4 Levels of Meatballs: Amateur to Food Scientist | Epicurious

Hello, I'm Emily and I'm a level one chef. Hello, I'm Daniel and I'm a level two chef. Hello, I'm Yuji. I've been a professional chef for eight years, so today I'm going to make Swedish

meatballs

more or less in the style of IKEA

meatballs

. I modeled my meatball recipe after meatballs, which are basically mini meatballs that are cooked in this really amazing sauce. Today I will prepare tsumidi soup, simile that means fish meatball in Japanese, it is a great way to use up all the leftover fish that you get from the daily productions of the restaurants, so I am opting for a combination: a 50 50 division of ground meat ground beef and pork actually adds a lot of moisture and I think that's the extent of my knowledge that ground beef is one, I like easy meat two, you don't have to worry as much, like if you accidentally undercook the meat a little, It won't hurt anyone, which is a relief when you're a level one chef, this tuna was caught by lime Cooking lime fruit is the most sustainable way to fish because no other fish is caught, so I'm going to scrape it first the tuna bones to get the meat out, so this part of the meat is called nakaochi in Japanese and it means almost like a rib meat and then many times restaurants scrape this meat and make a tuna tartare and serve it in dirty buns , okay, let's scrape and get some meat out, it's pretty satisfying, when you get the meat out, you want to make sure that the tip of the spoon goes deep so that there's really nothing left and then this part is called the blood line and this part It's also very good, very much like a nice irony flavor, this is very satisfying, so to start these meatballs, I'm going to sauté some onions with a little garlic and set them aside to cool before adding them. to the meatballs and now I'm just going to bring this pan to medium heat, so now I'm going to take these. and I add them to my pan and while that's happening, I'm going to work on the garlic, so I want them to be nice and nice, this is added with the onion, I'm going to add a little bit of salt, a little bit of pepper, I'm just going to transfer them all these pieces to a bowl, they will just sit and cool while I work on the rest of the meatball mixture.

You can almost see it on the other side, it's almost like a piece of paper. I took out most of the meat, but there's still more you can do: I turn this into ramen broth at my restaurant, so I have breadcrumbs, milk and eggs and I'm going to combine them, that's my first step, next thing I'm going to do it's just add my eggs and let's go and we'll break them in and now I just want to make sure it's nice and thick that's the technical term so I'm done scraping a tuna so I'm just going to mix this in evenly.

You have a very good mixture so before mixing other ingredients I am going to chop it even finer so that it is very spongy and with more fat on all sides. It's almost like making a tartare with the tuna I'm trying to break down. bloodline as much as possible too, okay, so the next thing I'm going to do is chop my onion and my garlic, okay, so I'm going to put my onion raw, uh, why Emily? Because I can't, I do what I want. I just trust that whoever made this recipe knew what they were doing.

I particularly don't like using raw onion when cooking. I just like to cook it first. You really get a nice aromatic profile and the layers of flavor are much better. I think the lazier cut is really what it is. I know this is probably wrong, but this is the way I do it because this is the thing. It's not that I can't do things that are harder, it's just that you know someone has to represent that. There are many times when you don't want to, that's what I'm here for, so now I'm going to mix five grams of scallion, the same amount of ginger, a little bit of sesame miso, so this miso is a special mixture. of red miso and also sake, which is leftover from making sake when used with fish, actually balances the flavor of the fish very well.

The ground beef and the ground pork go into a bowl here and I'll season them with the oregano, a little bit of cayenne, a little bit of basil and a little bit of rosemary. I'm going to alternate between sprinkling breadcrumbs here and then adding broth to dry it out a little and then moistening it again with the beef broth and this just serves as another binder so when it cooks it doesn't like to fall apart anything to do with it. with gloves it will be interesting and a little bit of olive oil and the onions, I'm just going to put my onion in my meat two cloves of garlic salt a little bit of pepper and I'm just going to sport that all in let's mix everything I'm going to put a little bit of soy sauce you don't want to season this too much because you're going to be eating with your miso soup fingers at the ready it's going to be gross okay let's do this people use spoons for this I don't know I mean I'm sure that there are more sanitary ways, I don't know, gloves, it's like carving a meat pumpkin and then I can take it off and fill it in the trash.

I'm going to go for about the size of a golf ball, so our bondigans are usually smaller meatballs, almost bite size, you know, so I'll use a spoon. It actually helps make foaming easier instead of doing it by hand. It's almost like making a dumpling. Maybe just add a little to some of the smaller ones. Meat hats for all my ball friends. My meatballs are ready to move on to the next step, so I'm going to cover them with plastic wrap and put them in the refrigerator for a couple of hours so that they look like balls when I cook them, so here is my tuna and tomato meatball, ready to be poached in miso soup.

