Meatballs Done Easy

 Surprisingly one of the hardest dishes to make right looks like it would be the easiest. The simple meatball is far from that. It's a complext marriage of meats cheeses and spices. SOmetimes its' recipes call for a binder. Sometimes not. Yet it's so delicious that home chefs should never shy away from making a batch of them.

Regular contributor and good stylist Sue Li gave recipes and advice on them in today's New York Times Wednesday Food section. Basically there are no strict rules for making them as she has found out from her years of being a food stylist and working with professional chefs. A meatball is nothing more than a blend of meat seasonings and in most cases a binder of sorts. There's not one single formula however but a few principles for ingredients and techniques. Once they're learned a home chef can make the perfect polpetti every time. The classic Italian-American one should be a delicate one. Ms. Li's recipe for it is a blend of fattier ground  beef and pork. It's lightened with two kinds of cheeses - Pecorino-Romano and ricotta.It adds milkiness without the milk along with tenderness . The ground beef used should have a good ration of fat - about eighty per cent lean to twenty percent fat. As for mixing  - mix the egg, cheeses  and seasonings separately and then add the meat. This will ensure that the flavors are equally distributed and it is a loosely packed ball.Mix in the meat , according to another great NY TImes chef, Kenji Lopez-Alt as if you were folding in egg whites into yolks.

What about meatball size? Try not to aim for the mammoth ones that many Italian restaurants serve. Go for ping pong sized ones using a cookie dough scoop.Sear them in olive oil, making sure to seal in the inside and creating a burnished crust There are some meatball  recipes that require a tighter texture and more mixing. Ms.Li gives a chicken meatball made with the ground meat. The tighter ones hold their shape giving them a springy texture that perfect for frying and dipping. Chicken can be bland tasting, unlike beef and pork. Ms. LI adds paprika, cumin and coriader along with mint leaves.The sauce sin;t tomato but a dipping sauce made of Greek yogurt and lemon. Then there is the other recipe, one that is rich with pork and tofu.These are Lion's Head meatball so name probably because of their large size. The tofu gives the other ingredients a lightness. These are first formed and dipped in a slurry made from water, cornstarch and soy sauce.They're then steamed for more spring, nesslater being served with cabbage and broth.

Meatballs are actually pretty easy to make. Try these recipes for a new spin on a classic recipe. They're a simple dish but complex in flavor and texture.