By Sue Li For The New York Times There are no strict rules for meatballs, as my 15 years of professional cooking experience at various magazine test kitchens and cooking for food photography shoots have shown me. Meatballs, in essence, are just meat, seasonings and a binder. They can be mixed delicately or vigorously, made from a meat substitute, flavored with a variety of ingredients (herbs, spices, cheeses) and cooked any number of ways. But while there’s no single formula, there are a few principles for ingredients and techniques that, once learned, will help you make better meatballs every time. The three recipes here yield meatballs that are all quite different from one another, but...
