Our best-ever meatball recipe not only goes with everything, but perfects the art of tender, extra-flavorful meatballs that won't fall apart.
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🛠️
LifestyleTranscript
00:00 How's it going, everyone?
00:00 It's Justin here in the Delish Test Kitchen.
00:03 Every cuisine has some version of taking ground meat,
00:05 rolling it up into a ball, and cooking it off,
00:07 but I'm from the Northeast,
00:08 so I have a distinct love and appreciation
00:11 for that Italian-American style meatball.
00:14 I love 'em to death.
00:15 This is a really simple, approachable version
00:17 that I'm gonna teach you, so let's get into it.
00:19 All good meatballs have some form of starchy binder.
00:23 Some people like to use pre-made grocery store breadcrumbs,
00:27 which can work, but it's gonna lead
00:28 to a super dense meatball.
00:31 What's better is using fresh bread.
00:33 This is truly sliced Wonder Bread.
00:36 So I'm gonna go right into my food processor.
00:37 I'm just gonna tear up these slices into vague chunks.
00:41 If you're someone who hates the butts of bread,
00:43 I am not one of those people, but if you are,
00:45 this is the perfect opportunity to use them.
00:47 And then we're gonna blitz them down to little baby crumbs.
00:51 For meatballs, we don't need to go crazy fine or too chunky.
00:54 This is about what we're looking for,
00:56 kind of that like panko-y texture.
00:59 Now that we got these breadcrumbs,
01:00 we're gonna mix it with a little bit of milk
01:02 to create what's called a panade.
01:04 This is gonna add moisture and lightness to our meatballs,
01:07 and it's really, really important.
01:09 It's gonna take about 15 minutes.
01:10 You're gonna wanna let it steep,
01:12 and you're gonna create like a bread milk tea.
01:15 Sounds gross, but it's great in meatballs.
01:17 Before we put the food processor away,
01:18 I wanna do one more kind of hacky thing with you guys.
01:22 I'm sure for a lot of you growing up,
01:23 your real first relationship with Parmesan cheese
01:26 was that super powdery stuff out of a can or a jar.
01:30 It's usually not made with the highest quality parm,
01:33 but for certain recipes like this,
01:35 you want that super fine, almost snowy, great.
01:38 The best way to do that is with a food processor.
01:41 So being in a test kitchen,
01:42 we have off cuts of parm laying around.
01:44 So I just have a couple cubes.
01:46 I'm gonna toss these into the food processor.
01:48 And I'm gonna blitz it up until it's nice and fine
01:50 and we get that texture.
01:51 You can use this just as you would use regular parm.
01:53 You could put it like you're in a pizza shop
01:55 into one of those shakers.
01:56 And it's gonna taste 10 million times better
01:58 than that stuff that comes from the can
02:00 because you bought the good stuff.
02:01 Any good meatball by any no-no or no-no
02:04 will have at least two meats in it.
02:06 In this case, we're doing ground beef, ground pork,
02:09 and ground mild Italian sausage.
02:11 The beef is gonna bring that like unctuous,
02:13 rich beefiness to the party.
02:15 The sausage is gonna be like that huge punch of flavor,
02:18 a little bit of like fennel, garlic
02:19 that you expect in an Italian sausage.
02:22 And the pork is gonna add fat.
02:23 Like that's really what we're looking for.
02:25 We wanna add like a little bit of that balance
02:27 of lean and fat.
02:28 Into a large bowl, we're gonna go in with our beef,
02:31 pork, and pork sausage, along with a small onion
02:34 that we chopped pretty finely,
02:36 as well as some minced garlic.
02:38 You're gonna wanna get in there with your hands.
02:40 This whole process is gonna be very hand.
02:42 I don't want like a wooden spoon
02:44 and then a cookie scoop to make these meatballs.
02:46 Let's get, we gotta be tactile here.
02:47 Please don't be afraid of your food.
02:49 So get in there, start mixing it around,
02:52 and then you're gonna wanna season pretty heavily
02:54 with some salt and pepper.
02:55 You might be kind of surprised
02:57 that we're using raw onion in here
02:58 and we're not cooking them off,
03:00 but it's gonna cook down.
03:02 You're not gonna have those big pieces of onion
03:03 in your meatball, but you're still gonna get some texture
03:06 and it's actually gonna add additional moisture
03:08 to the meatball.
03:08 Super delicious.
03:09 Also, it saves you work.
03:10 How easy.
03:12 I'm just trying to make your life easy.
03:13 Then we're gonna whisk up two eggs.
03:16 Add that, along with that panade mixture,
03:18 along with some parm and parsley.
