Drain Greasy Meatballs As They Cook With A Game-Changing Hack

Don't tell Nonna (aka, the OG Italian meatball baller), but there is a better way you could be cooking your meatballs. There are already plenty of options — from frying your meatballs off in a skillet to baking them on a sheet pan or, most traditionally, simmering them in a pot of tomato sauce — but all these methods have the downside of leaking the grease and fat from the meatballs right into the cooking vessel. This could potentially leave you with oily, mushy, unappetizing meatballs.

However, you can avoid the issue entirely with the help of a wire rack. Really, it is that simple. Baking your meatballs on a wire rack placed on top of a baking sheet lifts your meatballs off of the cooking surface, allowing excess grease to drain through the rack and away from the meat. It might sound a little nontraditional (You would be hard-pressed to find a real Italian nonna cooking her meatballs in this fashion), but this modern hack promises tender, juicy meatballs without any excess oil.

Instead of letting your meatballs steep in their own grease, a wire rack is just the hack you need to keep them tender but not oily. After mixing your meatball recipe and forming the balls, simply slide a wire rack on top of a sheet pan. Do yourself a favor and line your sheet pan with aluminum foil which will catch all the grease and save you a bit of scrubbing later.

I like to cook my meatballs at 400 degrees Fahrenheit, but your cooking time may vary depending on the size of your meatballs. Start to check them at around 20 minutes or so, and bake until the meatballs are entirely firm to the touch.

Once they're done, you'll notice the grease pooled on the bottom of the pan, far from your perfectly cooked meatballs. With this method, you still get the golden brown crust on the outside, with none of the grease. Plus instead of sautéing the meatballs in a pan and ending up with misshapen, flattened sides, you'll have perfectly round meatballs to plate your pasta. You can use this hack for any kind of meatball, too, from Swedish meatballs to those grape jelly cocktail meatballs — so don't limit yourself to regular old red sauce. The one thing you might want to consider is that wire racks can be difficult to clean with baked-on grease, so you might want to invest in a rack designed for savory cooking, so your future cookies don't pick up any beefy flavor.