a recipe from my mother-in-law’s family for a distinctive take on classic meatballs. These are cooked in a lovely sweet-and-sour sauce with a tomato base that is fantastic over rice! The original sauce recipe was doubled by me. This recipe will yield a large amount of sauce, which we enjoy.
| Prep Time: | 15 mins |
| Cook Time: | 1 hr 5 mins |
| Total Time: | 1 hr 20 mins |
| Servings: | 6 |
| Yield: | 12 large meatballs |
Ingredients
- 1 ½ pounds ground beef
- 2 eggs
- 1 ½ cups bread crumbs
- ¼ cup finely chopped onion
- ¾ cup milk
- salt and ground black pepper to taste
- 2 cups ketchup
- 2 (8 ounce) cans tomato sauce
- 2 cups water
- ⅔ cup brown sugar
- ⅔ cup white sugar
- 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
- 1 teaspoon Italian seasoning
- 1 teaspoon chili powder
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
- Mix the ground beef, eggs, bread crumbs, onion, milk, salt, and black pepper together in a large mixing bowl until evenly combined. Form the mixture into 12 large meatballs. Arrange the meatballs into a 9×13-inch baking dish.
- Stir the ketchup, tomato sauce, water, brown sugar, white sugar, Worcestershire sauce, Italian seasoning, and chili powder together in a saucepan over medium heat; cook and stir until well combined and hot, about 5 minutes. Pour the tomato sauce mixture over the meatballs in the baking dish. Turn the meatballs to coat in the sauce.
- Bake in the preheated oven until the meatballs are cooked through and no longer pink in the center, 60 to 90 minutes.
Nutrition Facts
| Calories | 597 kcal |
| Carbohydrate | 85 g |
| Cholesterol | 133 mg |
| Dietary Fiber | 3 g |
| Protein | 28 g |
| Saturated Fat | 7 g |
| Sodium | 1621 mg |
| Sugars | 63 g |
| Fat | 18 g |
| Unsaturated Fat | 0 g |
Reviews
Even when i use store bought meatballs this dish seriously is a staple meal i get harassed for it to be at every function outing its quick ,its cheap , usually have the ingredients just kicking around so its perfect add pinapple and 3 shots of rum slow cook 24 hrs
We didn’t have a lot of time tonight so we just used frozen meatballs, but that sauce is spot on. I adorned it with chopped green belpeppers, onions, and pineapple and it came out great!
Delicious! I make the meatballs my own way but the sauce in this recipe is super good. I leave out part of the white sugar.
Meatballs are tender but the sauce is a little too sweet for me. Next time I’d make it with less of the sugars but it’s still delicious! Just like how my grandma used to make them!!
Made it once, cut the time in half by cooking meat balls on stove and saving energy$……why water? I left it out DELISH, thick and tastier….doubled chili powder and worcestire……I guess this made up for the traditionallike made meatballs ……no rice necessary not a big fan of meatballs on rice……thank you mmmmmmmmm
I only used the brown sugar to cut back on sugar and it was great! I used frozen meatballs for a quick meal.
I won’t make this again
Good recipe – I replaced 1/2 cup water with Vinegar. Everyone enjoyed it!
The meatballs themselves were bland. The sauce was too sweet, and I had lowered the amount of sugar and ketchup required. Loved the tang of the spices, and I would try it again with less sweetness.
I wanted to try something different and this recipe sounded delicious! I was, however, forced to make 2 changes because of not having the right and correct amount of ingredients. My only tweaks were adding 6 honey garlic Italian sausage links (out of casing) to the ground beef and using meat sauce rather than tomato sauce (was out of tomato sauce). Other than that, this dish turned out superb! I served over rice as suggested and my husband just loved it! I’ll be making this dish again! Thank you Rebekah!
I wanted to rate this 3.5 stars b/c they are better than ok. Just too sweet for us, AND I didn’t even use all the sugar it said to! I used 1/2c each. Next time I’ll use even less. Good spicy twist to it, if you can get the sugar balanced correctly, I think.
I gave this a 5 star because it is a fabulous BASE recipe that can easily be changed to suit your family’s taste buds! All of my family enjoys this, even the toddler who normally won’t eat ANYTHING with a sauce on it!! First time, made as written… it was good, but was missing something. Second time, I used my meatball recipe, cut sauce in 1/2 and added 1/2 tsp rice vinegar and 1/2 tsp lemon juice to the sauce… MUCH better and with this I realized it was versatile. Last night, I used the sauce recipe with stir fry veggies/ chicken and served over rice… FABULOUS!! Add soy sauce (to taste) and it makes a very light terriyaki sauce. Thank you SOOOOOOO much!!!
Awesome!! Super easy and everyone loved it!
I love this recipe, I make my meatballs much smaller, it just takes more prep time, they are great on hot dog buns as well as rice or pasta
great. add lemon juice
I’ve made this MANY times already and we love it – it makes more than enough sauce so you could cut it back a little bit if you wanted to. We love it every time I make it – it’s become a “frequent flyer” with my menu planning!
I did this a little differently, and instead of throwing everything into the oven, I let it simmer on the stove while I prepared and fried the meatballs, and then tossed the meat into the sauce and let it simmer longer until the rice was done. I also used cornstarch to thicken it since I took the stove-top shortcut. I was very skeptical of the sauce, but it turned out fantastic. It was absolutely perfect with the meatballs and served over rice. I’ve done different recipes before and they were too sweet that even my kids wouldn’t eat it. The tomato sauce really mellowed it out.
Oh Wow!! So tasty!! Pretty easy too, and most are ingredients are pantry items that you have already. I was craving a meatball with a sweet flavor and this did the trick! I just ate the meatballs but my husband (who needs a lot of food) ate it on some white rice which was obviously easy to make….definitely make this again.
a tad too sweet for my liking , BUT the family loved them. I made rice for the original meal and meatball subs with the leftovers.
very good and very easy! mine made 20 meatballs, and since i was in a hurry, i put them in the oven at 400 for 35 minutes. perfect!
We really enjoyed this although it is very sweet. I might cut back a bit on the sugar next time. There was enough sauce to completely fill the 9×13 dish. I noticed the contributor said she doubled the sauce, so next time I will probably cut it in half.