03:21 Get back in there with your hands.
03:22 Make sure everything's combined.
03:24 We wanna be sure, while we're making our meatballs
03:26 and we're mixing it together,
03:27 we don't wanna overwork the mixture.
03:29 If you do, you can kind of get that like sausage texture
03:31 that's like bouncy and hard.
03:33 We want something that's tender,
03:34 easy to dig your fork into, moist, delicious.
03:37 The best way to do that is to work very gently
03:39 with the meatballs.
03:40 Once everything's combined,
03:41 we can start making these into like
03:43 inch and a half meatballs.
03:45 And for organization's sake, you can get it onto a plate
03:47 or like me, you can get a parchment lined baking sheet.
03:51 Look at my beautiful meatball babies.
03:53 We're gonna cook 'em up.
03:54 One of the most important things
03:56 is to give them a nice, good sear.
03:57 I wanna see those browned edges.
04:00 That's like arguably the most important part.
04:03 That's gonna give us that Maillard reaction.
04:05 It's gonna add umami, caramelization, good flavors.
04:08 So into a large, like high-walled skillet,
04:12 we're gonna put in a couple tablespoons of olive oil.
04:15 Get it over medium-high heat.
04:17 And then we're gonna be adding our balls.
04:18 Do not overcrowd the pan.
04:19 It's gonna cause steam to come
04:21 and it's gonna be really hard to build that sear.
04:23 So add as much you think will fill the pan
04:25 without overcrowding.
04:26 Then we're gonna cook these boys about two minutes per side,
04:30 getting that really nice, hard sear.
04:32 I like using a fork and a spoon to turn them.
04:34 That can be a little bit more easy and manageable to do.
04:37 But once they're seared on all sides,
04:38 you could honestly also go in with like tongs.
04:40 That makes it easy too.
04:41 Get them out.
04:42 You can go in with the second batch.
04:43 And this is not like,
04:44 we're not trying to make them like fully cooked
04:46 'cause we're gonna do a secondary cook
04:47 after we sear them off.
04:48 If you're gonna use a store-bought sauce with meatballs
04:51 or any other like tomato sauce preparations,
04:54 delish chefs have tested a ton of jars of sauce.
04:58 And Rao's is legitimately our favorite.
04:59 It's one of those few times
05:01 where like the most expensive brand is the best brand.
05:04 It's really, it's like meaty, like tomato meaty.
05:07 It has that like rounded umami tomato flavor
05:09 without having too much dried oregano.
05:11 Also a lot of jarred sauces are very sweet
05:13 and this is like very well-balanced, really delicious.
05:16 Worth, worth the price.
05:18 So I went ahead and wiped out the skillet
05:19 that the meat was cooked off in.
05:21 Now I'm gonna add our sauce over like medium,
05:23 medium low heat.
05:25 And we're gonna get our meatballs in there.
05:26 Toss them around a bit just to get them coated.
05:28 I'm gonna cover it and we're gonna cook
05:29 for like eight to 10 minutes
05:31 just until the meatballs are totally cooked through.
05:34 Once those are done, I'm gonna top it with some parsley
05:36 and some of that like beautiful snowy parm
05:39 that we made earlier.
05:40 It's gonna be delicious.
05:41 Is there anything that looks better
05:43 once you get some parm and parsley on them?
05:45 It just truly, it looks beautiful on the inside.
05:48 So tender, so juicy.
05:52 Like all of the juices and the meat is in here.
05:55 You get a little bit of that textured bite
05:57 from the onions, both because we put it on top
05:59 but also because there's a full cup
06:01 in the meatball mixture itself.
06:02 You get like that umami base layer
06:04 of like punchy parm flavor.
06:06 So delicious.
06:07 Again, the raya is really, really good.
06:09 It's really delicious and cooks down really well
06:12 and reduces.
06:13 I understand that you're looking at this
06:14 and you're like, "Why aren't those meatballs
06:15 "on a big plate of spaghetti?"
06:17 Because I hate that.
06:18 Truly, if you go to Italy,
06:19 you will never see meatball and pasta together.
06:22 That to me is like a little sacrilegious.
06:23 If your meatball is good enough,
06:24 you're gonna wanna eat it by itself and appreciate it
06:26 and then have your pasta separate.
06:28 That way you can have like some interesting pasta
06:30 and then have the meatballs be what they are.
06:32 If you love delicious morsels of little roly-poly meat,
06:35 you'll find tons of other meatball recipes
06:38 right here on delish.com.
06:39 (upbeat music)
06:42 (upbeat music)