I love cooking but hate tedium, so I tend to gravitate towards dishes that don’t have a lot of repetitive motions. This is why I’ve only made meatballs twice—I find it boring. The mixing is fine, the frying is fine, but the portioning? Tedious.
Fortunately for me (and the rest of the tedium-adverse), Lifehacker’s senior health editor, Beth Skwarecki, found a meatball portioning hack on Reddit that is quick, easy, and—dare I say—elegant.
It reads:
All my years in kitchens and my partner blows me away with this meatball trick. Squishes the meat into a baking tray, cuts like brownies. Portioned meat balls in seconds!
I’d never thought I’d describe squishing meat into a baking tray as “elegant,” but this is quite elegant. It might not be as accurate as weighing each little ball, but unless you work in a proper kitchen in a fancy restaurant, that does not matter. Just pat the meat out so it’s even—measure the depth in several spots with a toothpick if you must—then cut the meat slab into squares. You can get a tape measure involved if you want to be extra precise, but I’m going to eyeball it because avoiding tedium is the entire point here.
Another benefit to this method? You can see exactly how many meatballs you’re going to end up with before you start rolling. As a big fan of planning (and counting), I appreciate knowing the outcome of a task before I complete it, so this is a big deal for me.
Will it increase meatball production in my household? Yes. I think it will. If nothing else, the novelty of squishing meat into a baking pan and cutting it “like brownies” will get me to try it at least once, and one batch of homemade meatballs is better than no batches.
