In Poland, kotlet (cutlet) by itself refers to a whole chunk of meat (not ground) that's flattened with a meat mallet, and indeed breaded and fried. Ground meat version would be kotlet mielony (ground cutlet).
😂”…Nothing happened…”. Sometimes we get so used to doing things a certain way. Thank you Helen for reminding us that it’s ok to change things and absolutely nothing terrible will happen. Love your videos ❤️❤️❤️🌻🌻🌻
Everything adds up to affect the texture. Grind size of the meat, salt %, mix time, and holdover before cooking are the main things. Breadcrumbs and other filler loosen it up and add moisture. The biggest mistake with most meatballs is they are over mixed, mixed too warm. I used to make A LOT of meatballs in R&D. The eggs are not doing much for sure.
I learned early on to use 10s of thousands of dollars in specialized equipment. 😅 But at home always hands and keep everything cold. Let the emulsion chill in the fridge a few hours before making meatballs.
In Morocco, where my family comes from, it's not traditional to add eggs to meatballs or "kofta" (same mixture as meatballs). I've never seen eggs added to the mixture except for some second or third generation immigrants abroad. Being from the second generation of my family abroad, both in France and Canada, I came across plenty of meatballs (meatloaf, etc..) recipes with eggs added to the mixture. Seeing this video and your experiment, I'm glad I rarely followed this instruction. The only exception is when I use quick oats in lieu of the bread. The oats suck up much more moisture than the bread. Good butchers in Morocco (and some good Moroccan butchers here in Montreal, Canada) ground the beef only when you buy ground beef. They don't grind it before hand. Therefore, they can add onions, parsley, cilantro, and spices in with the meat in the grinder. Some will add a proportion of kidney meat to the beef. I wonder if the traditional kidney meat in the classic kofta mix is there to make them more tender and juicy. I'm intrigued enough that I'll ask about it next time. I wonder if the egg addition comes from a time when homesteaders, ranchers in North America chopped their beef with a knife, not achieving the same fine grind as they could have with a grinder, and therefore used the eggs as "glue" to bind the mixture so it holds its shape while cooking?
Your dedication to meatballs (and cooking) is admirable. To set up this 5 sample meatball taste test only to discover that "yoooo it's a meatball" is amazing. Thank you for settling this bally-debate. I'm just glad I don't have to subject myself to a-b-c-d-e version of meatballs. My favorite part is learning to appreciate 1-hour meatballs to 20 minute simmers.
It always goes back to “my mom” taught me the egg and bread crumb was just filler to stretch the budget, the egg helped bind the bread to the meat. That’s it lol…
@@riana2975 exactly I can give my mom props she could make one pound of ground beef feed five people. And if possible we always had a side salad. I’m realizing now as I get older how amazing my parents were.
Vegetarian here so not making meatballs anytime soon, but I LOVE your scientific approach to recipe testing. I always learn something from your videos!
Long time ago, when I was still learning to cook, I've been told that if you had freshly ground meat, you could make your meatballs/meatloaf without any egg, but if your ground meat has been in the fridge for some time, the meat may dry out and eggs were needed for moisture and binding.
Helen This has nothing to do with this video but I just want to tell you to keep up your fabulous videos, I have learned so much from you! I look for to every video you publish and I think your obsession with food is just terrific. Sending love from Pennsylvania ❤️
This is excellent! (eggcelent?) I pre-make my meatballs, let them sit in the freezer for an hour on a parchment paper-lined baking sheet, and then vacuum seal them in 20-ball packs and freeze them for future meals. It just so happens that I have a pack of egged and a pack of eggless meatballs in the freezer (I made Joshua Weissman’s recipe, which is eggless, and the Williams-Sonoma recipe, which uses eggs, on different days). I look forward to trying them side-by-side. Thanks, Helen!
An Italian friend taught me to make meatballs. She never used eggs. My family loved them. My daughter still uses eggs when making meatloaf. I like them either way. At least now I can share your tests with my stubborn sister. Thank you.
In the UK we used to use "cutlet" for the same thing, breaded ground meat. I remember school dinjers in the 80s where we had cutlers like that. But I think these days the meaning has changed, perhaps we use the american meaning now
This kind of info is inspiring for a person like me who is cooking for a person with heart disease. I rarely make such a thing as meatballs, but to be able to avoid extra fats like eggs really helps. It's just so widely thought to add it. Thanks for your information
I was told that fillers such as egg, breadcrumbs, onions, etc. were used to "stretch" a recipe, when meat was very expensive or not readily available. It was a Depression technique that seems to have carried on into the present.
