Never put tomato sauce in my meatballs. Interesting.

I'm surprised that the instructions don't include flipping at the half way point.

in my family, we mix an old roll soaked in milk into our meatballs, according my sister that's the real secret for perfect meatballs. BTW: in Italy we never serve meatballs with pasta, that's an Italo-American invention (i should try sometime...), my granny served them cooked in a skillet with tomato sauce and I like them with peas.

Pich is correct. The best way to make meatballs is to soak a stale loaf of bread in milk (or water, if you don't want to use milk) and then squeeze them out before adding to the meat mixture. It keeps the meat incredibly moist.

My Sicilian grandmother never let me make meatballs any other way.

No eggs. Just soak fresh bread crumbs in milk (about 1 cup crumbs -- loose -- for 2 pounds of meat). And for really tender balls (ala Schwetty Balls!), cook them in the sauce.They will rise in the sauce like gnocchi!

Boy, this is a pretty specific "hack" - how about this:

1-1-1, pounds of ground meat to eggs to breadcrumbs.

Add chopped onion, minced garlic, parsley, celery tops, or basil if you'd like. Season to taste.

Also, say what you will about Rachel Ray, but she suggests grating some onion into things like meatballs, hamburgers, meatloaf, etc. to keep them moist. Works like a charm.

I make mine with ground chicken & ground pork, and mix in chopped onion, carrot, garlic, spinach, & parsley. Next time I'll try your tomato sauce addition, that is interesting...

In my country we put grated onion and oil; and we don't use tomato paste and cheese in our recipes in classic meatballs. We also don't keep them like balls but press them into ellipses and cook them in a skillet instead of oven. They are delicious! I also saw in Iran that they don't use bread crumbs a lot and put tomato past glaze over kebab-like meatballs (koofteh) they are also delicious with sumac.

I very rarely cook with canned soup but my mother used to use Campbell's Tomato Soup as a sauce for meatballs. It may sound pretty weird but it was really quite tasty. She'd make the meatballs with veal, pork and beef. Heated the soup with just a little water to thin it out a bit, then added the cooked meatballs and let them simmer in the soup for about 15 minutes. They were never served with pasta. I made these a few weeks ago and couldn't get enough of them.

I found this to be an excellent recipe, thanks

Baking dries them out too much! And I've never heard of putting tomato sauce IN the meatballs. You need a binder like eggs to keep them together. I use ground beef, eggs, breadcrumbs, finely minced onion and garlic, a splash of milk, salt, pepper, oregano, crushed red pepper, and grated parmesan cheese.

I deep fry them until they're VERY browned and get a nice crunchy coating outside. Then I let them simmer in a big pot of tomato sauce for 4-6 hours. The crunchy outside keeps them from falling apart in the sauce, but they do gradually soften up. Time consuming (a full-day project) and admittedly not the healthiest, but if you're going to the trouble of making meatballs, you either go all the way or just give up on life and go to the Olive Garden. Anyway, this is how my Italian-American family has made them for generations.

I just found a recipe that bakes the meatballs in some beef broth. What do you think?

Tried and true...makes the perfect meatball!

at what stage can I freeze them?