Sweet & Sour Meatballs (Bulk Recipe)

Someone asked me for this recipe recently and I’d forgotten what a good bulk cooking dish that this is for the freezer. I originally got it years ago from a good friend of mine, Donna, who also happens to be a terrific cook.

I save my crusts from bread and dry them for bread crumbs. (I use the blender to grind them up fine.) If you’ve accumulated a bunch of crumbs but are stuck with how to use them, this recipe is a really good way to use up a lot of breadcrumbs all at once.  I’ll spend a couple of hours cooking up a whack of meatballs and then freeze them into the reusable foil containers with cardboard lids. They thaw in a jiffy and are easy to heat if you have unexpected company or just forgot to take something out for supper. They are fabulous especially served with rice.

This recipe is for bulk cooking. You can make a smaller amount, but it’s hardly any more trouble to mix up 10 lbs of hamburger instead of just one, if you have the ingredients to do so - this recipe makes about 10 meals for a family of 4.

MEATBALLS

10 lbs ground beef

18 eggs

2 1/2 cups of ketchup

1/4 cup of Worchestershire sauce

1/2 cup of soya sauce

1 tbsp garlic powder

2 tbsp onion powder

2 tbsp ginger

1 tsp ground allspice

3 tbsp salt

1/4 cup dry parsley

13 cups of fine bread crumbs

Mix all ingredients together in a big roasting pan or big bread bowl.

Knead everything together until well mixed. Start shaping the hamburger into 1” - 1 1/2” balls. Put the balls onto a broiler pan or cookie sheet covered with foil. Broil for about 8 minutes per pan. Transfer the cooked meatballs on to a paper towel to absorb any grease. Drain the excess grease from your cookie sheet into a tin can before broiling the next batch.

As the meatballs are cooked, place them into reusable foil containers, but don’t seal until you’ve covered them with the Sweet and Sour Sauce.

SWEET & SOUR SAUCE

7 cups of vinegar

23 cups of brown sugar

15 cups of water

1/2 cup of cornstarch dissolved in 4 cups of water

In a very large pot, bring mixture to a boil stirring constantly. Sauce will go from cloudy to clear. Once sauce is ready, pour over meatballs until covered and seal the containers for the freezer.

When ready to use, dump out of the foil container (so you can reuse them another time) into a casserole dish and bake at 350 for 30 minutes if thawed, or one hour if frozen.