Mother always added an egg as a binding agent for the ground meat, not for flavor or texture. The only additions we added were dried onion, garlic, parsely salt and pepper. At the time, Fat was the new silent killer, so all of our family bought very lean ground meat in our own homes. It was so dry; it barely held together in a meat loaf. That was also when we were being warned that eggs were also a silent killer and we needed to eat less of them. My very lean burgers completely fell apart in the pan, if they didn't have an egg. During the early days of the Food Network, their various chefs explained that using a ground meat with a higher fat content would hold the meatballs together without an egg, and that would improve the texture, juicyness and flavor. That also allowed you to not cook them to well done, to insure the egg was fully cooked. If you fire grilled the burgers, you get the added smoke flavor while most of the fat drips into the fire.
although im terribly bad at cooking , i still watch ur video with pure joy....something about ur videos makes it so relaxing to me , its like therapy...but better :)
I think for sure using fresh onion and celery etc adds enough moisture and adding eggs often produces a more dense, processed meatball taste similar to a store bought one. I'm not saying that is bad but it should be consider in the application. For example I think a wedding soup or escarole soup tastes better with a more doughy/processes meatball. However, if you desire a more seared meat style meatball where it's role is that of a full.muscle meat then id keep the meat ratio high and moisten it more with mirepoix-like ingredients and herbs. That said the latter would also prefer a fattier meat so it cooled down to look like your patty in the video. Nice and crispy on the outside. I prefer this style in olive oil or butter based pan sauces or white creamy sauces like stroganoff or Alfredo. For example I make a pasta dish that features mushrooms and is basically just mushrooms sauteed in the fat of the meatballs I make with a cornmeal, celery and herb filling then finished with herbs like sage and tarragon tossed with linguini or tortellini in the pan. Topped with some romano cheese or similar. Anyways the meatballs in that dish are tiny and seared and wouldn't lend themselves to egg. They are more like a Greek kabob mince than a filling stuffed meatball. I find savory dishes like that need the seared minced meat over the more filling based meatball that is better "boiled" in a soup or stew. I feel one way to gage this and decide is asking if a dish could be substituted with pan seared ground/ minced meat. To use my mushroom pasta example I could easily replicate that dish in a more homely manner with minced or ground meat but it wouldn't look restraint worthy however in meatball form it lends itself better to fine dining. It's less "messy" and allows an appreciation of layers of flavor by isolating the meat and it's seasoning from the pasta and it's. Idk if that made sense but the point is if you can make the same dish with ground or minced meat alone then id forgo the egg
I'm once again admiring of your experimental design. Holding the other variables consant while testing different weights (!) of the variable you're investigating--of course! Kenji Lopez-Alt is also rigorous about this and I appreciate it a LOT.
All along, I'd though the egg was necessary as a binder. So this is a eureka moment! Love that you did these terrific experiments--the only way we can truly get to the bottom of anything.
So we can deduce that not adding egg to burger patties will give a slightly firmer texture, which in my opinion, is a good thing. Thanks for the video!
burgers are a completely different story. they don't have any fillers (at least traditional American gastropub style burgers), but they are cooked to medium-rare, not well done.
Huh, I always assumed the role of an egg in meatballs was to act as a binder, since a heated egg becomes solid. Some folks cook meatballs in the sauce instead of baking. If you cook slowly, that makes for a more tender meatball, and everything that rends out adds to the flavor of the sauce. I've done it both ways. If you cook them in the sauce, there's a risk they might break up if you try to stir before they firm up. So maybe including eggs is more important there. More than anything, I agree with your point: how it turns out it's hard to notice any difference unless you already know and so are looking closely for subtle differences. So maybe there's really very little discernable difference. Maybe meatballs are best regarded as a simple versatile dish that is hard to mess up, and which is pretty sure to get gobbled up. The only real risk, the thing to avoid, is cooking them to the point of hardness or rubberiness. Why waste the time and effort then, when they sell rubbery ones in bags at the grocery store.
The overall takeaway for me for this incredibly meaty experiment Helen, is that it's no problem to give egg a miss. As a vegan who can't give you up, I am pleased to hear that things without eggs as binders is good news. I've been using white chia seeds with water in baking and it's all good. All very encouraging. I have no idea how you ploughed through so much meat and egg! You continue to be a champ for your subscribers ✊🏻😁🙏🏻
...as a curious child I asked my mother why she put eggs in the meat ...(she was a country cook from a different era ...she was born in 1906) and I do not remember her ever serving meat balls but I am sure they would have been made with the same method she used for any ground meat recipe ...patties or meat loaf ...back to the eggs ...I was told that you added the egg or eggs depending on the amount of ground meat being used to bind the mixture together so it would not crumble ...it worked and her meat loaf was delicious ;-)
👍🏻 Fascinating! Thanks for going to so much trouble, Helen. In South Africa, we call them "frikadels" .. and i stopped using eggs and breadcrumbs in mine eons ago. Instead, i use between 50% and 100% chopped bacon compared to the beef by weight. And dried onions, and a packet of powdered soup mix. For added variety, i use different soup mixes from time to time, and a splash of some sauce or other for moisture (ketchup, vinegar, Worcestershire, mayonnaise, or a blend, or even nothing). I love the variety of resulting flavours and textures, more than trying to get the same results each time. The only constant besides the beef is the bacon, and even that varies in ratio. Plus, always roasted in the oven to save on cleanup. But I'm glad to know that i didn't throw out any babies with the bath water, when i stopped using eggs and breadcrumbs!
