Meatballs taste 'juicy' and full of flavour if you add 1 simple ingredient

Meatballs go with pretty much everything. Whether you're eating them Spanish style with tapas, on top of pasta, or with mashed potatoes, they are a real crowd pleaser. However, even a mountain of sauce cannot hide when the meatballs are dry.

A cook and food writer swears by one secret ingredient that helps prevent the meatballs from going dry, and instead adds moisture to the dish so they taste succulent every time. The tip comes from Myo Quinn, who shared her grandmother's tried and tested trick for making ground meat, which makes the juiciest meatballs.

Writing on Simply Recipes, the cook revealed the secret is adding a very finely grated or blended raw onion to the meat mixture. The pulp and juices add moisture and flavour to the dish, and it helps lighten up the mixture so it doesn't dry out.

The chef said that even though her Korean grandmother has never made meatballs, she's likely made tens of thousands of dumplings, which essentially use the same filling, and "they were always juicy and so flavourful".

You can either pulse the onion until it's nearly pulp in a food processor, or grate it on a very fine setting with a container underneath so you can catch the pulp and juices.

She explained: "The ground meat will suck up the liquid, expanding and lightening the mixture. This is an easy and smart way to add flavour and moisture and a trick I use when making all kinds of meatballs."

Jamie Oliver has a slightly different take on the classic dish, having created a recipe that uses 12 Jacob's cream crackers.

A simpler version promises to make authentic Italian meatballs with beef mince and breadcrumbs in the base.