The Ultimate Meatball Recipe

This month’s drawing winner picked…Spaghetti and Meatballs!!

Which means it was the perfect opportunity to do a blog post on my meatball recipe!!

When I was growing up we didn’t have meatballs often. My mother mostly made spaghetti sauce with ground meat cooked into the sauce. My grandmother was well…a horrible cook. We all loved her dearly but we all knew that she grew up with a full time cook in her childhood home. As I heard it, until she was “of age” she was not allowed to eat in the dining room with the adults, but instead ate in the kitchen with the cook and the other children. So it’s no wonder she didn’t have a knack for cooking.

When my grandmother made her “meatballs” they were actually more of patties than meatballs. Honestly, I don’t remember what the meat itself really tasted like, but the gravy…that gravy. The gravy is the most simple thing on earth. But somehow the flavors meld together and create a wondrous symphony in your mouth. It is quite literally two different types of condensed soup mixed together. That’s it. But somehow…

Anyway, that gravy is what started my quest for a good meatball. At first I made the dish like my grandmother and mother did. I made the meat into little patties. However, I soon realized that the meat to gravy ratio wasn’t quite where I wanted it. I wanted the ratio to be MORE gravy than meat. So what’s the solution? Smaller portions of meat. Meatballs!

Now, I use this meatball recipe as the base for all my meatballs. Whether it’s for Grandma’s Meatballs or Meatball Stroganoff (stay tuned, those recipes are coming!)

The Ingredients:

Ground Beef:

I choose 80% ground beef for these. The percentage refers to the fat content. Or more precisely, the percentage of “lean”. The higher the percentage, the lower the fat; 80% lean is 20% fat. Whereas 93% lean means 7% fat. You can always choose to use 93% or even ground turkey or chicken or even ground pork. I have tried turkey and chicken and it will have a softer texture than the ground beef. Ground pork however will have a denser texture than beef. You can also experiment with different mixtures, ground chicken mixed with ground pork for example. I like the juiciness that 80% provides.

Stale Bread:

Some kind of bread or starch is needed to help bring these meatballs together and to hold their shape. I have used a variety of different binders; oatmeal, crackers, bread crumbs – fresh and dried, and a slice of bread. My preferred is a slice of bread simply because I always have a random slice of bread that won’t be eaten otherwise. The heel of the bread is a barrier to help keep the rest of the bread fresh. That’s it. I said what I said. When the rest of the loaf is gone, I put the heels into the freezer and save them for making croutons, breadcrumbs, stuffing, meatloaf or, you guessed it, meatballs. If you don’t have random bread slices in your freezer like I do, you can use prepared breadcrumbs, crushed crackers or like I stated above, even oatmeal.

Buttermilk

I’ve used a lot of liquid in my meatballs. I’ve tried stock, water, milk, cream, but I always come back to buttermilk. Buttermilk has a tang to it that adds a little something to the meatballs. It is also thicker and doesn’t bog down the meatballs, but lends just enough moisture to make them delicious. We don’t use much, just enough to soak the bread.

Egg

In combination with the milk soaked bread, the egg helps to bind the meatballs so they don’t fall apart as you are cooking them transporting them from the pan to your plate. Also, have you ever forked a meatball and it just falls apart? We don’t want that. We want to be able to pop the whole meatball into our mouth! We want to be able to control the meat to sauce to pasta ratio.

Worcestershire Sauce

Worcestershire sauce is a fermented sauce that starts with a vinegar base and usually has molasses, onion, garlic, tamarind, anchovies and some other stuff depending on the brand. Fun fact, Worcestershire Sauce was invented by two pharmacists in Worcestershire, England. Worcestershire sauce is kind of the English soy sauce. It gives a great complexity to a dish and just adds a great flavor.

Stone Ground Mustard

Here in Okinawa, the commissary doesn’t have the brand I prefer. But any grainy mustard that has the yummy little mustard seeds in it will do. If you are worried about the texture of the mustard seeds you can definitely use a smoother mustard, but use less.

Italian Seasoning

Ok, ok, so we know that Italian seasoning isn’t really Italian. The “Italian Seasoning” blend we buy in the store is basically any herb that an Italian would have in their household all mixed together. But! It does well in these meatballs. If you don’t want to use an Italian seasoning blend, you can use your favorites.

Garlic Powder

I have tried using fresh garlic in these meatballs, but I have found that if you don’t get the garlic fine enough, basically a paste, it does not mix within the meat well and the flavor is lacking. Also, the texture is affected if the garlic isn’t fine enough. So garlic powder gives the flavor without the compromise of texture.

Onion Powder

I’ve also tried these meatballs with grated fresh onion. I’ve tried just grating them over the bowl with the meat mixture in it and I’ve tried squeezing the extra juice out. Squeezing the juice out does help the meatballs not get too soggy. However, the mess that is made by grating onion in my opinion is just not worth it. Onion powder will give a good flavor without the risk of compromising the integrity of the meatball and with no mess.

Salt and Pepper

As with almost everything I cook, we add salt and pepper. Salt may seem very simple, but in fact it is very complex. If you can afford it, avoid iodized salt at all costs. Sea salt is very potent and depending on the type, quality and brand it can either be very coarse or fine, wet or dry. I personally like to use kosher salt. It is coarser than table salt, but it is generally finer than sea salt. It is also a very clean taste and not as strong as sea salt.

As for pepper, I like to buy whole black peppercorns. I use a small, inexpensive coffee grinder to grind it finely.

The Process:

The most important thing about these meatballs is DON’T OVER MIX! Over mixing creates a tough meatball. Why? I have no idea. But my honest guess is that the Meatball Gods don’t like to be touched too much.

Anyway, the first thing I do is soak my bread in a little bit of liquid. I’ve tried stock, water, milk, cream and buttermilk. Buttermilk is my favorite and we always have some in the house so my husband can make his Famous Buttermilk Pancakes. If you don’t have a pancake making husband, first, you should get one, but second, using regular milk will work just fine. Place the bread into the bowl you plan on using, pour the buttermilk over it and allow it soak as you gather the rest of the ingredients.

Next I add in my ground meat and measure all of my other ingredients. OK, that’s a lie. I gather all my ingredients and like I’m making a potion in a large cauldron I put some of this and some of that and a little of this and a smidge of that…and then it all works out. However, friends and family and you dear reader can’t accept that answer. So I finally measured everything I put in and wrote it down. Then I tested it each time I made meatballs. Then I had friends and family test it. And guess what? It comes out perfect every time.

So…I put my bread, buttermilk and ground meat into a large bowl, then I measure all of the other ingredients into the bowl right on top of the meat.

Now here’s the fun part. Take your hands. Both of them. Right over to the sink and WASH them. Even if you already washed them (which you should have), wash them again. Once they are washed, rinsed and dried (if you want…drying them isn’t essential for this process) plunge your hands right into that crazy mess of ingredients.

Pretend your hands are one of those crushing claws that dig down into the earth to bust it up. You know, the kind you see on cartoons that bust up the rainforest to build a parking lot? Yeah! One of those. Pretend you are the evil claw and massage the meat and the other ingredients together until it just looks mixed.

Now, here is a vital part. You are going to want to skip this. It’s an extra step. We don’t like extra steps. Who has time for all those extra steps and no one notices anyway! This step is noticeable. Take a small pan, put it on med-high heat. Pinch off a tiny ball of the meatball mixture, flatten it out and put it in the pan. Brown it on both sides and…..TASTE IT! I promise you this is important. I have made 15 pounds of meatballs this week and guess what? In one of the batches I forgot the salt. Yep. The salt. Anyway, I wouldn’t have known I missed the salt until after I formed and shaped and cooked off 5 pounds of meatballs. Then there would have been no way to fix it. So take the time and do this step. You will thank me in the end.

After you have tasted it, if it needs additional seasoning, go ahead and add it and taste it again. Repeat this step as many times as you need to. Once it is tasting exactly how you want it, then you can go ahead and shape the meatballs. I personally use a cookie scoop, weigh the meat out into 30g portions and then roll them into spheres.

Now, unless you are a stickler for uniform size and want to know exactly how many you will get, this step you can skip. So long as you are happy with the size of them, that’s all that matters. When I weigh them out at 30g each I get about 24 meatballs out of 1 pound. I think it depends on the size of the bread slice, the actual size of the egg, whether or not the butcher weighed out exactly 1 pound, etc. But I get about 24 each time.

At this point, you have a few options. 1. Pop them on a parchment lined baking sheet, put them in the freezer until frozen and then put them into gallon sized zip lock baggies until you need them. 2. Pan fry them on all sides until golden and eat them right away. 3 Bake them for about 20 minutes or until the inside register 165º on an instant read thermometer and eat them right away. 4. Pan fry the bottom, then bake them off the rest of the way, until they reach 165º in the center and you guessed it, eat them right away.

Pan frying the meatballs will give you a crispier meatball and a smokier flavor as more surface area of the meat has been caramelized. I have found that pan frying alone can result in a dried meatball. Some like that. If you are a person that prefers drier meat, that may be the way to go.

Baking the meatballs will give you a softer meatball but in general they maintain their shape. You are not going to get the crispy caramelization on the outside of the meatball as you will with pan frying. This also means you are not going to get that little bit are charbroiled taste. Nothing good or bad about that, just personal taste.

Starting the meatballs in a frying pan and finishing it in the oven is a happy medium between the two. You will get that little bit of caramelization on the bottom. A little bit of that crisp, some smokiness. But on top the meat will be tender and soft. These meatballs also tend to be a little juicer than the pan fried only version.

Once you have picked which way to cook the meatball, the hard work is done.

As you can see in the photo above, there is a little bit of protein that leaks from the meatballs as they cook in the oven. This is a mixture of the protein from the buttermilk and the meat itself. Shake the pan a little and it will fall away. Using a slotted spoon you can spoon these meatballs out of the pan and drain the oil away from them as you dish them out.

The meatball is small and it can be difficult to use a thermometer on them. I personally just like to split them open. If there is no pink you are good.

Below I go through the directions on how to start on the stove and end in the oven. Serve with your favorite sauce or gravy and sit back and enjoy the compliments of “OMG! These are amazing meatballs!”

For our deliveries this week the wonderful Lynn Tate Faulkner told us her secret! She adds brown sugar to the sauce! So we whipped up these meatballs and served it up with a simple sauce enriched with a touch of brown sugar! The service members loved it!