@@helenrennie Actually, i do sometimes include a handful of dried oats or ground up all bran .. but leaving them out doesn't make their absence badly felt. Maybe the dried onions and powdered soup compensate for the bread, soaking up moisture whose loss would spoil the final results. But next time I'll try the bread again, on your recommendation 👍🏻
Traditionally, eggs are very available, and full of every vitamin except Vitamin C, and adding an egg is a good way to add even more nutrients to our food and maybe make it stretch a little longer. If I have eggs when I make hamburgers or meatballs, I add one, but it's not necessary
This was so interesting to watch! Thank you for doing this experiment. I was always told to add eggs for a binding agent and if I didn't have an egg to add, I'd need to add another binding agent, like bread crumbs. This is to keep the meatballs (or a like recipe) from falling apart. It's great to know different filler ingredients don't change the outcome very much!
Yes, you need bread crumbs, but not because your meatballs will fall apart. It's for tenderness and moisture. Burgers don't have either eggs or bread and they don't fall apart ;)
Don't use eggs personally, but use minced bread with milk and the meatballs are moist and tender. For a meatloaf i also add baking powder to give it a little more fluffiness.
dumpling fillings usually don't use eggs, so I don't either! the glutamine takes care of holding the filling together just fine. I add liquid and beat the filling in one direction, just as dumpling filling is traditionally made, plus I use a bit of potato starch to bind (nowhere NEAR as high an amount as the usual addition of breadcrumbs). the meat is cooked for a short period of time (dumplings cook fast!) and is still tender and super-delicious.
An excellent exercise in analysis. There is a good reason why there exists a plethora of favorite (meatball) recipes, side by side, in the same community. The truth, as you have demonstrated, is that there are many paths to one destination. This is undoubtedly true for many, many recipes that are more forgiving than baked breads or other such carefully balanced dishes. Thank you for doing the hard work of comparing.
BTW, I always thought eggs were a holdover from meatloaf where the eggs might play a role in holding form together for a larger mass, to possibly prevent cracking of the loaf.
The next time you do a meatball experiment and don't want to eat that many meatballs give me a call, I'll fly to Boston and help you out. Cuz that's the kind of guy I am 😁
Roast a few beef shanks in the oven. Keep the browned bone marrow apart, then make broth from the shanks. Scrape the meat off of the bones when the broth is done and shred it thoroughly, include it, with the bone marrow, in the meatball mixture. Many traditional Dutch (and Rhinelandic - half of the crews of Dutch East India Company ships were Germans) meatball recipes include soup meat and bone marrow and especially the latter would yield exactly the sort of properties in them that you describe.
I make Norwegian meatballs/meat patties, and they are quite different in the seasoning. They contain, or should contain lots of nutmeg and black pepper, plus additional spices like allspice, clove and/or ginger (others can also be added, like for example a touch of cardamom). And not to forget a lot of finely chopped onions. In my opinion Norwegian meatballs should not be bland, but seasoned very well and have a pronounced but also mild flavour of mixed spices and onions. And that is why I don't use eggs. I find that eggs dulls the spice flavor. Sort of camouflage it, in a way. Or that eggs eats up some of the spices. Maybe it is just in my imagination. But I don't think so. I should try to do a test one day with and without eggs to see if I'm right or wrong.
When I started making meatloaf, I never had eggs. I would substitute a little oil to help it all bind together. Always tasted great. I use eggs now, but there's no noticable difference in flavor. Jayman...
from norway, and i make meatballs (aslo called kjøttkaker) with some milk (about 2dl for 400g of meat), salt pepper, nutmeg, ginger powder and corn starsh/potato starch. i dont use egg as i just presive that has getting butes of scrambeled eggs, something i dont like. i also dont feel like i get that soft texture that i want
My mom used to make ground beef "steaks", which were basically a cutlet coated in breading and pan-fried. That was extremely juicy and tasty. I wonder if she learned it or based her recipe on an Eastern-European dish.
I’m wondering what would happen if you added a considerable amount more egg. For example Mike Maroni who beat Bobby flay in a meatball throw down, has a recipe where he used 4 eggs to the pound. Bobby used one egg per pound and lost.
I think adding egg is a cheap way to get around not cutting your fillings fine enough (e.g. if you lived in the 40s and had no food processor available). Also, if you add an egg, you can add more dry ingredients (bread) instead of meat, which in ye olden days would make the dish cheaper (of course it would be a bit less tasty, but still quite nutritious and somewhat good in texture). Further, probably the butter does a similar job as an egg would do in your recipe.
I love you so much lol. I’m not sure if it’s how much you articulate your words or if it’s the fact I can tell you love what you do, or if it’s the fact you’re so informal…it’s all of the above…good job…keep it up,
i love eggs, the taste, the protein, the cholesterol, everything about them, and i eat them nearly every day and use them as ingredients in many dishes. also love meat, and have never seen any reason to add eggs to meatballs so i havent. like helen's, my meatballs turn out outrageously juicy because i use suitably fatty meat with just enough bread crumbs to retain most of the fat in the meatball as it melts instead of it running out while cooking. not uncommon for me to have police knocking at the door with a warrant for my arrest for meatballs that are illegally delicious, which is a high crime or misdemeanor in most places. so yes, eggs in meatballs are kinda immaterial. thank you, helen, for settling that there is no reason to fuss about eggs in meatballs. appreciate your channel and all of your videos whether or not i comment
I thought the egg was a binder to help the meatball stay together rather than fall apart. Were the egg meatballs easier to form, or more structurally sound during cooking?
