Meatballs problems, diagnosed

Start with the direction of the failure. Meatballs that stay perfectly intact but eat dense, bouncy or rubbery usually have too much structure from heavy mixing, compaction, lean meat, too little panade or aggressive cooking. Meatballs that crack, slump or disintegrate have the opposite problem: the mixture does not have enough usable binding for its moisture and filler load, or it is being disturbed before the exterior has set. Do not apply 'mix less' to both failures — that helps a tough meatball but can make a loose mixture even less cohesive.