What’s for Dinner Wednesday: Sweet and Sour Meatballs

This week’s recipe is definitely a keeper at our house!

When I was in the midst of my crock pot cooking frenzy of eight weeks, I came across a crock pot recipe for Sweet and Sour Meatballs that the kids wanted me to try.

I never got the chance to try them out, the recipe was still on my list of things to make in the future, but I did not like that the “sweet and sour” part of the recipe was a jar of sweet and sour sauce. I like to make things on my own when I can, so that I know exactly what I’m putting into the recipe and I can modify if I need to.

In the meantime, I follow Six Sisters’ Stuff on Facebook, and this week I clicked on a link of theirs that came through for ground beef recipes, and somehow I kept clicking until I ended up at a recipe from one of the sisters, Mel, on her site, Mel’s Kitchen Cafe for sweet and sour meatballs with a homemade sauce. The Six Sisters often have some good stuff on their sites!

I decided to try it out this week, and I’m glad I did! All but my little non-meat-eater, Alex, liked this recipe. LOVED this recipe. Even Alex ate one meatball. She just didn’t like it.  I got so many compliments on it other than from her though, that it was well worth it!

We also decided that this would be great for a party. We often do traditional meatballs in sauce, but this would be a nice change. When I made them this time, I used my larger of the two Pampered Chef scoops, the same one I use to scoop my muffin batter into my tins. If I did this recipe for a party, I’d use the smaller of the two scoops, which is the same one I use for cookie batter.

I did, in fact, modify this recipe just a bit:

* It called for 1 1/2 lbs. of ground beef but I used 2 lbs of ground turkey instead.

* It said it wasn’t a particularly saucy recipe and that you could double the sauce. Since I prefer saucier than not and since I was using more meat than it called for, I did opt to double it.

*The directions called for making the meatballs and baking them right in the sauce for 30 minutes. I wasn’t all that comfortable with putting the raw meat into the sauce, so I baked them for 15 minutes first, added in the sauce and then baked them the rest of the time in the sauce.

*I left about 12 out of sauce for those who wanted plain. I’m glad I did. We all tried both and we all liked both.

I made sure to bake these in a deeper casserole dish rather than on a baking sheet, so that there’d  be plenty of space for the sauce.

Below is Mel’s recipe, just as she has it here on her site. I encourage you to try it out and take a look at some of the other recipes on her site as well!

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 pounds lean ground beef (you don’t want the beef to be too high in fat because the fat will all pool at the bottom of the baking dish after baking – big time grody-ness in my book)
• 3/4 cup quick oats
• 2 eggs, slightly beaten
• 1/2 cup finely chopped onion
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon pepper
• 1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce

• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
• 1 teaspoon mustard
• 1/4 cup barbeque sauce
• 1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce

Directions

1. For the meatballs: Combine all of the ingredients and mix well. Form into about 12 balls, eacha bout 2 inches in diameter. Place in a casserole dish. Cover with sauce (below). Bake at 350 degrees for about 30 minutes. Serve over rice.
2. For the sauce: Combine ingredients and blend thoroughly. Heat in a small saucepan until combined and sugar is dissolved and pour over meatballs. (This dish is not overly abundant on sauce so if you enjoy things a bit saucier, double the sauce ingredients.)

Notes