I love meatballs, they are easy to make and easy to batch cook. Adding more flavour to the meatballs with my homemade barbecue sauce will make them even better. These barbecue meatballs are the perfect combination of juicy meatballs and savoury barbecue sauce. My pro-tip is to double the barbecue recipe so you have extra sauce to drizzle over the meatballs when serving.
Cooking the meatballs in the oven, rather than on the stove top, make them even easier to batch cook and I can make a whole bunch of them at the same time.
Substitutes
I often make meatballs with all kinds of minced meat, depending what I have at home. The barbecue sauce works well with everything from beef to pork to turkey. Use what you have at home or what your family prefer.
Freezable
These meatballs are perfect to batch make and freeze. You can either freeze the meatballs after rolling them, or cook them in the oven first and then freeze.
To avoid one large frozen block of meatballs, freeze them individually, flat on a baking sheet. Once they are frozen solid, you can put them in a freezer bag. If you do not have the space to freeze the meatballs flat, then freeze them in portions of how many you think you need to defrost. I prefer many smaller portions to defrost rather than one big chunk that I then would not use all.
Variations
The barbecue sauce is used not only in meatballs but also in my barbecue meatloaf and you can make my barbecue meatloaf on sourdough sandwich with meatballs instead. The last one in my repertoire are my barbecue hamburgers, perfect for barbecue night in the summer. All great, freezer friendly recipes, including the barbecue sauce.
Barbecue meatballs
Ingredients
Barbecue sauce
- 2 garlic cloves minced
- 1 tbs oil
- 100 ml ketchup
- 1 ½ tbsp vinegar
- 2 tbsp brown sugar lightly packed
- 100 ml room temperature water
- 1 tbsp soy sauce
- ½ tsp chili powder
Meatballs
- 1 yellow onion
- 2 garlic cloves
- 125 ml barbecue sauce see above
- 50 ml milk
- 40 g bread crumbs
- 500 g mince meat
- 1 egg
- 1 tsp salt
- ¼ tsp white pepper
Instructions
Barbecue sauce
- Mince garlic and fry in a pot for a few minutes in the oil until fragrant.
- Mixed the rest of the ingredients and add to the pot.
- Cook for ten minutes on low heat, don’t let it boil. Whisk occasionally.
- Take off heat and let cool off for a bit before adding it to your dish.
Meatballs
- Turn on the oven to 180 °C (360 °F).
- Take mince meat out of the fridge and let come close to room temperature.
- Dice the onion and mince the garlic.
- Mix onion, garlic, barbecue sauce, milk and breadcrumbs in a bowl and let sit for at least 15 minutes.
- Once the mixture has come together in to a sludge add the mince, egg, salt and pepper.
- Stir it all together into a smooth batter. I will do it using my hands but feel free to use a spoon.
- Wet your hands with cold water and roll the mince batter into round meatballs. Place on a cooking tray, space apart.
- Oven cook for 10 minutes in the middle of the oven.
- If using a frying pan, add some butter in the bottom of the pan and fry the meatballs on all sides until golden in colour.
Leave a Reply