Meatballs With Beef and Pork
Three decisions make a meatball tender, and two of them are made before anything is rolled.
A meatball that came out dense and bouncy was over-mixed and under-fatted. Both are fixable before you roll anything.
| 1 lb Dry-Aged Signature Ground Beef | 1 combine gently, do not knead | 2 roll, brown, then finish in sauce | |
| 8 oz PP Ground Pork | |||
| 2 slices white bread, crusts off | 3 soak until it falls apart | ||
| 1/2 cup milk | |||
| 1 egg | |||
| 3 cloves garlic, minced | |||
| 1/4 cup parsley, chopped | |||
| 2 tsp coarse salt | |||
| 4Mix with your fingertips until it just comes together. Every extra turn makes them bouncier. | |||
| 5Brown them for color, then finish them in the sauce. They do not need to cook through in the pan. | |||
Numbers show the order to work in. Each cell spans exactly the ingredients it uses.
Two to one, beef to pork
“So, making, I've sometimes done a ground beef and pork burger blend where you do like a two-thirds beef and a little bit of, and a third of a pork to make a burger that has a little interesting flavor. Or same thing with meatloaf, mixing beef and pork together. Most people don't think about doing that.”
Gray Shipley
Beef brings the flavor and the structure; pork brings fat and softness. Beef alone gives you something closer to a small burger. The reasoning is in ground pork against ground beef.
Soaked bread, not dry breadcrumbs
Bread soaked in milk until it collapses, then mashed in, keeps moisture inside each meatball as it cooks. Dry breadcrumbs do the opposite: they absorb moisture out of the meat. This is the single biggest difference between tender and dense.
Do not knead it
Working ground meat develops the proteins into something springy, the same mechanism as an over-worked burger. Fingertips, briefly, until it holds together. Then stop. That is the third cause in why is my burger dry.
“I, the more I learn about food, the more important to me, clean label and food that's made of food.”
Gray Shipley
“And then let the flavor do the work and don't try to do too much.”
Gray Shipley
What is the best mix for meatballs?
Two parts beef to one part pork, with soaked bread rather than dry breadcrumbs.
- Cook to a Safe Minimum Internal Temperature, FoodSafety.gov
- The Color of Meat and Poultry, USDA FSIS
Food-safety temperatures and storage times on this page are cited to the agencies above rather than to us.
Written at Shipley Farms in Vilas, North Carolina: a family cattle farm raising and dry-aging beef in the Appalachian Mountains, now in its fifth generation. No shortcuts since 1872.
Every quote on this page is Gray Shipley talking, the man who runs this farm. We sat down with him, turned on a recorder, and kept his own words. Hesitations are trimmed so they read on the page. Nothing else is added or reworded, except where Gray revised his own words in review.
Nobody knows this beef better than we do. On food safety we leave it to USDA FSIS and FoodSafety.gov, and we have linked their pages above. Reviewed 3 October 2026.
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