Alton Brown's Egg Carton Hack Will Change The Way You Make Meatballs
This is not your Nonna's meatball. Celebrity Chef Alton Brown's version may resemble your grandmother's meatballs – a classic blend of ground beef, pork, and lamb with an egg thrown in – until you get to the cooking part.
Brown, who hosted "Good Eats" and "Cutthroat Kitchen" on Food Network, and is now co-host of the latest adaptation of "Iron Chef" on Netflix, is known for his unconventional cooking methods. This is the man who put salt in coffee grounds and mayo in scrambled eggs. Among his many food hacks, Brown has devised new uses for everyday kitchen appliances (and then some) – such as using a panini press to cook an entire chicken and preparing instant oatmeal in a coffee pot.
For a meatball recipe posted on Altonbrown.com, he abandons the usual cooking approaches, such as sautéing, simmering, braising, or frying. Instead, he baked, cooled, and froze the meatballs in a muffin pan, adorably nestling each ball in its own little muffin bed, before moving them into a zip-top bag for freezer storage. But he wasn't done. Brown came up with a meatball hack involving egg cartons as only he can imagine. While he introduced it a few years ago on Instagram, it is apparently still winning new fans. Eitan Bernath, social media influencer and author of "Eitan Eats the World," posted a video about it on Facebook last year. He called Brown's method "very, very strange" but loved the result.
Meatballs in an egg carton
"That looks incredible," says Eitan Bernath, who whipped up the meatballs on his Facebook page. "Your guests will never know that these were cooked in a carton that used to hold eggs." Alton Brown's muffin-pan meatballs, which appeared on Season 9 of "Good Eats" (via Food Network), have been upgraded to residing in an egg carton. This hack allows the grease from the ground beef to be absorbed by the cardboard, wicking it away from the meaty morsels. The finished meatballs are crispy on the outside and juicy on the inside.
If you decide to add an egg to the mixture of ground meat, breadcrumbs, spinach, Parmesan cheese, basil, and parsley, you have Brown's egg carton technique as a cooking option. However, you probably don't want to use Styrofoam, which can emit dangerous chemicals when heated, according to UCLA Health.
Cardboard is the better choice because it can stand temperatures up to 425 degrees, Brown told Today. The fat from the meat protects the sturdy paper carton from burning. Still, we recommend staying near the kitchen with a working fire extinguisher, just in case. Worried about salmonella from eggs? The CDC reports that heat sufficient heat will kill the bacteria.