Yes, Virginia, you can make cocktail meatballs without breadcrumbs or eggs. (Note: Okay, I lied. I said in my last post that this post would be about pineapple. That’s the next post, I promise).
I started out with this recipe, written by my grandma:
I of course had to tweak it. I used powdered egg substitute for the eggs. I bought blackberry “fruit spread” in place of the grape jelly (lower in sugar and I *love* blackberries). I couldn’t find traditional chili sauce at my organic grocery, but happened upon some Thai sweet chili sauce instead. I was dubious about it, but it worked out in the end.
I halved this recipe because I only had one pound of ground beef (yes, actual ground beef this time; not bison). Since the original recipe didn’t call for much cornflakes to begin with, I wasn’t worried about omitting them entirely. I was worried about the chili sauce. I didn’t think it was the same consistency as that called for originally. I ended up adding a tablespoon of tomato paste and 1/4 c. of water to the sauce before simmering everything together. I probably could have halved that amount of water and been fine, but I’m glad that I added both.
I was a bit concerned that the recipe didn’t advise to brown the meatballs before simmering, but that ended up being unnecessary. They soaked up the color of the rich sauce. Per the recipe, it was definitely necessary to spoon off the fat from the sauce.
The result was spot-on taste-wise! I’m thrilled and can’t wait to make this again. That’s two successful meatball recipes without gluten or egg. The sky’s the limit from here.
