Anyone got a method?
FTR, I’ve got nothing against gluten. I like it. But l’m making these balls for people who don’t want it in there.
Don’t know if it would work for meatballs, but I use oatmeal in meat loaf.
I have never done this, but I have enjoyed every recipe I have tried from this site. There might be something less complicated. In general, I use a lot of almond flour in my gluten free cooking:
Am I missing something? There’s no need to add breadcrumbs or flour to meatballs. In fact, it’s not good even if widely practiced.
Agree. I’ve never made meatballs with anything except meat and seasoning. As long as the meat has a decent fat content they’ve always stayed together.
Breadcrumbs or bread soaked in milk will add a lightness & moistness to meatballs if done correctly. Yes, you can make them without it, but IMO they are not nearly as good without something other than just meat & herbs/spices. It’s what elevates them from being “chunks of meat” to “meatballs”.
Use gluten free bread. Many kinds exist.
When I was hard-hitting low carb last time I found this meatloaf recipe that knocked my socks off. He uses a small bit of almond flour and an even smaller bit of coconut flour.
You could probably turn that in to meatballs.
Before I made that meatloaf I made these meatballs. No bread or flour of any kind. They were fine.
But yeah, this is low carb and paleo. If you’ve got rice and potatoes as options, might as well try using those!
Watched a TV show last night and a woman made meatballs (her grandmother’s recipe) and didn’t use breadcrumbs but used shredded parmesan - I would think that this would work. What do you think? (I always defer to you or puly when cooking comes up - you guys are the wisest, imho. :))
Most meatballs I’ve had do have some sort of panade (the technical name for the starch & liquid binder/stretcher) in them. It’s not absolutely necessary, but I do find that its inclusion does make the meatball more like what I think of as a “meatball” than just a ball of seasoned meat. You can also use rice or oats or mashed potatoes (or flakes) or whatever type of grain you want. This will affect the final texture, of course.
Oats by themselves are gluten free, but generally most oats you buy at the store will be contaminated with gluten. So I’d advise not using regular oats for gf cooking. You can buy gf oats, but I am not a huge fan of the texture oats give. That’s just a personal preference.
You can buy gf breadcrumbs or gf breads. Some are actually very good. The textures will not be like normal breads. I can’t replicate my original meatloaf recipe which uses saltines.
I’ll have to try the recipes in this thread!
Yeah, the recipe I posted used parmesan in addition to almond flour. I imagine just the parmesan could work in some way.
My first thought, like some others, was that meat is gluten-free- so just don’t add anything to the meat (other than seasoning). I have eaten gluten-free or completely grain-free at different points of my life, and it’s actually been simpler to me than just about any other way of eating. When in doubt I just have meat and vegetables. it seems like a lot of gluten-free people have other self-imposed restrictions or different definitions, just as a lot of types of “vegetarians.”
If you do go with rice might as well go all the way and make Porcupines. 
Awww thanks!
Parmesan in meatballs is definitely good, but I don’t think it lightens things up on its own. Really, though, even if you end up with chunks-o-yummy-ground-meat instead of true, light & delicious meatballs, that’s not all THAT bad. 
Concur. I’ve experimented quite a bit with meatballs, and hands down the number one most consistent best way to make them is to use a panade, which in my current method consists of dry breadcrumbs and milk. Yes, you can make meatballs without it, but, as said, they have a tendency towards the hard and dry, with chewy bits in them. You can mitigate that somewhat by using higher quality cuts in your grind, but that starts to get pricy. The panade is a cheap way to transform workaday grind into, effectively, grind made from higher quality cuts. I don’t think of the panade as a binder; it’s more of a tenderizer and, to redeploy a word from one hedonistic sphere to another, a fluffer.
Often those who say the bread crumbs don’t matter are not making the panade first and then mixing it with the meat, but they are just dumping dry crumbs into the grind. Then, yes, it doesn’t really do its thing.
I haven’t tried gluten free bread, despite how obvious that is. The thing is, I’m making these meatballs as part of a fundraiser for 300+ people, so I’m trying to keep the cost down, and GF bread, per my cursory pricing, is relatively expensive. I tried oats. I chopped them a bit first, just so they would distribute more evenly and there wouldn’t be whole oats visible in the meatballs. It was OK, but lent a certain sliminess to the interior that I didn’t like. I tried potato flakes and Rice Chex, but they were not substantial enough, and just sort of dissolved away as you chewed the meatball, leaving you with chewy bits of meat in your mouth. I can’t recommend it. I tried coarse corn meal. That worked the best, as far as tenderness and fluffiness, but was a little grainy. I didn’t cook the corn meal first, just let it sit in the milk a while. I plan on trying a precook version next, but, given, as said, this is a large quantity cook, I’m also trying to simplify the process as much as I can.
I’ve come across recipes using almond flour, as suggested uppost. I’ll give it a shot, but I’m afraid it might be cost prohibitive as well. Standard breadcrumbs are cheap as dirt. Rice sounds like a possibilty.
Thanks for the suggestions.
Walmart sells both gluten-free bread and gluten-free crackers. Neither are terribly more expensive than the wheat kind.
I have always made meatballs with just meat, seasonings, and the grated parm that comes in a can (which is not expensive but I’m kind of reluctant to call it cheese, really) and they are delicious and hold together. If they seem too dry I toss in an egg.
I wouldn’t say the panade makes the meat any higher quality in terms of flavor and texture, but it does make the meatball retain more liquid and provide a bit of a “spring” to it when you bite in. You can also use a bit of gelatin to the same effect. For drier meats like turkey or chicken, I tend to use a panade with bread or breadcrumbs and a bit of gelatin (like maybe a scant teaspoon for a pound of turkey), and that adds a lot of moisture to it (when combined with a bit of liquid, like broth/stock). I seem to have picked up this tip from a copy of Cooks Illustrated in the last couple of years, and it works a treat for drier cuts. For regular ol’ meatballs made of beef and veal (or pork), it’s not necessary.
Rice and oatmeal are both substitutes I’ve used successfully
Oatmeal is a standard in my meatloaf recipes. I just use the quick cook oats, so no pre-cooking is needed.
If you’re doing rice, then you want the rice cooked when you add it to meatballs. I actually started experimenting with rice in meatballs after doing golabki cabbage rolls. The cabbage is stuffed with rice and ground meat and covered with tomato sauce.
One other option: pureed vegetables of your choice. They don’t bind the way the starches will, but they do help lighten the texture and keep more moisture in. Onion is a pretty safe addition that doesn’t affect the standard flavor profile much. Celery, carrot and bell pepper (again, pureed to avoid chunks) can all be very tasty additions, but it might not be the “grandma’s meatballs” flavor you were expecting. (Still, these flavors often form the base of Italian sauces like Bolognese, so they’re not a huge departure.) I have not tried mashed potatoes, but I bet they’ll work the same way.
Yeah, that’s my beef (no pun intended) with oats.
I used to use Minute Rice in meatloaf. It doesn’t add any flavor of its own, like oats can. I’m confident it would work with meatballs, too.