My mother always added an egg to our meatball recipe because she never baked or fried her meatballs. She would poach them for an hour in the sauce, resulting in a very soft and delicate meatball. Without egg they would fall apart in the sauce.
Some use egg whites to tenderize meat (I believe I saw Kenji do it in a video for a stir fry). What meat did you use? Maybe a lesser quality meat might benefit from eggs? Interesting
Finally, someone who realises and acknowledges that by changing one ingredient it could potentially affect the others, for example by increasing salt and reducing fillers to compensate in certain tests. Although the results showed little if any noticeable difference unless tasted side by side, I cannot help but wonder if some of the fancy and complicated time consuming recipies are more to justify some chef's egos rather than the diners palate, and that the choice of ingredients of the appropriate quality, and the care they are cooked with is the most significant variable. What could be interesting, and certainly in times of rapidly increasing food prices, is how in dishes/components using minced (ground) beef, just how much of the beef could be substituted with cheaper pork, chicken, turkey, or even vegetables, before the character of the dish is changed so much, that in effect it becomes something else.
Hmmm... so with the eggs acting as a filler, you can offset other ingredients. It might be worth trying to push the envelope the other direction. Replacing carbohydrates with extra protein is certainly worth doing if it tastes the same...
These are such tiny differences, it wouldn't make a dent in your diet. If you start replacing a lot of bread with egg, your meatballs will be too mushy. Also, the bread holds on to the meat juice, but I doubt egg does that. They both contribute to softness, but bread also contributes to moisture retention.
Where I'm from, everyone adds eggs to meatballs to make the meat stickier. Nobody does it for the taste or tenderness. I stopped using eggs in meatballs a long time ago and the meatballs do not fall apart. I'm in the no egg camp.
So much filler? So that's why my meatballs tend to be dry. And frying them fast and hot isn't the way to go, either, I gather. Learned something today!
I think you would be hard pressed to make Scotched Eggs without eggs. Thanks, Helen. It's always interesting to experiment with recipes. Especially as we all have different tastes.
I consider myself to be an accomplished cook, however, I always learn a great deal from your detailed, informative videos. Love your style, too!
She should have more followers - she's great!
SAME! I'm a very good cook but I *always* learn something new from Helen.
We need to appreciate the amount of work that goes into producing these videos. Amazing!
In Poland, kotlet (cutlet) by itself refers to a whole chunk of meat (not ground) that's flattened with a meat mallet, and indeed breaded and fried. Ground meat version would be kotlet mielony (ground cutlet).
that sounds similar to the english word cutlet: a small slice of meat
😂”…Nothing happened…”. Sometimes we get so used to doing things a certain way. Thank you Helen for reminding us that it’s ok to change things and absolutely nothing terrible will happen. Love your videos ❤️❤️❤️🌻🌻🌻
Everything adds up to affect the texture. Grind size of the meat, salt %, mix time, and holdover before cooking are the main things. Breadcrumbs and other filler loosen it up and add moisture. The biggest mistake with most meatballs is they are over mixed, mixed too warm. I used to make A LOT of meatballs in R&D. The eggs are not doing much for sure.
I learned early on to use 10s of thousands of dollars in specialized equipment. 😅 But at home always hands and keep everything cold. Let the emulsion chill in the fridge a few hours before making meatballs.
Nice info !!!
Wow I think we’ve found the meatball expert! Was this a restaurant job or something larger?
@@jamesdavis2027 large scale cooked meat product manufacturer.
I was wondering if the eggs might be needed when using very lean meat?
In Morocco, where my family comes from, it's not traditional to add eggs to meatballs or "kofta" (same mixture as meatballs). I've never seen eggs added to the mixture except for some second or third generation immigrants abroad. Being from the second generation of my family abroad, both in France and Canada, I came across plenty of meatballs (meatloaf, etc..) recipes with eggs added to the mixture. Seeing this video and your experiment, I'm glad I rarely followed this instruction. The only exception is when I use quick oats in lieu of the bread. The oats suck up much more moisture than the bread. Good butchers in Morocco (and some good Moroccan butchers here in Montreal, Canada) ground the beef only when you buy ground beef. They don't grind it before hand. Therefore, they can add onions, parsley, cilantro, and spices in with the meat in the grinder. Some will add a proportion of kidney meat to the beef. I wonder if the traditional kidney meat in the classic kofta mix is there to make them more tender and juicy. I'm intrigued enough that I'll ask about it next time.
I wonder if the egg addition comes from a time when homesteaders, ranchers in North America chopped their beef with a knife, not achieving the same fine grind as they could have with a grinder, and therefore used the eggs as "glue" to bind the mixture so it holds its shape while cooking?
Your dedication to meatballs (and cooking) is admirable. To set up this 5 sample meatball taste test only to discover that "yoooo it's a meatball" is amazing. Thank you for settling this bally-debate. I'm just glad I don't have to subject myself to a-b-c-d-e version of meatballs. My favorite part is learning to appreciate 1-hour meatballs to 20 minute simmers.
