We must have different tastebuds because I’ve always preferred oatmeal over rice because oatmeal doesn’t add any flavor of its own, like rice can.
Maybe we need a grant to study this. 
And if not, you just add in egg or some milk.
But if you insist on adding a grain-like substance, why not gluten-free cracker crumbs?
The gluten in oats is not the same as wheat gluten or rye gluten, and many people (perhaps 80%) with “gluten” sensitivity are not sensitive to oat gluten. There is significant disagreement about the size of this group. But then, many people who are “sensitive to gluten” are actually sensitive to one of the other wheat proteins anyway, so it’s not yet entirely clear what “gluten sensitivity” means.
In most countries, “gluten free” oats just means oats that are not contaminated with wheat or rye gluten, and the oats are “gluten free” in the sense that the common test for wheat/rye glutens does not detect oat gluten.
I made falafel the other night using Alton Brown’s recipe, and I am wondering if chickpeas might be a good replacement for bread crumbs? The falafel is nothing but chickpeas, spices, onions and parsley, which I was surprised to find held together very well in the fryer. I’ll bet if you added ground chickpeas instead of breadcrumbs to the ground meat mix, it would make a very good gluten-free meatball.
Thanks for the correction!
To be honest, I wouldn’t call it a correction. More an expansion. Last I looked, oat products in the USA are labelled “gluten free”, and many people with coeliac disease don’t have a problem with that.
I thought oats didn’t have gluten, but rather something called avenin (and the University of Chicago seems to agree). Maybe “oat gluten” is the common name for it.
Pretty sure the actual binder is just salt, which changes the proteins in meat, and makes them stickier. The panade, eggs, bread crumbs, etc… are just there to change up the texture and add flavor.
So you could likely make good meatballs with just meat, salt and seasonings, although the texture might be weird. You could also use something interesting like transglutaminase, but there’s no real need.
Here’s an article on it:
http://www.eater.com/2011/6/3/6677233/dave-arnold-on-meat-glue-meatballs-and-gluten-free-cooking
My meatballs have meat, salt and egg for the ball itself, then get rolled in flour after forming (makes them easier to handle). The flour we normally use for cooking is maize, so they’re gluten free.
I have a really good recipe that I have made many times and I swear you can’t tell the difference. Uses almond flour. (Don’t just sub in other stuff for regular bread in meatballs, you can tell.)
wheat gluten = gliadin,
barley gluten = hordein
rye gluten = secalin
oat gluten = avenin
If you define “gluten” as “a gluten that is wheat or barley or rye gluten”, then oat does not contain gluten, provided it is grown and processed carefully to avoid wheat/ barley/rye contamination. This is a particularly useful definition in one sense: the common test for wheat gluten does not detect oat gluten. If you use the test as the definition, you have a testable rule.
It is also a partly useful definition for people with celiac disease. Many people with celiac disease are only sensitive to wheat proteins. It’s not clear what the size of this group is. In fact, it’s not even clear that the group of celiacs who are sensitive to wheat proteins are sensifive to gliadin: some of them are actually only sensitive to a different wheat protein (that you get by eating wheat, but which is not a gluten). Again, the size of the second group is not clear.
Your reference for the size of the group that can tolerate oat gluten is 99% Other sources put it at 70% or less. The Australian coeliac organisation puts it at 80%
The test for an individual is to examine the small intestine after including clean oats in the diet. There was some disagreement about the numbers resulting from these studies: perhaps it’s all be clarified now, but that’s not what I’ve seen.
I don’t think binding is the function the panade, in fact just the opposite. When the meat binds together, it gets chewy, maybe even a little tough or rubbery. What is’ve always envisioned the panade and its starches doing (and I admit I have no scientifical authority on it) is kind of intercalating among the meat globs and actually preventing them from binding too much, thereby keeping the final product more tender and fluffy. Could be off on that.
I found some gluten free breadcrumbs at a reasonable price. It made a promising slurry when mixed with the milk and egg. But in the end it just wasn’t robust enough, and, like the potato flakes, just sort of dissolved away as you chewed the meatball. Also tried tapioca. Slimy, with tiny globules. On a suggestion uppost I tried parm cheese. These have been the best, by far. I even made a few of my customary breadcrumbs balls and had a blind side by side taste test with a few subjects. Parm balls were the unanimous winner. They are, however, still just a little dense for me, and I know just trading straight across parm for crumbs is going to up the cost significantly. So next is’m going to take another uppost suggestion and add some fine chopped/puréed veggies. See what that does.
The parm cheese in the recipe I posted upthread with the almond flour is what keeps them appropriately moist. (Really, they’re very good. Don’t tasty almondy at all or anything, at least to us.)