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Everytime I make meatballs they fall apart during cooking them. I used a several recipes such as a chinese lionshead meatballs and an indonesian recipe and even a recipe from a michelin 3-star restaurant. Always they fall apart. please give me tips. I like to make lions heads or indonesian meatballs. But they fall apart all the time. it drives me nuts. I use the recipes to the letter so it must be technique or something. The meatballs look oke when i construct them, but during cooking they all apart.

Marcus
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  • Can you link to the recipes? It definitely matters what's in them and how you're cooking them. If they're recipes that succeed for others, there may well be something that you're unknowingly not following correctly. – Cascabel Dec 13 '15 at 00:46
  • Hello Marcus, we already have a question on that. If your situation is not covered there (not that there are many answers there, not just the "boil them" suggestion), please edit this one clearly stating what is different, and we can reopen. But the general advice on not falling apart should go to the other question. – rumtscho Dec 13 '15 at 13:54

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The general cure for this is to add an egg and some breadcrumbs to your ground meat mixture. The eggs serve as a binding agent, and the breadcrumbs remove excess moisture.

If your recipe does not allow the use of these workarounds, there are still some things you can do to improve your result:

  1. Increase the density of your mince: there is quite a lot of difference in how large or small the chunks of meat in your mince are when you buy it. A real craftsman butcher will allow you to buy finer mince by changing the setting on his mincer. The finer the mince, the denser and tighter the meatballs will be.
  2. Work them! Many cooks tend to be a bit lazy when it comes to rolling meatballs, working on the "once it's round, it's done" principle. This means that they do not bother to roll them longer and harder to improve the structural integrity of the balls.
  3. Turn up the heat: Good hot oil/butter and plenty of it helps you to get a solid crust around the meatballs, which in turn lowers the chance of them falling apart.
  4. Bigger is NOT better. Smaller balls have less tendency to fall apart.

I hope this helps any in making the recipes more successful next time!

Richard ten Brink
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  • #3 was going to be my suggestion, so the meat on the outside of the ball can bind up before the meat starts to expand from the heat. – Escoce Dec 13 '15 at 18:37