Juicy Pork Meatballs - Healthy Recipes Blog (2024)

FAQs

What can I use in meatballs instead of breadcrumbs? ›

I suggest using either rolled oats, old-fashioned oats or quick cooking oats in this recipe as the bread/breadcrumb substitute. I do no suggest using steel-cut oats as they generally have a longer cooking time and will not hydrate properly by just being soaked in milk.

Use a mix of ground meats

Lean ground meats like ground sirloin, chicken, and turkey breast tend to dry out and make meatballs tough. I like to use equal parts ground beef chuck and ground pork.

Egg and breadcrumbs are common mix-ins to add moisture and tenderness. Another binder option that people swear by is a panade, which is fresh or dry breadcrumbs that have been soaked in milk. “The soaked breadcrumbs help keep the proteins in the meat from shrinking,” as food writer Tara Holland explained in the Kitchn.

If you don't have breadcrumbs handy, you can use panko, a slice of torn-up bread, or even crumbled saltine crackers. A little yogurt or buttermilk thinned with water also makes a handy stand-in for the milk.

Rolled oats will not only give your dish a nutritional boost, but they'll also provide a mild and nutty-flavored coating for any food that you might typically coat with breadcrumbs. Additionally, rolled oats pack plenty of nutritional benefits, too.

Pork tends to my go-to meat much more often than beef; I find it more flavorful and cheaper more often than not. It plays as well with other meatball ingredients—onion, garlic, salt, pepper, parsley, and Parmigiano Reggiano—as beef, if not better. The kicker? The sauce.

Mind the Micros. The beef in meatballs also is a rich source of micronutrients, particularly zinc, iron and vitamin B12. According to the National Institutes of Health, zinc is a potent antioxidant involved in DNA repair and replication.

How Many Calories in a Meatball? A two ounce meatball has 53 calories, 8.9 grams of fat, 1.76 grams f carbs, 10.9 grams of protein, and no fiber. If you want to lower the amount of calories in a meatball recipe, you can omit the breadcrumbs – that will also drop the carbs.

Is it better to bake or pan fry meatballs? ›

Browning in the oven at high heat is neater than frying and, if you're making meatballs in quantity, both faster and easier than skillet searing. Baking them on a rack set over a baking pan ensures even cooking, and using your oven's convection setting (if you have one) yields nicely browned surfaces.

Add Milk for Moisture

A little bit of milk will add moisture to your meatballs. (Many people think it's the eggs that add the moisture, but their role is to bind the meat, breadcrumbs, cheese and herbs.)

Add a lightly beaten egg, but not too much. Egg acts as a binder for the ingredients, but you only need a small amount. One small egg will do for one pound of minced meat. Alternatively, if you're following an egg-free diet, you could soak fresh bread in milk, squeezing out any excess milk, to use as a binder.

Filler ingredients like breadcrumbs or flour are important too because they stop the meatballs becoming dry. The breadcrumbs absorb the juices from the meat as it cooks, trapping them within the meatball. Again quantity is important here; too much and your meatball will be more like stuffing or a dumpling.

Bread Crumb Substitutes

¼ cup panko. ¼ cup cracker or pretzel crumbs. ¼ cup crushed cornflakes or other unsweetened cereals. ⅔ cup regular rolled oats (Use this only as a substitute for bread crumbs in meat loaf and other meat mixtures, such as burgers.