Martha Stewart's Easy Trick For Keeping Meatballs Perfectly Round

Is there anything that's not made even better by a really tasty meatball? Maybe, but let's not worry about that right now. Meatballs are delightful in a sauce with pasta, alongside rice, or all on their own. In a pinch, store-bought options are okay. But if you want the best meatball, you have to make it yourself, right? If you've given it a try before, you may have struggled with forming them once your mixture is ready. Getting every meatball perfectly round and roughly the same size can be a daunting task. Luckily, Martha Stewart has a simple trick to fix the problem, and that's to use an ice cream scoop.

Just because the tool was designed to serve up a perfect scoop of ice cream, that doesn't mean it can't be adapted to other tasks. Once you have a mixture of raw, seasoned beef ready for your meatballs, an ice cream scoop will ensure that you get exactly the same amount of meat in every mound. As Stewart demonstrates in a video posted on Facebook, it only takes a moment to get a perfectly sized scoop that you can then finish forming it in your hands before cooking. You don't need to try to squeeze or shape it much after scooping. Just give it a quick roll to guarantee it's round and that everything is holding together.

Making uniformly sized meatballs is important no matter what dish you're cooking. Not only do they look better when they're all the same size, but they're also going to cook more evenly. This is especially important if you're using chicken or turkey, which can be dangerous if they're not thoroughly cooked.

While using an ice cream scoop is a great hack for quickly forming perfectly shaped and sized meatballs, what if you don't have one? Forming them by hand is still possible, and there are many tricks for that, like using extra cold beef so the meatballs maintain their shape better, or lightly coating your hands in olive oil so the ground beef won't stick to your hands or the pan. You could also go through the process of weighing out each portion on a kitchen scale and carefully rolling them by hand to make sure they are even, but that does take a lot of extra work. There are a few easier fixes to this problem, though.

We have our own baking-inspired hack for forming meatballs that involves rolling the meat into a log and then simply slicing even portions. It's easy and effective, and won't take much extra time. But if that idea doesn't appeal to you, we have a few other hacks for making the best homemade meatballs. For instance, you could use a pasta ladle to properly portion out your meatballs. If you want to be even more hands off, use a muffin tin to cook them. They won't be perfect spheres, but you can fill each cup evenly to ensure they are are all the same size. Any of these tips should up your meatball game if you're having trouble getting them to be the size and shape you want. Once you have your technique down, give our special Italian meatball recipe a try.