One of my favorite recipes is my
Nana’s meatballs, easy to make and we all love them. Over the years I’ve
adjusted the recipe slightly, using ground turkey instead of ground beef, egg
whites instead of the whole egg, and Romano instead of Parmesan cheese. I
make a batch about once a month, freezing two-thirds of the meatballs for later
(in two meal size containers so it’s easy to take out the next time) and
keeping the rest for that week. I’ve been making them for years so it
goes pretty fast (unless I feel flush with time and decide to go “old school”
and cook them in the sauce, really rare these days). So I found myself
drawn to a video about making meatballs on our website the other day (courtesy
of All Recipes’ culinary director) and I was surprised that I picked up a
couple of new tips! First, mixing the ingredients together with two forks
instead of your hands, keeps the meat from compacting together. Simple
yet brilliant! While I don’t mind working with raw meat I really don’t
like it, particularly when the kids are running around so having a trick that
keeps my hands clean for a little longer is welcome! Second, use an ice
cream scoop to shape the meatballs so they are uniform in size. This
doesn’t completely eliminate the need for touching the raw meat but certainly
minimizes the handling which makes for great meatballs – great tips!