The secret to moist, airy, perfectly seasoned meatballs is in the breadcrumbs -- they can make or break the flavor and texture.
If you've never made your own breadcrumbs before, pardon me for yelling at you, but you really should MAKE YOUR OWN BREADCRUMBS! It takes seconds to whirl up in a food processor, and will make the best meatballs in town. Seriously.
Why store bought breadcrumbs stink:
Store bought breadcrumbs often take on the taste of the cardboard in which they are packaged, and offer a crumb so small that they could never allow the small pockets of air to form within the meatball, which keeps the meatballs light and airy. Store bought breadcrumbs make a dense, dry meatball, so stop using store bought breadcrumbs for meatballs, I mean it!
Use fresh bread, not stale:
Grab a loaf of any bakery-style bread -- Italian, sourdough, French -- or, make your own. It's very important that the loaf or baguette be fresh. Fresh bread has a lot of moisture in it and will help to produce the larger crumb we need in the food processor. Dry or stale bread will produce a smaller crumb, which is bad for meatballs. Do not use sandwich bread. It's full of chemicals to keep it stable and fresh for weeks, and will fall apart in the food processor {um, because it's not real food -- real food doesn't contain exthoxylated mono and diglycerides or diammonium phosphate}.
Using fresh bread also eliminates the need for soaking the bread in milk, or anything else. Soaking stale bread will add necessary moisture, but it also creates a mushy mess that condenses within the meat, creating a dense meatball. We're looking for light, airy meatballs. Milky bread does not make a light and airy meatball.
Flavor profiles:
The breadcrumbs are going to carry our herbs, spices and aromatics, and infuse them into the meat. We're focusing on an Italian flavor profile in this recipe, but in the future, be brave enough to think beyond spaghetti night. More on that later.
The flavor will make its way into the breadcrumbs with an infused olive oil of roasted garlic, shallots and fresh herbs. Once the oil is fully infused with the roasted aromatics, the breadcrumbs will soak it all up and then be toasted, right in the pan.
Never put this into the meat:
Do you like steamed onions and garlic? Nope, I didn't think so. Neither does anyone else. Do not add raw onions or garlic to your meat as seasonings. The onions and garlic will steam within the meat and produce an off-putting flavor that is strangely bland and unidentifiable. Is it an onion? Is it garlic? The world may never know when it's steamed inside meat.
What kind of meat makes a great meatball?
The type of meat you use for your meatballs is personal preference. Some cooks and chefs like to use a mixture of ground beef and pork, or a trinity of ground beef, pork and veal. Ground turkey, chicken and lamb are also popular choices.
I'm not a fan of mixing meats for meatballs, period. I find the gray color that the pork and veal produce when cooked, along with the varied textures, unappetizing. Whether I'm making beef, chicken, turkey or lamb meatballs, I only use one type of meat. In this recipe, I'm using lean, grass-fed ground beef. Lean beef is important for this recipe because we're adding olive oil back into the beef via the breadcrumbs, essentially removing the bad fats, and adding in good fats. If we used an 80/20 ground chuck, our meatballs would be too greasy {which, on rare occasion, isn't such a bad thing}.
And what about the tomato sauce?
Wicked Good Italian meatballs are a treat on their own, but they're even better when slowly braised in tomato sauce. The sauce itself couldn't be simpler, with only four ingredients: tomatoes and garlic, salt and pepper. The meatballs absorb some of the cooking liquid while braising, plumping them up, and return the favor by imparting herby flavors from the breadcrumbs into the sauce.
Are you ready? Let's make some Wicked Good Meatballs! —dawnviola
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