1 week Ago By [email protected] (Dennis Lee)
At its best, the perfect meatball — a true , as it were — is flavorful and keeps its shape, yet is fork-tender at the same time. But it's not as simple as seasoning and balling up some ground meat and calling it a day. There's one key component that keeps your meatballs supple and moist: a panade.
If you're not familiar with the term, a panade is simply breadcrumbs soaked in some form of liquid, like water, stock, or most commonly for meatballs, milk. Soaking the breadcrumbs makes it easier to incorporate them into your meatball mixture, but it also provides that extra moisture that the meat might lose during the cooking process. This is why you typically end up with tougher meatballs without using a panade (it's also ).
You can use traditional breadcrumbs or panko for a panade, both of which will result in the same moist and tender texture that you want when digging into a plate of spaghetti and meatballs that could even meet . How to make breadcrumbs out of fresh bread If you don't have any store-bought breadcrumbs on hand, it's easy enough to make your own out of the fresh stuff. You can simply use stale day-old bread and pulse it in your food processor until it's pulverized into even bits.
You'll want to first remove the crust if you're using something with a tough exterior, like sourdough. Sandwich bread crusts can remain intact, only because store loaves tend to be pretty soft. If you only have fresh bread, all you have to do is pop some pieces into a preheated oven and let them dry out.
Once sufficiently dry, you can pulverize them with a food processor. If you don't have a food processor, you can get away with making small batches in a blender or by simply chopping the dried bread finely by hand. Your meatballs, and your family, will wordlessly thank you for not forgetting this key element.
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