Let cool so the meatballs form and are ready to cook, so tomato meatballs are a soup dish, so I'm going to prepare the broth base which is called dashi dashi and it's a combination of this bonito flake and then also kombu. You will put the kombu in the pot with the water and then start heating it with cold water and then let it sit on medium heat for about 10-15 minutes until the kombu floats and then I don't want to boil cornbread, it actually kills the flavor , so before you boil it, I'll take out the kombu and then when it starts to boil, we'll add some bonito flakes and let it sit. for another 10-15 minutes now my dashi is finished and then I'm going to strain it.

The color looks nice, golden brown. This is the ideal color of dashi that you look for when you make dashi, it smells amazing so if you go to the American farmers market you see beautiful fennel and in the cereals, the special aroma that comes from these two ingredients is very Japanese friendly, like fundamental flavors like miso and soy sauce, so I'm going to stick with this fennel top because I want to use this little one. part for the garnish later, so now the yak cereal and fennel are chopped and then ready for the miso soup, so I will start from the cold temperature and bring it up to a simmer, it will take about 15 minutes.

About now the vegetables are soft enough to blend, so I'm going to use a hand blender and blend them, so now the vegetables and the dashes are well blended, so I'm going to add miso and use kosher. this kosher is a combination of yuzu peel, green pepper and salt, it just fermented for about half a year and then I will blend it even more now that my tomato miso soup is finished so my dumplings have been cooling a bit. and they are ready to cook, this is less of a general bake and more of a brownie.

I'm trying to sear all sides so they're hot and medium-rare and the rest will end up in the sauce. so I'm going to go ahead and heat up my pan, add a little bit of oil and then start browning my balls. I'm going to set this on medium heat, medium heat, nothing bad can happen on medium heat, overall, I don't really want to boil the miso soup once miso is added to the soup because it actually destroys the flavor of the miso, so you want to keep the temperature below simmering. I'm going to add a little bit of olive oil ball number one.

I will say that Despite the refrigerator, I found a nice flat bottom, but that's okay, so I'll start watching my tuna meatballs so that they disappear into the miso soup, but once it's cooked it will start to appear. The tuna meatball will take between three and five minutes. so it's fully cooked, this looks good. I'm going to give it a spin. I'm not too worried about them cooking all the way through at this point just because they'll end up in the sauce. I'm going to say that they are as cooked as they should be, I think they look very tasty, so the tuna meatballs look very good, so they brown on one side and then brown on the other, that's what I did, so here they are. my meatballs and the next thing I'm going to do is just make a sauce for them it's time for the sauce to be okay so to make my sauce I have my pan with the drippings from the meatballs I have to add my butter I'm just going to Melt it this butter, shake it a little.

I'm going to pour a little more olive oil here and start with my onion, which is actually the second half of the onion from before. I just want to soften them, let them absorb. all the oil and flavor is already in the pot, so now that the onions are in, I'm going to throw in a little bit of salt and a little bit of pepper, so I'm just going to put in the flour and then whisk it in. making a kind of roux so the onions look good, they said they are nice and clear and now I'm going to add my liquid components.

I'm going to start with the crushed tomatoes. I'm going to add my beef broth and whisk it's so much easier when there's no one around to judge you now I'm going to start adding my cream this is going to be delicious I'm so excited now it's some red wine I've never used red wine before and cook before trying this recipe a lot, it's actually crazy how much flavor you can get from wine and

food

. I thought it was something really sophisticated chefs would do. The next thing I'm going to add is my soy sauce. Use my teaspoon to add my mustard.

Now that my sauce is almost ready, I'm going to put my meatballs in the sauce. We will let them cook over low heat in the sauce for about 15 to 20 minutes and in that time not only. Will they be fully cooked? They will also have soaked up the flavor of the sauce. I think these Swedish meatballs are good for my side dish. I'm planning to use a leek and also a milga which is Japanese. Young fresh ginger. I'm going to try to cut this in one bite and then we'll open it up. This is called hari nagi hali means needle neggy means chives.

So I'm going to put this in our water from time to time. I'm going to move on to milga now I'm going to squeeze it like this to remove the a little bit of bitterness, it will look good in the garnish and it will make it a little bit easier to eat, okay? I'm going to transfer this to the colander, so now my leek and ginger garnish is ready, so for my garnish I have some fresh parsley, which is really all you need. Much of the flavor of the meatballs is just perfect, I don't want to mess with that. too much, it adds a nice little pop of color on top, so just slice it nice and nice.

I don't know if you'd call it a side dish per se, but I'll serve my beautiful Swedish meatballs with some. some Lincoln berry jam on the side they just go, they're meant to be, they're like harry and sally now I'm going to put it all together, so I'm going to start pouring the miso soup in here and then I'm going to put the tuna meatballs. Like I'm chasing them here we go, we'll do three for this. I usually like two or three meatballs, I think, and then what I want to do as well is get a little bit of extra sauce just for drizzling.

On top of this, this is a mixture of leek and then ginger. I'm going to finish off the fennel and top it with a little bit of freshly chopped parsley, just enough to give it a little kick, so this is the pepper. I called the sancho, I'm using this because it has a very nice mint flavor that goes well with fish and there you have it my Swedish meatballs and these are my meatballs this is my meatball soup with tomato and tuna okay, let's try these strip the fork and walk away, it's very good, it's super good, it's funny, you can really taste the Dijon, it's not a lot of Dijon, but since you get it, you get it there.

I was afraid of the textures of the tuna, but it is very soft and fluffy, not overcooked. such a robust profile you feel like you taste the onion, you taste the rosemary, you get the pork and you get the fat from the beef. The only thing that would make it better is if it were at a table somewhere in Spain, Indonesia. So tomato meatball is very much like a family meal and isn't really a special dish, but since I haven't made it for so long in the United States and it's so good, I feel like I should make more every day.

Meatballs are a versatile and convenient shape. To serve any type of ground meat, let's see how each of our three chefs made theirs. Emily made Swedish style meatballs with ground beef as the main ingredient. It's really going to be disgusting. Granted, this ground beef is usually made from less tender cuts of meat. By first soaking the breadcrumbs in milk before mixing them into the meatball mixture, the texture of our meatballs became very soft. It's like carving a meat pumpkin. The moist breadcrumbs helped Emily's meatballsThey retained moisture very well because the breadcrumbs gelatinized with the natural juices of the meat.

Otherwise Emily also added her eggs to this mixture. Eggs bind all the ingredients together due to the presence of proteins like old albumen in the egg whites that coagulate when heated and connect the meat with the seasonings. Milk and egg yolk were also added. a little extra fat and richness Daniel's Spanish-inspired meatballs, called albondigus, were made with a blend of ground beef and pork. Pork is meat from young pigs and commercial pigs are raised to be lean. Pork is lighter in color than beef for several reasons. Red muscle ratio due to the way pigs move using their muscles more sporadically than cows.

These muscles require less oxygen, so they naturally have less myoglobin, which is a compound that stores oxygen and gives meat its color. The flavor of pork comes from many different chemicals. Like hexanal and octadecanel, hexanelle is associated with grassy flavors that come from the pig's diet and I think as far as I know, Daniel had a lower ratio of breadcrumbs than Emily compared to the starches in his gluten. The free breadcrumbs absorbed the meat broth as they gelatinized, locking in moisture and giving your meatballs a softer, more tender texture. He didn't add an egg, so having fewer crumbs helped his meatballs retain their shape instead of relying on added egg white proteins.

She relied on the meat proteins that retract and become more compact when cooked. Yuji made his Japanese-inspired meatballs with fresh tuna that he cut off the bone and chopped by hand. Tuna is a large ocean predator fish that constantly swims at fast speeds, which means it needs a lot of oxygen. For metabolism, this means they have a lot of oxygen-rich myoglobin, which is why fresh tuna is such a deep red color and why some flavor compounds produced during cooking are similar to those in cooked beef. He also added miso, a flavorful paste made from soy beans. which are fermented by a mold called aspergillus oraze or koji Koji is a versatile mold used in the fermentation of various ingredients such as miso and rice vinegar Yuji also added his homemade soy sauce, a dark liquid made from fermented soybeans that varies greatly depending on the processor. to the processor, but it's always salty and flavorful.

Emily refrigerated her meatballs for about two hours before frying them. This was smart, it helps the meatballs keep their shape because the fat is in solid form when it's cold, she fried them in a small amount. she of oil and she was careful to make sure they browned all over. Daniel also lightly fried his meatballs in olive oil low and slow because he burns things all the time. He made sure to expose the entire surface of his meatballs to the hot oil to get a nice crust and gets the Mayard reaction going. This is a non-enzymatic browning reaction between sugars and amino acids in ground beef.

Mare's gilt products have hundreds of aromatic rings with oxygen, nitrogen and sulfur groups that impart roasted nutty meaty flavor notes, but also some onion, earthy and slightly metallic notes. It is also the complicated set of chemical reactions that makes the meat so delicious yuji poached his tuna in his soup. Poaching is a gentle cooking process that allows the tuna proteins to coagulate slowly, giving them a tender texture when they are too much. there is water present, the major browning is inhibited, so there is no roasted or toasted flavor in your dumplings, while yuji used fewer ingredients, its level 3 status comes from perfectly balanced flavors, it smells amazing, sometimes, knowing how to dose fewer ingredients with a greater impact of flavor increases the level of difficulty because each ingredient is so pronounced that the meatballs are so versatile that you can make them with meat, pork, tuna, really any meat or fish you like, there is no shortage of preparation methods, since Whether it's fried, poached or finished in sauce the next time you're in the mood for meatballs, we hope.

You'll take some of these tips from our three innovative chefs.