I’ve always browned mine, but I’m eager to try the recipe that shantih posted. Those sound pretty good to me.
No one has linked to Maillard browning yet? I can’t think of a good reason not to brown the meat first, considering that the flavor of browned meat is almost universally liked.
For those of you who, like me, appreciate the browning of a meatball but are too [del]lazy[/del] busy to stand over the stove turning meatballs for half an hour…try baking them instead. Make your meatball recipe as usual, and put each meatball into the cup of a mini-muffin tin (or regular muffin tin, if your balls are ginormous) and bake at 400 until they look and smell done. Mine take about 20 minutes for 1.5 ounce meatballs*. Doesn’t matter if the inside is up to temperature if you’re going to simmer them; we’re just going for browning.
While the meatballs are baking, I make my sauce, and then pop the baked meatballs into the sauce to simmer. I can add as much or as little of the rendered fat from the muffin tin into the sauce as I like, so this is also a good way to practice fat control - for health or flavor. If you have some nice fond stuck on the muffin tin, just set the whole damn thing into your simmering sauce, and it will get it off and into your sauce.
*Also - meatballs are one of my kitchen scale items. They’re so much quicker and easier to get evenly sized if you weigh each one as you make it. Looks better and cooks more evenly.
Blushing! I’m blushing!
According to Batali, there needs to be a ratio of 50/50 breadcrumb to meat. This is suppose to account for the tenderness. Soaking the bread in milk or water and using lots of bread should make it super tender. He tends to cook in the sauce ( no browning) and this makes them soft and as he calls “succulent.”
My wife always browned them first (see above), but she tried not browning them a few times since then. After several times, she prefers browning them. She says they’re firmer if they’re browned first, and she doesn’t like how mushy they are when they aren’t.
There were one or two things she meant to try to fix that, but now can’t remember what.
zombie or no
they should be lightly browned for taste and stability.
if it’s an unbrowned unstable ball then when it falls apart in mid air then there will be sauce everywhere.
on top of spaghetti.
When something made with ground meat is mushy, quite often it’s because a person used too many binders. The three primary binders are bread, eggs and milk. Only two are needed, usually bread and eggs or bread and milk. Three will result in a mushy product. This is true whether you’re making meatballs or meat loaf. Moisture in the meat can be provided by other ingredients such as onions without causing a mushy outcome.
You said it so much more prettily than I would have.