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5 from 2 votes

Traditional Homemade Italian Meatballs With Milk Soaked Bread

Super soft and juicy traditional homeamde Italian meatballs in less than 40 minutes with just 10 core ingredients. Made with milk-soaked sandwich bread to get them nice and tender, generously seasoned and bursting with flavor.
Prep Time20 minutes
Cook Time20 minutes
Course: Main Course
Cuisine: Italian
Servings: 28 meatballs
Calories: 70kcal
Author: Helen

Equipment

Ingredients

  • 1 piece white bread crusts removed (Note 1)
  • 100 ml milk
  • 500 g ground beef or half beef half pork (Note 2)
  • 1 onion finely chopped or grated
  • 3 cloves garlic
  • 45 g parmesan or pecorino finely grated
  • 1 egg
  • 2 tbsp fresh parsley (Note 3)
  • 2 tsp dried oregano
  • ½ tsp salt
  • ½ tsp black pepper
  • 2 tbsp oil for frying if using pan frying cooking method
US Customary - Metric

Instructions

  • Pour the milk over the bread and leave it to soak in for 10 minutes while you prep the other ingredients.
  • Mash the bread and milk together to form a paste.
  • Add the remaining ingredients, mix thoroughly using your hands.
  • Form the mixture into golf-ball sized balls using a cookie scoop, ice cream scoop or wet hands.
  • Cook the meatballs using one of the methods below until the meatballs have an internal temperature of 165°F or 75°C.

Pan frying

  • Place a frying pan on a medium to high heat and add oil. Add the meatballs when the oil is hot and fry for approximately 10 minutes, turning regularly until brown on all sides. Be careful not to crowd the pan. You might need to do this in two batches.

Oven baked

  • Bake the meatballs at 400°F or 200°C for around 20 minutes, broiling for a couple of minutes to brown them if needed.

Air fryer

  • Spray the air fryer basket with olive oil, set the air fryer to 400F or 200C and cook for 7-10 minutes, turning halfway. 

Notes

  1. Bread: a slice of ordinary white sandwich bread works well. Just ensure you remove the crusts first. It's fine if it's a little stale.
  2. Meat: For best results use ground beef and ground pork. The pork adds flavor and its high fat content helps to make the meatballs more succulent. All beef is fine too.
  3. Parsley: fresh is recommended but can be substituted with 1 third of the amount of dried parsley.

Nutrition

Serving: 1meatball | Calories: 70kcal | Carbohydrates: 1g | Protein: 4g | Fat: 5g | Saturated Fat: 2g | Polyunsaturated Fat: 0.4g | Monounsaturated Fat: 2g | Trans Fat: 0.2g | Cholesterol: 20mg | Sodium: 88mg | Potassium: 66mg | Fiber: 0.1g | Sugar: 0.4g | Vitamin A: 27IU | Vitamin C: 0.4mg | Calcium: 31mg | Iron: 0.4mg