Tips, Tricks and Tools to Make The Best Meatballs

I have made AND eaten hundreds of meatballs in my time! Some are great and some are just okay. It got me wondering- what makes a really great meatball?? So over the years I have collected a few tips, tricks and tools that I have found make the very best meatballs, always. I wanted to share them with you so you can make the very best meatballs for you family too!

If you have some meatball tips and tricks that I didn’t share here, I would love to have you share them with me and other readers in the comments below!

Happy Cooking- Susie

Our Favorite Meatball Tools

There are three items that I use to make all our meatball recipes amazing!

Large Rimmed Baking Sheet – there are three reasons why you should use a large rimmed baking sheet for making meatballs:

1. It allows enough room for the meatballs to caramelize in the oven. If you overcrowd a smaller pan the meatballs will steam and look grey (unappetizing to be sure).
2. The low rim of a baking sheet allows the heat to move around the meatballs and for the juices to spread out, again letting the meatballs caramelize and not steam.
3. The rim of the baking sheet catches all the juice that releases from the Italian Sausage Meatballs during cooking and ensures you don’t have a mess in your oven at the end of the cooking time.

Parchment Paper – this is a staple in my kitchen for just about all things baked in the oven, sweet or savory! It ensures that nothing sticks/bakes to the pan and yet lets enough heat through from the pan to caramelize the bottom of the meatballs. I don’t find I get the same results using foil.

Cookie Scoop – yep, a cookie scoop! This helps make the meatballs in two ways:

1. The scoop will help you portion the meatballs out easily and efficiently.
2. It also makes all the meatballs the same size. This is not important for visual appeal, it helps keep the Italian Sausage Meatballs uniform in size which in turn helps them cook evenly!

Start With A Panade

A panade is a mix of a starch, usually bread, bread crumbs or crackers, and a liquid, usually stock, water or milk, to keep a ground meat recipe moist. We do just that in all meatball recipes to keep them tender and juicy.

Use a white or wheat bread that you have in your kitchen, even day old bread works for a panade. We like to use Pepperidge Farms Hearty White Bread because we usually have it in the pantry.

You can also use ciabatta, French bread, Italian bread, even sourdough for some recipes. If the bread has a thick or hard crust just make sure to remove that and just use the soft inside parts of the bread.

Also make sure you avoid any breads that are overly grainy or seedy, nobody wants to find a sunflower seed in their meatball.

85/15 Ground Beef is Your Best Bet

A lot of times you see recipes call for an 80/20 ground beef. That means that 20% of the beef mixture is fat and 80% is lean beef. Good beef of course makes for great tasting meatballs. But you might be surprised that you also want some fat in the beef because it REALLY enhances the juiciness and flavor of your meatballs.

Although a lot of recipes call for 80/20 beef, we find that 80/20 is best reserved for hamburgers, where some of the fat will cook out into the fire.

Meatballs, like these BBQ Meatballs, are baking in their own juices. So we have found that using an 85/15 ground beef still allows for enough fat to be flavorful, but not so much fat that you end up with greasy meatballs.

Really Good Coarsely Ground Parmesan

Not all Parmesan Cheeses are equal. I said what I said.

If your meatball recipe calls for parmesan, like this Baked Italian Meatball or Italian Sausage Meatball recipe, you will want to find a really good parmesan cheese wedge. Look for something that looks kind of craggy and dry. It will likely have a rind that has writing of ticking on it.

This is a meatball pro tip straight from my Italian friend… use a coarsely ground parmesan in your meatball mixture. It will give you little pockets of melted parmesan flavor throughout.

You can achieve this texture by running chunks of good parmesan in a blender or food processor, just PULSE it a few times to get this texture. See photo above for the right parmesan texture.

Crushing Dried Herbs

Dried herbs like oregano, basil, thyme, sage or dill can really enhance the flavor of your meatballs. Not to mention they are economical and easy to store.

We love this Italian Seasoning used in this Ground Chicken Meatball Recipe.

When you use a dried herb in your meatball mixture you want to measure them out into the palm of your hand, then lightly rub the herbs with your other hand. This crushes the herbs and reactivates the essential oils, which releases more flavor into your meatballs.

Use Raw Garlic

YES! We all love garlic! Garlic powder is great. But if you really want to punch up the flavor of your meatballs, like in this Asian Glazed Meatball Recipe, try using raw garlic cloves.

You will need to use your knife skills for this part.

• First remove the desired garlic cloves from the head of garlic (pick nice big ones).
• Then place the flat side of your knife on the garlic and give the knife a good whack with your other hand. This will pop the garlic clove and release the paper husk.
• Now mince the cloves really well into a very fine texture. We don’t like using a garlic press because that tends to liquify the garlic and can make it bitter.

The garlic will bake up in the oven, so you won’t really be eating raw garlic. But trust us, starting with raw garlic gives you way more flavor!!

Bake, Don’t Pan Fry

We all have those recipes that are handed down through generations that are amazing, right!? But sometimes those recipes contain old techniques that don’t necessarily serve us anymore. One of those is browning or pan frying meatballs.

We find that pan frying meatballs is a problem for at least 3 reasons:

1. It is a HOT MESS browning meatballs on the stove top! Talk about grease splatter.
2. It is an unnecessary step in making meatballs. We find that the meatballs caramelize/brown perfectly in the oven. especially on the bottom of the meatballs when you use parchment paper on the baking sheet.
3. Pan frying makes for mis-shaped meatballs. We love a good round meatball and that is what you get when you bake them. When they are browned in a skillet they usually end up a weird square shape.

Roll with Slightly Wet Hands

Things can get sticky and messy when you are rolling raw ground meats, especially in this Ham Ball recipe that uses ground ham! The trick is to very lightly wet the palms of your hands before rolling the meatballs. This will prevent any sticky meats from sticking to your hands.

Portion First, Then Roll

Don’t you hate it when you are rolling meatballs and you get to the end of the meatball mixture and there isn’t quite enough for the last meatball (same goes for cookies!)…. Do you throw it away? Do you make a really small meatball? Do you re-roll a meatball?

This is why we started using the portion first, then roll method.

1. Using a cookie scoop or measuring cup, portion all the raw meatball mixture into piles on a parchment lined rimmed baking sheet.
2. Then if you have a little mixture leftover you can distribute a little into each of the unformed meatballs.
3. Now you can lightly wet your hands and roll each portion into nice round meatballs, feeling confident that you used all of the mixture!

Meatball Recipes To Try

Now that you are a pro meatball maker, here are some of our favorite meatball recipes to try: