Meatballs

Cranberry Meatballs

Bryan and I decided that meatballs sounded good, but we wanted to try a new recipe to change things up a bit. (The recipes we have a great – but we make those a lot.)

We needed to use up some ground beef so we stuck with a entirely ground beef recipe. I think future meatball attempts may include beef and pork and we will freeze the excess in smaller portions so we do not have to eat meatballs all week long!

Bryan found this recipe in The Complete Guide to Country Cooking, a cookbook my mom and dad gave me when I was in 8^th grade. I begged my parents for cookbooks when I was a kid but they tried hard to get us age appropriate things but I was not necessarily interested in a child’s cookbook as I had some of those and wanted something more advanced. Eventually, I got this cookbook and it appeased me for some time.

This recipe included a sauce that we will use as the beginning of a BBQ sauce. Once we get the recipe perfected we will post it here J

I don’t like to touch raw meat so Bryan offered to make the meatballs. He combined all of the ingredients and used a 1-inch cookie scoop to make the meatballs. He was careful to pack the cookie scoop full so that the meatballs did not fall apart while cooking.

We placed them on a sheet and baked them for 20 minutes.

Once the meatballs were out of the oven we put them in the cranberry/tomato sauce for 10 minutes to finish cooking and to take on some of the sauce flavor.

You’ll see that we are missing a vegetable in this picture. We did have them (cucumbers) but the dishwasher had all of our dirty plates, so we ate our main dish first in these bowls and then had the cucumbers. It happens!

Cranberry Meatballs copied from The Complete Guide to Country Cooking by Taste of Home Publishing

1 egg, lightly beaten

½ c. crushed saltines (approx 15 crackers)

¼ diced onion

1 tsp salt

½ tsp pepper

1 lb. ground beef

1 can (16 oz) whole-berry cranberry sauce

1 can (10 ¾ oz) condensed tomato soup, undiluted

In a bowl, combine the first five ingredients. Crumble meat over mixture and mix well. Shape into 1 ½ inch balls. Place on rack in a baking pan. Bake, uncovered, at 400 degrees for 20 minutes or until no longer pink.

Meanwhile, combine cranberry sauce and soup in a large saucepan; heat through.

Add meatballs, simmer for 10 minutes. Serve over rice or noodles.

Yield: 4 servings