fantastic meatballs is the consistency of the meatball itself—moist, meaty morsels that just melt in your mouth and get you craving more.

Here are some guidelines to follow to make sure your meatballs come out just right.

Pre-cook ingredients.

If you are going to add extra ingredients (like vegetables) into your raw meat mixture, be sure to cook them first. Since most meatballs are meant to be small, the meat will cook faster than the ingredients inside.

Avoid overmixing.

Once you have all the ingredients together, but sure to mix the ingredients just enough to get them evenly distributed. Overmixing will make your meatballs tough in texture.

You can use large cooking utensils (such as spoons, forks, or tongs) to combine the ingredients. If you want to put in that extra elbow grease and use your hands, be sure to wet your hands with cold water. This will help prevent the meat from sticking to your hands.

Size them right.

When you are ready to shape the meatballs, chill the meat mixture before forming (up to an hour if you can). This will help to make meat easier to form. If you are going to be using your hands to roll the meatballs, be sure to rinse your hands with cold water.

There are many other methods you can use to form the meatballs. Utensils like ice cream scoops, melon ballers or cookie scoops can help to make the meatballs the same size and shape. There are even specific “meatball tongs” that help make full-sized meatballs.

If you don’t want to use fancy tools or your hands, you can use a knife. Simply form the meat mixture into a flat rectangle and cut the meat as you would a pan of brownies.