It always goes back to “my mom” taught me the egg and bread crumb was just filler to stretch the budget, the egg helped bind the bread to the meat. That’s it lol…
Lol. Same here. I grew up in a house where we added stuff to meat dishes to strech it in a large family
@@riana2975 exactly I can give my mom props she could make one pound of ground beef feed five people. And if possible we always had a side salad. I’m realizing now as I get older how amazing my parents were.
Vegetarian here so not making meatballs anytime soon, but I LOVE your scientific approach to recipe testing. I always learn something from your videos!
beyond meatballs are pretty good if you ever need to eat a meatball
Me too! And I agree!
@@HulkRemade don't eat beyond meat. I'm pretty sure they're owned by Tyson. They put a LOT of bad ingredients in fake meat.
Helen, it is impressive that you tested 5 different recipes for this experiment and that your controls and variables were clearly delineated. Brava!
Long time ago, when I was still learning to cook, I've been told that if you had freshly ground meat, you could make your meatballs/meatloaf without any egg, but if your ground meat has been in the fridge for some time, the meat may dry out and eggs were needed for moisture and binding.
Helen
This has nothing to do with this video but I just want to tell you to keep up your fabulous videos, I have learned so much from you! I look for to every video you publish and I think your obsession with food is just terrific. Sending love from Pennsylvania ❤️
This is excellent! (eggcelent?)
I pre-make my meatballs, let them sit in the freezer for an hour on a parchment paper-lined baking sheet, and then vacuum seal them in 20-ball packs and freeze them for future meals. It just so happens that I have a pack of egged and a pack of eggless meatballs in the freezer (I made Joshua Weissman’s recipe, which is eggless, and the Williams-Sonoma recipe, which uses eggs, on different days). I look forward to trying them side-by-side.
Thanks, Helen!
An Italian friend taught me to make meatballs. She never used eggs. My family loved them. My daughter still uses eggs when making meatloaf. I like them either way. At least now I can share your tests with my stubborn sister. Thank you.
Another fantastic Helen Rennie deep dive! Love it.
In the UK we used to use "cutlet" for the same thing, breaded ground meat. I remember school dinjers in the 80s where we had cutlers like that. But I think these days the meaning has changed, perhaps we use the american meaning now
This kind of info is inspiring for a person like me who is cooking for a person with heart disease. I rarely make such a thing as meatballs, but to be able to avoid extra fats like eggs really helps. It's just so widely thought to add it. Thanks for your information
I was told that fillers such as egg, breadcrumbs, onions, etc. were used to "stretch" a recipe, when meat was very expensive or not readily available. It was a Depression technique that seems to have carried on into the present.
Mother always added an egg as a binding agent for the ground meat, not for flavor or texture. The only additions we added were dried onion, garlic, parsely salt and pepper. At the time, Fat was the new silent killer, so all of our family bought very lean ground meat in our own homes. It was so dry; it barely held together in a meat loaf. That was also when we were being warned that eggs were also a silent killer and we needed to eat less of them. My very lean burgers completely fell apart in the pan, if they didn't have an egg.
During the early days of the Food Network, their various chefs explained that using a ground meat with a higher fat content would hold the meatballs together without an egg, and that would improve the texture, juicyness and flavor. That also allowed you to not cook them to well done, to insure the egg was fully cooked. If you fire grilled the burgers, you get the added smoke flavor while most of the fat drips into the fire.
although im terribly bad at cooking , i still watch ur video with pure joy....something about ur videos makes it so relaxing to me , its like therapy...but better :)
I think for sure using fresh onion and celery etc adds enough moisture and adding eggs often produces a more dense, processed meatball taste similar to a store bought one. I'm not saying that is bad but it should be consider in the application. For example I think a wedding soup or escarole soup tastes better with a more doughy/processes meatball. However, if you desire a more seared meat style meatball where it's role is that of a full.muscle meat then id keep the meat ratio high and moisten it more with mirepoix-like ingredients and herbs. That said the latter would also prefer a fattier meat so it cooled down to look like your patty in the video. Nice and crispy on the outside. I prefer this style in olive oil or butter based pan sauces or white creamy sauces like stroganoff or Alfredo. For example I make a pasta dish that features mushrooms and is basically just mushrooms sauteed in the fat of the meatballs I make with a cornmeal, celery and herb filling then finished with herbs like sage and tarragon tossed with linguini or tortellini in the pan. Topped with some romano cheese or similar. Anyways the meatballs in that dish are tiny and seared and wouldn't lend themselves to egg. They are more like a Greek kabob mince than a filling stuffed meatball. I find savory dishes like that need the seared minced meat over the more filling based meatball that is better "boiled" in a soup or stew. I feel one way to gage this and decide is asking if a dish could be substituted with pan seared ground/ minced meat. To use my mushroom pasta example I could easily replicate that dish in a more homely manner with minced or ground meat but it wouldn't look restraint worthy however in meatball form it lends itself better to fine dining. It's less "messy" and allows an appreciation of layers of flavor by isolating the meat and it's seasoning from the pasta and it's. Idk if that made sense but the point is if you can make the same dish with ground or minced meat alone then id forgo the egg
I love your videos so much! Always so informative ❤️
There is no bullshit with your videos, it's straight to the point and I love that
I'm once again admiring of your experimental design. Holding the other variables consant while testing different weights (!) of the variable you're investigating--of course! Kenji Lopez-Alt is also rigorous about this and I appreciate it a LOT.
