Use French Fried Onions As Breadcrumbs for the Best Meatballs
The breadcrumbs are good, even noble. Without them, the meatballs would be tight little balls, and the meat rolls would be just loaves of meat. There would be no crispy breaded fish, no fried fish, no oven-baked chicken cutlets. I don’t want to live in a world without bread crumbs, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to switch it up sometimes and use French fried onions instead – the one you find on this casserole .
Fried French onion slices, after chopping, can serve many of the functions of bread crumbs, and they taste like onions, which is a fun flavor. You can mix them with meat for more flavorful meatballs and meatloaf, crush fish into them before frying, or sauté them with real breadcrumbs in butter for an enhanced salad dressing .
However, my favorite is the more onion and savory meatball. You don’t even need to adjust your measurements unless you are used to using very soft bread crumbs, in which case you can reduce the amount of salt. Just grab a can of French (Trader Joe’s is good too), let the food processor do its thing, then measure out as many onion crumbs as you would bake. Pieces of onion will hold your ball together while adding a whole bunch of umami. If there is a downside here, I don’t see.