Connie’s Sweet and Sour Christmas Meatballs

  4.3 – 17 reviews  • Meatball Appetizer Recipes

Do you have any leftover corned beef that needs to be used up? The air fryer is used to prepare this crispy corned beef hash from beginning to end.

Prep Time: 30 mins
Cook Time: 30 mins
Total Time: 1 hr
Servings: 10
Yield: 30 meatballs

Ingredients

  1. 1 egg
  2. ¼ cup water
  3. 1 pound ground beef
  4. 2 slices bread, crumbled
  5. 1 pinch salt and ground black pepper to taste
  6. 1 cup ketchup
  7. 1 cup beef bouillon
  8. ½ cup vinegar
  9. ½ cup brown sugar
  10. 2 tablespoons cornstarch

Instructions

  1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
  2. Beat egg and water in a bowl; add ground beef, bread crumbs, salt, and black pepper to eggs and mix thoroughly. Form ground beef mixture into bite-size meatballs; place meatballs into a large baking dish.
  3. Bake in the preheated oven until meatballs are browned and no longer pink inside, 25 to 30 minutes.
  4. Mix ketchup, beef bouillon, and vinegar in a large saucepan or Dutch oven. Combine brown sugar and cornstarch in a small bowl and stir brown sugar mixture into ketchup mixture. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to low, and stir until sauce is thickened and bubbling and brown sugar has dissolved, about 5 minutes. Add meatballs to sauce, stir until coated, and serve.

Nutrition Facts

Calories 160 kcal
Carbohydrate 17 g
Cholesterol 46 mg
Dietary Fiber 0 g
Protein 9 g
Saturated Fat 2 g
Sodium 431 mg
Sugars 13 g
Fat 6 g
Unsaturated Fat 0 g

Reviews

James Jackson
Was a great sweet & sour sauce recipe. Being me, I tweaked things a bit by adding maybe 1/2 C 7Up and a quarter of a lemon squeezed a sprinkle of cayenne. Used a touch more corn starch to compensate. I too used store-bought frozen meatballs (Swedish -as they have the least overpowering flavours vs. Italian style for example. Made if for High school boys hockey team Thanksgiving dinner as a meat side dish. Son says will be well received! Edit: nov 28th cooked these in dutch oven on stovetop. Kept near frozen over 2 nites. Reheated today (stovetop, same dutch oven they were still in) to transport to dinner location and then ladled into preheated CrockPot. As one reviewer said they taste better the next day (less catsup-y). Will definitely reuse this easy recipe!
Kimberly Adams
I made it in the slow cooker with precooked meatballs. Sauce was great! Always a crowd pleaser!
Mitchell Ray
Love the sauce. It was great for both adults and children. Will definitely make again.
Jon Garner
I made this recipe twice and my husband and friends loved it. It’s easy to make, with a great flavor.
Mary Ray
This recipe was so bad that after five years of being on here, I’ve decided to leave my first review. The sauce in itself was terrible and tasted only of ketchup and vinegar, but would’ve been excusable if the meatballs were good. Spoiler alert: they were just as bad. I’m only leaving this because I feel as though I was led on by everyone’s high rating and I don’t want another user to suffer through the same dinner my bf and I did.
Andre Walsh
Bland. I won’t be making these again.
Scott Mendez
We really enjoyed these meatballs. I used half ground beef and half ground pork mixture to make these meatballs. Otherwise I followed the directions exactly. I made them a day ahead, cooked them and then just reheated them the next day for serving. I found that by reheating them to serve the next day the strong vinegar flavour disappeared. My family enjoyed this recipe and said it’s a keeper! I guess I will be making these again! Thanks for sharing your recipe!
Jeremy Armstrong
Loved it!! Reminded me of the meatballs my mom use to make!!
Matthew Contreras
I made this today for super bowl Sunday! Soooo good! I put them in the crockpot, first browning the meatballs in the oven. I made the sauce in the crockpot while the meat was in the oven. The sauce thickened beautifully with the cornstarch. I used half ground beef and half ground chicken and used low sugar ketchup. Will make again!
Christopher Roman
Make them the night before to reduce the ketchup flavor.
Emma Bush
My husband had made up his own recipe of sweet and sour and we loved it so we were hesitant to try something new. We are glad we did!!! We make this EXACTLY like the recipe except I put in a good quality frozen meatball instead of making my own(omit ingredients for meatballs if you use frozen) and make the sauce just like it says and then we put it all in the crockpot on high for several hours. I am sure it is delicious with the homemade meatballs too, but I used the frozen to save on time. They are delicious! Everyone loves them. Even my daughter who is picky about sweet and sour. Try it! It is a keeper for us.
Jamie Romero MD
I prepared exactly as written. I just wish I could give it more stars. Next time I might try adding some pineapple, red onion, green and yellow bell peppers carrots, etc. Definitely not necessary tho.
Gary Kramer
I used Italian breadcrumbs rather than just the bread, and I added garlic powder to the meatballs. Certainly, you could add whatever you like in your meatballs. I like the sauce, and especially appreciate that it calls for ingredients I keep on hand.
Paul Anderson
I made this sauce, it was delicious!! It had just the right balance of sweet and sour. The meatball recipe looked a little bland, so I used my own. I added steak spice, seasoning salt, italian bread crumbs and 2 eggs to my ground beef, the meatballs got rave reviews 🙂
Rebecca Andrews
Very Good taste. My husband said that it was superb. I did put some onion into my meat mixture. This is going to be a regular in my kitchen. Thanks
John Watson
I made this for Christmas it was a Big Hit Thank You!!! 🙂 the only things I did different were~~ I put finely grated onion, garlic, parmesan-romano cheese and a package of real bacon bits in to the meat mixture and used 1 lb ground chuck and 1 lb of ground pork sausage. The sauce I didn’t change at all it was incredible people were dipping into it even after the meat balls were gone!!!
Carrie Bennett
Delicious. My husband said they were the best he ever had. Which is good because I’ve never made sweet and sour meatballs! Only minor changes I made were to add chopped onions to the meat mixture, used less water with the eggs, and used bread crumbs instead of bread. Adjust the brown sugar based on how sweet you like things. I used a little less

 

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