How to make meatballs that won’t fall apart (2024)

FAQs

How to stop meatballs from falling apart? ›

Add a lightly beaten egg, but not too much. Egg acts as a binder for the ingredients, but you only need a small amount. One small egg will do for one pound of minced meat. Alternatively, if you're following an egg-free diet, you could soak fresh bread in milk, squeezing out any excess milk, to use as a binder.

Bind but don't overwork

Because meat shrinks when cooked, mince proteins are likely to separate and crumble unless bound together. Whether it's breadcrumbs or egg (or both), or simply salt, binding the mince is a crucial step in maintaining the softness of your meatballs while preventing them from falling apart.

Egg: Adds more moisture and helps the mixture firm up once cooked. Parmesan: My secret ingredient for the best meatballs! Parmigiano-Reggiano adds flavor and salt to our mixture.

The Key to Tender Meatballs

Here, we're soaking fresh or dried breadcrumbs in a little milk until the bread becomes soggy, then mixing that right into the meat. This binder (aka panade) helps add moisture to the meatballs and also prevents the meat proteins from shrinking and becoming tough.

They are super flavorful but what makes them so so tender and moist is this: Plain Greek Yogurt. The lactic acid from the yogurt tenderizes the meat while adding subtle flavor. The addition of egg and parmesan cheese help keep the meat together so that you get delicious weeknight meatballs in minutes.

Add Milk for Moisture

A little bit of milk will add moisture to your meatballs. (Many people think it's the eggs that add the moisture, but their role is to bind the meat, breadcrumbs, cheese and herbs.)

When it comes to adding liquid to meatball mixtures, milk is often used for its versatility, depth of flavor, and richness. Without the use of milk, you may be faced with a plate of dry meatballs. Milk adds a certain level of moisture that helps produce perfectly tender meatballs.

Cornstarch is used as a low-fat alternative to tapioca starch in meatball dough, resulting in a healthier version of the snack. The addition of corn silk, a byproduct of sweet corn production, to meatballs increases their crude fiber and ash contents, as well as their redness, yellowness, juiciness, and shrinkage.

How to make meatballs so they don't fall apart? ›

Home Cook World notes that if your non-meat ingredients are too large, they will keep the ground meat from binding together, and your meatball will fall apart.

Place the browned meatballs in the sauce and cook for a minimum of 1 hour on low heat to allow the meatballs to absorb the flavor of and braise in the sauce. When the meatballs are finished, serve with choice of pasta, grated cheese and Italian bread. Enjoy!

Home Cook World notes that if your non-meat ingredients are too large, they will keep the ground meat from binding together, and your meatball will fall apart.

Freezing the meatballs in a single layer first means that they won't stick together once frozen. This means you can take out only what you need, which is helpful if you're freezing more than one batch at a time.

Use a small ice cream scoop to make perfectly round meatballs of the same size. Put some of the meatball mixture in one hand and dish up (with your scooper) equal-sized meatballs and drop them on a baking pan. After scooping, smooth them out into round meatballs by gently rolling in your hands.

Ultimately, I found that a 15-minute postshaping refrigeration period was the key to creating a springy, not mushy, texture in the cooked meatballs. That's because it gave the myosin, a sticky, soluble protein in meat, time to bind the meat together.