Making meatballs: techniques for "loosening" up the mixture before balling?

There are some great cooks here, so I hope this question isn’t too strange. I make meatballs often. They’re easy to make and are totally worth the effort, in my opinion. There are a few variations, but my recipe is largely the same as Ina Garten’s recipe:

1 lb ground beef
1/2 lb ground pork
1/2 lb ground veal
fresh breadcrumbs
seasoned bread crumbs
egg
parsley
Parmesan cheese
nutmeg (just a hint)
S&P

My question comes to how to loosen the meat mixture so that the meatballs aren’t dense. The ground beef I buy is grass fed stuff and always comes in a tightly shrink-wrapped package. That meat is really compacted in there and it really takes some doing to just loosen it enough so I can successfully blend it with the other meats. I can’t stand it when there is a chunk of beef in the ball…I like a very uniform, tender meatball.

So, what are your techniques to better combine the meats, but also keep the meatballs lighter and less dense when mixed? Thanks in advance!

add egg and make a panade (the breadcrumbs by themselves depending on the ratio will dry out the meatballs).

also, use a higher % fat meat mixture.

once you have the blend down, you can whip them in a mixer for a little air. works quite well.

and this will be accurate 98% of the time: start at serious eats for techniques and recipes for best restults: The Best Italian-American Meatballs Recipe

i use the cook’s illustrated technique. Make the panade of buttermilk, add unflavored gelatin which takes up moisture and causes them to plump when simmered. I also grate the onion finely. Because i do a big batch, use the dough hook on the KA to mix. Then to keep from compactiing, use an ice cream scoop to form, just very lightly making spherical. They are both tender and firm at the same time if that makes sense.

Save and freeze leftover bread, crackers, couscous, quinoa, or other loose-textured grain products.
Break apart and mix into the meat, so that the meatballs contain more non-meat, lesser-binding ingredients.

If your meatballs remain unforgiving afterwards, a swift kick may also help.

I make a lot of meatballs but almost always from leftover meat thats been cooked already. Way different than starting from uncooked ground meat. To help with the consistency I put everything through the food processor. I don’t want any big pieces of anything. Generally the meat comes out looking like baby food. I also add addition fat to the mix. I keep frozen brisket fat in the freezer from when I trim briskets and this works great but any fat should work fine.

How are you cooking them after being formed.

I use a similar blend to yours, rolling them small, no bigger than a golf ball. Drop into slightly boiling water and once it floats transfer into your pot or pan of tomato sauce. Slow cook for a couple hours, best the next day

Thanks for the ideas. I like the idea of taking a mixer to the meat just to better blend them together into a uniform consistency and, likely, un-compact it a bit. I also will try a panade.

It would never occur to me to boil meatballs before putting them into the sauce - we’ve always either pan-fried or baked to get some color on them first.

We’ll give it a try next time.

You can softly boil them, in order for them to hold shape, and then brown for color and caramelization.

As a Swede, here’s a completely different type of meatball, the Swedish style. It’s a magical contraption, but obviously not to be paired with any Mediterranean accruements. The way to serve this is with creamy mashed potatoes, cream gravy (made in pan - cream, white pepper, soy sauce, dash of flour/arrow root/cornflour to thicken) and a huge dollop of Lingonberry jam (this is a must, can not be substituted, but thankfully IKEA has it) and some pickled cucumber (the sweet kind, not the jewish style).

I have two different meatball recipes - one for festivities and holidays and an everyday one. This is the luxury/holiday one:

Onions, chopped small, slow cooked until soft, brown and sweet.
Mixed beef and pork, half, half.
Cream, about 1 Cup per 2-2.5 lbs of meat.
1 Egg per pound.
Garlic, just a hint - don’t overdo. Good dash of garlic salt is often enough.
Fish Sauce - hint.
Salt
Bullion/meat stock or soy sauce.
Dijon
Sugar (just a hint)
Lemon
Bread crumbs - optional (don’t overdo!)
Nutmeg - knifepoint.
Ground cloves - knifepoint.
Anchovies paste
Worcestershire sauce
White pepper (no, can not be substituted with black pepper). Be generous, it almost gets better the more you have.

I normally mix the wet agents, the breadcrumbs (so they can swell and absorb) and all the spices into a “soup”. This has the added benefit that you can taste it before adding the meat, and it will be pretty close afterwards. Always make soup a little saltier than you think. Mix in meat and it should have the perfect and easy to roll consistency. Brown in pan on at least 2 sides until they look good, then dump into bowl or dutch oven in oven to finish cooking through at around 250 F.

Heavenly dish when done right. And in my 20 years in English speaking countries, whenever I’ve made this for people, they invariably go nuts for it. Never had anyone dislike it.

Sorry for thread drift!

I also use 1 egg per pound of meat. Try Panko instead of regular breadcrumbs, as it’s lighter. I fry them
in olive oil, never tried boiling.

It is not really a boil till done, just till they float, then continue to cook as desired

The America’s Test Kitchen episode/recipe from this season is excellent.
Saltine crackers.
Cooking the meatballs in the sauce and not browning them.
Freezes GREAT!

I’d run the compacted cold ground meat through the grinder with a large diameter (5mm) grinding plate.

I’d be a little careful about using a mixer too much, since that is how you make sausages, which is exactly the opposite effect you are looking for.

Another trick is to add 1.5% (w/w) Knox gelatin to up the juiciness factor.

At least amusing, possibly informative, Alex the French guy geeked out on meatballs recently (there were a whole series of videos of him traveling around the world making different meatball styles). In one video, he spends an inordinate amount of time trying to make perfectly spherical meatballs lol.

It’s not a recipe that was the problem, nor juiciness but, rather, getting the three meats to loosen up after packaging and to combine them in a more uniform manner.

I used a hand mixer on Tuesday and it actually worked really well. The balls were more uniform in meat distribution, and lighter. I’m going to do this going forward. It didn’t (obviously) grind them mixture anymore…just seemed to whip a little air into the mix.

That was hilarious!

Many years ago I used to go to this dim sum place once or twice a week. The cook, owner, and some of the customers became good friends and I’d head over in the wee hours on Saturday mornings to help and to learn how to make the stuff. For his meatballs he used a big mixer like you’d use in a bakery. He beat the ingredients together until they formed a paste.

For fish balls, they’d mix the ingredients and then slam the mixture repeatedly onto the table or the side of a bowl. Again, they produced a very consistent mixture, more like a paste. They said that the rough treatment made the resulting product more springy when you bit into it.

I don’t know if that is true. But it still remains among the best dim sum I’ve ever had. There would be lines outside for hours.

For some of those things, after the mix they’d throw in finely diced mushrooms and garlic, so you’d get pieces of those.

These of course, are unlike any Italian meatballs I’ve ever seen!

I have tried the panade idea, soaking bread in milk before adding it. That helps a little bit. OTOH, we hardly ever make meatballs these days.

Another fan here of just cooking in the sauce. Actually got the idea from some chef you don’t hear much about anymore…wore Crocs… hmmmm…

Of course this has nothing to do with the OP’s question

Me too?

It’s all good. It’s in the realm! I usually brown them by frying a bit, and then cook to done in the sauce.