Meatballs

[cdybedahl]

While I'm waiting for the water to boil...

1. Put half a deciliter of fine dry breadcrumbs and about 1.5 deciliters of milk in a mixing bowl. Mix well and let stand for ten minutes or so.
2. Put a teaspoon of salt, a fair amount of freshly ground black pepper and half a finely grated (or extremely finely chopped) onion into it.
3. Put in half a kilo of ground meat. Ideally it should be an 80/20 mix of beef and pork, but just plain beef will work just fine.
4. Mix the hell out of it. You should end up with a pretty homogenous, slightly fibrous-looking doughy mass. If you don't mix it well enough, it'll be much harder to make the balls later. OTOH, if you mix it too much you can make the fat separate from the meat, which will make the meatballs dry. I've never actually managed to do that, so I'm not sure how long you'd have to work at it to get there.
5. Make lots of slightly larger than thumb-size spheres. This is boring and takes time, which is the reason you don't do this very often.
6. Traditionally, you now put them in a hot frying pan, rolling them carefully around until they get a nice brown colour, lower the heat and leave them to get cooked through. Also traditionally, this results in a few nice ones and quite a few malformed and/or broken ones. If you don't care about tradition, an easier method is described below.
7. Get the largest pot you have, fill it three quarters full of water and bring it to a vigorous boil.
8. Put raw meatballs into the boiling water. Take care not to put in so many at once that it stops boiling.
9. At first, the balls sink. Once they're cooked through, they start to float. Leave the first few in the pot for a while and you'll easily see the difference. Large ones may float before they're done, so to be on the safe side leave them in the pot for a minute or two even after they've surfaced.
10. When they're cooked through, take them out with a slotted spoon or something and deposit them in a hot buttered frying pan. Roll them around until they're a nice brown colour, at which point they're done.

Comments

[mistraltoes.livejournal.com]

This is quite helpful since I have to make meatballs tomorrow and I didn't want to mess about trying to figure out when they were done by frying them. Thanks!

[cdybedahl.livejournal.com]

A just-passed experimental verification shows that if the balls are on the large side they actually float before they're done through. So it's probably a good idea to leave them in the water for a minute or two after they look to be done. And make sure to have the water at a vigorous boil.

[mistraltoes.livejournal.com]

It worked wonderfully. :) Thanks again.