The BEST Meatball Recipe | Easy Homemade Meatballs

We are sharing the very BEST meatball recipe with you today. Nothing beats having a meal like pasta with homemade meatballs.

Especially if the homemade meatballs have that perfect consistency and the best flavor. But getting meatballs perfect is tough! Unless you have a tried and true meatball recipe.

We have the best meatball recipe that my mom has been making my whole life.

This meatball recipe has been passed down from her Italian parents (my grandparents). And let me tell you, this recipe makes the most delicious meatballs that you will ever taste.

Here's why this is the best meatball recipe:

• This recipe makes 30 mouth watering meatballs
• These meatballs are easy to make (if you know the secret)
• The meatballs are infused with flavor
• After decades of perfecting this meatball recipe, they are the perfect balance of chewy and meaty
• These meatballs compliment any meal: savory or sweet. They are versatile in flavor compatibility

The BEST Meatball Recipe

This meatball recipe makes 30 meatballs. I usually double it as I like to make huge batches, but this is up to you. Here is the meatball recipe.

The BEST Meatball Recipe - Ingredients:

• 2 individual coves of garlic, minced
• 1 whole onion (yellow or sweet) minced
• 1 lb ground pork
• 1 lb ground sausage meat (if you can't find in your meat or frozen section, can use more ground pork in its place)
• 2 lb ground beef (I prefer lean, use your own preference for this)
• 1 cup of milk
• 2 slices of Italian bread
• 1 tsp each of salt and pepper
• 1 tsp each of oregano, basil and marjoram, or 3 tsp of "Italian seasoning" if you have that blend in your spice cupboard
• 1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
• 1 large egg
• 1-1.5 cups of breadcrumbs

Best Meatball Recipe - Directions:

1. Add all of your meat to a large bowl.
2. Add in your garlic and onion and blend meat together with your hands. You are going to get messy but this is the best way to blend meatball meat.
3. Once thoroughly combined, wash your hands with warm water and soap to get that cold fat from the meat off. Then, take your bread slices, put them into a small bowl and pour your milk on to soak them. Leave bread soaking there and go to the next step.
4. Add salt, pepper, spices and grated cheese to your meat and mix with hands until well-blended again.
5. Take your bread out of the milk one slice at a time and rip it into tiny pieces. This is the secret to making the best meatballs. This is the step that gets you that perfect consistency! Rip apart the milk-soaked bread and add to your meat, crust and all. Blend with your hands again.
6. Add the egg and blend with your hands. It should be quite messy and feel wet at this point.
7. Add about half of your breadcrumbs to your meatball mixture. The point of the breadcrumbs is to bring the consistency of the meatballs from being wet to almost a meatloaf consistency. So you can add more breadcrumbs as needed. Don't worry, you can't really add too much here, so use your judgement.
8. Form into meatballs in the palm of your hand. Take your time here, you want them to be rolled really well. And don't worry if you don't get the first few right, this takes practice! You can roll large meatballs for a pasta sauce or smaller meatballs if you prefer.
9. On a baking sheet (I line mine with parchment paper, but it is ok if you don't have any), put into the oven at around 300 degrees for about 45 minutes.

If you are making a sauce to put the meatballs in, you would take your meatballs out of the oven and add right to your sauce. When I make pasta sauce, I add the meatballs and cook the pasta sauce all day.

The meatballs will soak up that tomato flavor and really explode in taste. And with those onions, garlic and herbs, the flavor of your meatballs will really come out following day. So save them in your fridge for leftovers!

 

 

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Here are some questions you may have about  meatballs:

Is it better to bake or fry meatballs?

Baking or frying meatballs is a matter of preference. You can bake your meatballs or fry your meatballs, the difference is in the results. When you bake your meatballs, it is almost like slow cooking them in comparison as they take a while to bake, and they cook evenly throughout. The flavor gets perfectly infused with baking. When you fry your meatballs, you tend to do so at a higher temperature which cooks the outside of the meat much fast than the inside of the meatballs. You may get a slightly crispier outside on the meatball this way.

How do you keep your meatballs from falling apart?

When we make meatballs, the meat is infused for aromatics for flavor, then it is blended with an egg. The reason for adding egg is to keep your meatballs together during the cooking process. As the egg cooks, which is blended in the meat, it works like a binder as it keeps the meat together. The egg does however make your meat consistency more wet, and this is combatted by adding breadcrumbs.

What is the secret to soft meatballs?

The secret to soft meatballs is to infuse your meat with milk-soaked Italian bread that has been ripped apart, as you will see in our recipe. This is the secret to getting meatballs perfectly soft and moist in texture and consistency.

Do you put milk in meatballs?

Yes you can add milk to meatballs but there is a right way to add milk to meatballs and a wrong way to add milk to meatballs. You see, the milk won't properly absorb directly into the meat, you need an absorbing agent to properly get the milk into the meat, in this case, we use bread, which you can read all about in our recipe.

We hope you really love our best meatball recipe. Be sure to bookmark this page or save a Pinterest Pin (below) to your favorite recipes board. We would appreciate that!

Happy cooking!

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