All along, I'd though the egg was necessary as a binder. So this is a eureka moment!
Love that you did these terrific experiments--the only way we can truly get to the bottom of anything.
A crucial question. Looking forward to the video. Whatever the answer turns out to be I'm making meatballs today.
My best meatballs have moist breadcrumbs added which makes them light
Moist balls....
Always love your take on recipes, i have 2 old cookbooks from 1900 and now i have to see what was used in depth. Thankyou Helen!
I love experiments of all kinds!!
So we can deduce that not adding egg to burger patties will give a slightly firmer texture, which in my opinion, is a good thing. Thanks for the video!
burgers are a completely different story. they don't have any fillers (at least traditional American gastropub style burgers), but they are cooked to medium-rare, not well done.
Huh, I always assumed the role of an egg in meatballs was to act as a binder, since a heated egg becomes solid.
Some folks cook meatballs in the sauce instead of baking. If you cook slowly, that makes for a more tender meatball, and everything that rends out adds to the flavor of the sauce. I've done it both ways. If you cook them in the sauce, there's a risk they might break up if you try to stir before they firm up. So maybe including eggs is more important there.
More than anything, I agree with your point: how it turns out it's hard to notice any difference unless you already know and so are looking closely for subtle differences. So maybe there's really very little discernable difference. Maybe meatballs are best regarded as a simple versatile dish that is hard to mess up, and which is pretty sure to get gobbled up.
The only real risk, the thing to avoid, is cooking them to the point of hardness or rubberiness. Why waste the time and effort then, when they sell rubbery ones in bags at the grocery store.
I don't eat meat but I was still curious! Go figure! I'm also from Boston. Maybe I'll see you sometime. That would be lovely. 🌷🌷
I absolutely loved this video, thank you so much for this!
Thank you.
The overall takeaway for me for this incredibly meaty experiment Helen, is that it's no problem to give egg a miss. As a vegan who can't give you up, I am pleased to hear that things without eggs as binders is good news. I've been using white chia seeds with water in baking and it's all good. All very encouraging. I have no idea how you ploughed through so much meat and egg! You continue to be a champ for your subscribers ✊🏻😁🙏🏻
...as a curious child I asked my mother why she put eggs in the meat ...(she was a country cook from a different era ...she was born in 1906) and I do not remember her ever serving meat balls but I am sure they would have been made with the same method she used for any ground meat recipe ...patties or meat loaf ...back to the eggs ...I was told that you added the egg or eggs depending on the amount of ground meat being used to bind the mixture together so it would not crumble ...it worked and her meat loaf was delicious ;-)
👍🏻 Fascinating! Thanks for going to so much trouble, Helen. In South Africa, we call them "frikadels" .. and i stopped using eggs and breadcrumbs in mine eons ago. Instead, i use between 50% and 100% chopped bacon compared to the beef by weight. And dried onions, and a packet of powdered soup mix. For added variety, i use different soup mixes from time to time, and a splash of some sauce or other for moisture (ketchup, vinegar, Worcestershire, mayonnaise, or a blend, or even nothing). I love the variety of resulting flavours and textures, more than trying to get the same results each time. The only constant besides the beef is the bacon, and even that varies in ratio. Plus, always roasted in the oven to save on cleanup.
But I'm glad to know that i didn't throw out any babies with the bath water, when i stopped using eggs and breadcrumbs!
That you didn't throw out… what
I think a bread product is a must in meatballs. Every batch I was testing had a lot of bread.
@@helenrennie Actually, i do sometimes include a handful of dried oats or ground up all bran .. but leaving them out doesn't make their absence badly felt. Maybe the dried onions and powdered soup compensate for the bread, soaking up moisture whose loss would spoil the final results. But next time I'll try the bread again, on your recommendation 👍🏻
@@nodezsh it's a saying which means discard something valuable along with other things that are inessential or undesirable.
@@miavos3610 It sounds unnecessarily gruesome, though.
Thank you
Love this empirical/objective approach!
Traditionally, eggs are very available, and full of every vitamin except Vitamin C, and adding an egg is a good way to add even more nutrients to our food and maybe make it stretch a little longer. If I have eggs when I make hamburgers or meatballs, I add one, but it's not necessary
Wonderful video! Thank you!!!
Looking so yummy with meatballs cooking, thanks for your sharing, friend😋😍😍👍
This was so interesting to watch! Thank you for doing this experiment. I was always told to add eggs for a binding agent and if I didn't have an egg to add, I'd need to add another binding agent, like bread crumbs. This is to keep the meatballs (or a like recipe) from falling apart. It's great to know different filler ingredients don't change the outcome very much!
