Most People Are Making Meatballs Wrong! Try These Old Italian Tricks for Perfect Meatballs EveryTime

You cut into a meatball and it does not cut. It bounces. A hard brown shell on the outside, tight and dry in the middle, and the sauce just slides right off it. That is not bad luck, and it is not bad meat. It is about five small things every recipe tells you to do, and every one of them squeezes the meatball a little tighter. My mother Filomena made meatballs every Sunday for more than forty years in Bensonhurst, and hers were so soft you could cut them with a spoon. In this one I count down her ten rules, and every one starts with plain instructions before I explain anything. Two meats instead of one, stale bread soaked in milk instead of dry crumbs, one egg per pound and not more, mixing with open fingers, the little test piece that saves the whole batch, rolling them loose, resting them cold, the right sauce and the right simmer, why you never stir for the first twenty minutes, and at number one, the old Italian trick that makes them tender all the way through: you never fry them. I also settle the fried-crust argument, and whether spaghetti and meatballs is really Italian. So tell me where you are cooking from, and what your family puts in the meatballs that nobody else does.