Sweet Heat Meatballs

Let me just say something here off the bat. I love meatballs. If there’s any kind of food in the world that causes someone’s brain to malfunction and start chanting its name in a frenzied mantra, it’s meatballs for me.

It started a very long time ago. Let’s fairy tale this. Once upon a time, I happened across a hole in the wall restaurant that served spaghetti and meatballs. I ate it and I fell in love.  And we lived hungrily ever after. The end.

Probably not the best of fairy tales but I started off making Parmesan meatballs which I put in subs and gradually recreated the dish that started this all.

Then came the invasion of the evil Ikea Swedish meatballs. Can I say yum? Now when I see meatball recipes all over Pinterest, it takes a huge amount of restraint not to start a meatball posting crusade and throw in the towel by renaming my blog to The Meatball Inc.

But today I yield. Because these meatballs are so glaze happy they wouldn’t take no for an answer. So here we have sweet heat meatballs. It has this background heat to it that’s just right. And it’s sweet. It’s meat-shaped balls on a stick. Hooray for great inventions!

And while you can opt to make your own meatballs, you can also get frozen ones to work with here. How easy is that? More time to work on that glaze.

And how about that glaze? I’ll let it speak for itself.

Let’s zoom in, shall we?

How can you not want that? Okay, let’s zoom out again.

Serve these babies at dinner parties, cook outs or whatever function you have. It’s great for party food or just plain snacks!

Sweet Heat Meatballs

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★★★★★

4.2 from 5 reviews

• Author: The Cooking Jar
• Prep Time: 5 mins
• Cook Time: 10 mins
• Total Time: 15 mins
• Yield: 25 servings

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Ingredients

• 2 lbs. frozen, pre-cooked meatballs
• 1/2 cup molasses
• 4 tablespoons brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1 teaspoon ginger, minced
• 1 teaspoon chili powder
• 1/4 teaspoon cayenne
• 1/2 cup water
• 1 can (8 oz.) crushed pineapple
• 2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
• Salt and pepper to taste

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Instructions

1. Over medium high heat, bring the water to a boil
2. Add molasses, brown sugar, garlic, ginger, chili powder, cayenne, crushed pineapple and Worcestershire sauce and stir to combine
3. Season with salt and pepper to taste
4. Add in meatballs and stir to coat evenly
5. Reduce heat to medium and simmer until the sauce reduces, about 10 minutes
6. Skewer with bamboo sticks and serve hot with or without sauce reduction

Notes

Makes 25 sticks with 2 meatballs each.

 Nutritional based on 25 servings (2 meatballs each)