Yes, you need bread crumbs, but not because your meatballs will fall apart. It's for tenderness and moisture. Burgers don't have either eggs or bread and they don't fall apart ;)
@@helenrennie I was wondering if that was true or not and was thinking of doing an experiment on it for myself. Thanks! 😁
Don't use eggs personally, but use minced bread with milk and the meatballs are moist and tender. For a meatloaf i also add baking powder to give it a little more fluffiness.
dumpling fillings usually don't use eggs, so I don't either! the glutamine takes care of holding the filling together just fine. I add liquid and beat the filling in one direction, just as dumpling filling is traditionally made, plus I use a bit of potato starch to bind (nowhere NEAR as high an amount as the usual addition of breadcrumbs). the meat is cooked for a short period of time (dumplings cook fast!) and is still tender and super-delicious.
So crazy I'm making meatballs for my restaurant today. What a coincidence love the channel
Where is your restaurant? I'll try my best to be there! 👍
I don't have a restaurant. I have a cooking school :)
I dont own a restaurant I just work in one.
@@billybunter3753 The Warren Bar and Burrow , Pittsburgh PA my meatball special is tomorrow
An excellent exercise in analysis. There is a good reason why there exists a plethora of favorite (meatball) recipes, side by side, in the same community. The truth, as you have demonstrated, is that there are many paths to one destination. This is undoubtedly true for many, many recipes that are more forgiving than baked breads or other such carefully balanced dishes. Thank you for doing the hard work of comparing.
BTW, I always thought eggs were a holdover from meatloaf where the eggs might play a role in holding form together for a larger mass, to possibly prevent cracking of the loaf.
Your haircut looks awesome!
Short Answer: It's up to you! :)
The next time you do a meatball experiment and don't want to eat that many meatballs give me a call, I'll fly to Boston and help you out. Cuz that's the kind of guy I am 😁
I'm dying to find the old authentic way Dutch Boers made their meatballs - saucy, rich, soft, incredibly tasty.
Roast a few beef shanks in the oven. Keep the browned bone marrow apart, then make broth from the shanks. Scrape the meat off of the bones when the broth is done and shred it thoroughly, include it, with the bone marrow, in the meatball mixture. Many traditional Dutch (and Rhinelandic - half of the crews of Dutch East India Company ships were Germans) meatball recipes include soup meat and bone marrow and especially the latter would yield exactly the sort of properties in them that you describe.
I dare say the old Boers would claim it was the blood of the English!
@@classicallpvault8251 wow, that sounds like the real thing thank you!!
@@elizabethblackwell6242 my word! The English were the ones who torched Boers off their farms. You're ultra ignorant!!!
omg....your cutlets looks so good! I'm going to try myself. thank you :)
Sweden just imploded 😂 I’m going to experiment with my recipe for Swedish meatballs!
I enjoyed the science..I tell people to get a recipe ,cook test and adjust. Everybody has a different taste and budget ..
Thank you Helen, love your videos.
I make Norwegian meatballs/meat patties, and they are quite different in the seasoning. They contain, or should contain lots of nutmeg and black pepper, plus additional spices like allspice, clove and/or ginger (others can also be added, like for example a touch of cardamom). And not to forget a lot of finely chopped onions. In my opinion Norwegian meatballs should not be bland, but seasoned very well and have a pronounced but also mild flavour of mixed spices and onions.
And that is why I don't use eggs. I find that eggs dulls the spice flavor. Sort of camouflage it, in a way. Or that eggs eats up some of the spices.
Maybe it is just in my imagination. But I don't think so. I should try to do a test one day with and without eggs to see if I'm right or wrong.
When I started making meatloaf, I never had eggs. I would substitute a little oil to help it all bind together. Always tasted great. I use eggs now, but there's no noticable difference in flavor. Jayman...
from norway, and i make meatballs (aslo called kjøttkaker) with some milk (about 2dl for 400g of meat), salt pepper, nutmeg, ginger powder and corn starsh/potato starch. i dont use egg as i just presive that has getting butes of scrambeled eggs, something i dont like. i also dont feel like i get that soft texture that i want
Very informative, thank you.
I have to wonder what effect the egg has on the texture during forming as opposed to after cooking. Are they any easier to form with eggs as a binder?
No. They are softer with an egg.
My mom used to make ground beef "steaks", which were basically a cutlet coated in breading and pan-fried. That was extremely juicy and tasty. I wonder if she learned it or based her recipe on an Eastern-European dish.
Interesting. I add eggs to my meatballs sometimes and to my meatloaf just to up the protein content and get some more cholesterol and omegas.
How timely, I was just going to make meatballs tomorrow and I was wondering if I really needed an egg if I'm poaching in the sauce.
Helen! Outstanding video and comparison! I need to make me some meatballs. Oh yeah ............................ 😎👍👍
I love the details. What I got was that egg is another filler! The texture of the meat will have more of a difference than anything else.
Thank you for eating all those meatballs Helen!
Very interesting!
I’m wondering what would happen if you added a considerable amount more egg. For example Mike Maroni who beat Bobby flay in a meatball throw down, has a recipe where he used 4 eggs to the pound. Bobby used one egg per pound and lost.
I think adding egg is a cheap way to get around not cutting your fillings fine enough (e.g. if you lived in the 40s and had no food processor available). Also, if you add an egg, you can add more dry ingredients (bread) instead of meat, which in ye olden days would make the dish cheaper (of course it would be a bit less tasty, but still quite nutritious and somewhat good in texture). Further, probably the butter does a similar job as an egg would do in your recipe.
