The sauce is AMAZINGLY TASTY! Kids should LOVE the ketchup/brown sugar mixture BUT if you are a lover of spiciness (like I am! I LOVE hot sauce!) you are going to need to add some spice to it. As for the meat balls, it is a simple enough recipe to follow (took me 3 minutes to measure, mix and roll) but they do lack their own flavor identity. I would suggest choosing your own meat seasoning and adding it to the meat mixture before rolling into balls. This recipe is a good one and will be used again! Next time, I will add seasoning and vegetables to the meat mixture and add more SPICE to the sauce! ENJOY!!! :)
Tasty! I took these to my church community group and got several compliments and requests for the recipe. I made these on a baking sheet as directed and then moved them to a bowl to transport them, so a lot of the sauce ended up getting left behind. Since the flavor is really in the sauce I wonder if it would have been better just to have baked them in a couple of 9 x 13 dishes that I could have just taken with me. Still, very yummy.
So easy to make, and the nutmeg added a little kick. Baked in a 13 X 9 pan so I didn't lose any of the sauce.. My husband said they were "Really Good" and that's enough for me! Thank you for the recipe, Chris H.
Soo yummy..My hubby loved these..I added fresh garlic and basil sea salt and cracked black pepper and crushed red pepper flakes (sweet and spicy).. to meatballs..and I made the homemade BBQ sauce added 1 cup of Sweet Baby Rays BBQ sauce and a green pepper chopped baked..and served over rice..Next time doing over mashed potatoes.. Super Moist and a great recipe..Thanks for sharing..Super easy and delish..
This is close to a recipe that I have been using for a while now. Unfortunately I can't find that cook book at the moment.:( The only difference between that recipe and this one is that instead of using 1/3 cup water (which is about 6 TBS) it calls for 3T water and 3T white vinegar. The vinegar definitely balances out the super sweet flavor of the sugar and in my opinion tastes better; more tangy. Therefore I can only give this recipe 4 stars. Still good tho.:)
If you add some red pepper flakes the flavors of the meatballs become really complex both sweet and spicy at the same time. They come out really good and taste good with mashed potatoes.
These meatballs were great. Nice change from the regular Italian meatballs. I did double the sauce because I wanted enough to have over white rice. So good over rice. The sauce is quite sweet but my family likes that. If you aren't a fan of really sweet things then these may not be for you. I also misread the recipe and used ground ginger instead of nutmeg. Didn't matter because they were perfect. Definite keeper.
The original recipe looked like a fantastic guideline but I'm given to altering recipes before I try them as presented. As it turns out I found my variation to be ridiculously good. I substituted Italian seasoned bread crumbs for the crackers nixed the onions altogether since I am not an enthusiast and added 1/2 cup of grated parmesan-romano cheese to the mixture. After rolling the meatballs and arranging them on the baking sheet I very lightly dusted the tops with just a skosh more cheese. I also felt that while the sauce was good I wanted something extra to spice it up. To achieve that I added 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon and 1/4 teaspoon red cayenne pepper. For appetizer-sized portions the amount of sauce this recipe makes is perfect. However if you are looking for a slightly saucier dish I would recommend upping the sauce ingredients by at least 50% as covering 20 meatballs made from 1 lb. of ground meat won't leave much extra.
Sauce was a bit too sweet for my taste.