Hey Helen, question, when you cooked the meatball for one hour did you use the same temp as for the 20 minute meatballs?
Yes. 300F for both 20 min and 1 hour
Thanks for responding Helen.
Here In New Zealand most people don't use egg in meat balls so this was interesting to learn
2:17 if you use baker's percentages with meat, are they butcher's percentages?
I love you so much lol. I’m not sure if it’s how much you articulate your words or if it’s the fact I can tell you love what you do, or if it’s the fact you’re so informal…it’s all of the above…good job…keep it up,
i love eggs, the taste, the protein, the cholesterol, everything about them, and i eat them nearly every day and use them as ingredients in many dishes. also love meat, and have never seen any reason to add eggs to meatballs so i havent. like helen's, my meatballs turn out outrageously juicy because i use suitably fatty meat with just enough bread crumbs to retain most of the fat in the meatball as it melts instead of it running out while cooking. not uncommon for me to have police knocking at the door with a warrant for my arrest for meatballs that are illegally delicious, which is a high crime or misdemeanor in most places. so yes, eggs in meatballs are kinda immaterial. thank you, helen, for settling that there is no reason to fuss about eggs in meatballs. appreciate your channel and all of your videos whether or not i comment
I thought the egg was a binder to help the meatball stay together rather than fall apart. Were the egg meatballs easier to form, or more structurally sound during cooking?
I wish I could help you test an even larger batch of meatballs.
If you do, make sure I can help you help her test an even larger than even larger batch of meatballs.
My mother always added an egg to our meatball recipe because she never baked or fried her meatballs. She would poach them for an hour in the sauce, resulting in a very soft and delicate meatball. Without egg they would fall apart in the sauce.
Have they ever actually fallen apart without an egg? Or is that a theory?
@@helenrennie they are very delicate without egg.... they break easily with no egg. not fall apart but not as stable with binder
it's honestly a question I was asking myself just yesterday...
how does she bloody DO that?!
What do you mean by "meatball mix" in your recipe? Is that the minced/ground meat?? Or does it include seasoning and filling?
Just what i need thanks.
Some use egg whites to tenderize meat (I believe I saw Kenji do it in a video for a stir fry). What meat did you use? Maybe a lesser quality meat might benefit from eggs? Interesting
i love your accent
Very interesting video!! My mom never used eggs in котлеты. Maybe I will try some meatballs without them as well.
Don't bother. There's no difference. That's the whole point, wink wink
@@nodezsh Well there is a difference - if it’s fine without eggs I don’t have to use up an egg for it, right?
@@michicrj If anything the difference is that you get one egg's worth of meatballs.
One extra meatball per pound, anyways.
Finally, someone who realises and acknowledges that by changing one ingredient it could potentially affect the others, for example by increasing salt and reducing fillers to compensate in certain tests.
Although the results showed little if any noticeable difference unless tasted side by side, I cannot help but wonder if some of the fancy and complicated time consuming recipies are more to justify some chef's egos rather than the diners palate, and that the choice of ingredients of the appropriate quality, and the care they are cooked with is the most significant variable.
What could be interesting, and certainly in times of rapidly increasing food prices, is how in dishes/components using minced (ground) beef, just how much of the beef could be substituted with cheaper pork, chicken, turkey, or even vegetables, before the character of the dish is changed so much, that in effect it becomes something else.
Hmmm... so with the eggs acting as a filler, you can offset other ingredients.
It might be worth trying to push the envelope the other direction. Replacing carbohydrates with extra protein is certainly worth doing if it tastes the same...
These are such tiny differences, it wouldn't make a dent in your diet. If you start replacing a lot of bread with egg, your meatballs will be too mushy. Also, the bread holds on to the meat juice, but I doubt egg does that. They both contribute to softness, but bread also contributes to moisture retention.
@@helenrennie I understand. Thank you for the reply. ❤
Any idea what just adding yolks or only whites would do?
I tried meatballs with breadcrumbs (+buttermilk) and they were so bomb! Too bad I'm the only one who are them 😂😂
This is how you learn.
Where I'm from, everyone adds eggs to meatballs to make the meat stickier. Nobody does it for the taste or tenderness. I stopped using eggs in meatballs a long time ago and the meatballs do not fall apart. I'm in the no egg camp.
So much filler? So that's why my meatballs tend to be dry. And frying them fast and hot isn't the way to go, either, I gather. Learned something today!
Great!
I don’t always put eggs and definitely no eggs in my cabbage rolls, I find it toughens them
Meatballs are viviparous
I so appreciate your OCD -- compensating for the extra liquid in the egg mixture with D and E?! Next level, indeed!
I was hoping for a meatball with additional filler but without eggs/yolks.
hahahah this is hilarious , and so valid haha Thank You
I think you would be hard pressed to make Scotched Eggs without eggs.
Thanks, Helen. It's always interesting to experiment with recipes. Especially as we all have different tastes.
Meanwhile I just slap a pinch of salt and pepper in ground meat and call it good.
As a Scot I feel personally attacked right now.
Hi Helen what is the green stuff you include in your meatballs. Looks like guacamole ;-)
I link to my meatball recipe in the description below. The filler is green because of parsley. It has all sorts of other stuff in it.