Cocktail meatballs aren’t just for parties. They go well with rice or pasta, or in a bun or wrapped in a tortilla.
This photo is from a recipe that says, “one of the best parts about this appetizer is that it’s so stinking easy to make.” Not easy enough. There are 11 ingredients. At a party, people gobble up meatballs like a live action Pacman. Any marginal improvement in quality doesn’t justify the additional effort.
Rely on the old wisdom.
Buy a bag of frozen meatballs. Unless you shop somewhere weird, they are fully cooked. One ounce meatballs are big, half-ounce meatballs are small. You decide. Keep them frozen until it’s time to prepare.
Get a jar of cocktail sauce and a jar of grape jelly. If you can’t find cocktail sauce, ketchup or barbecue works fine. Something sweet and tangy. Buy the cheapest grape jelly you can find. If you don’t have grape jelly, any other jelly or jam is fine, it’s just that any seeds or solids make it a little unusual.
The recipe size doesn’t matter. Use as many meatballs as you like. Cocktail sauce and jelly are in approximately equal amounts, with enough to just cover the meatballs.
Some people dump it all in a crock pot. I don’t prefer that approach.
Toss the frozen meatballs in a stock pot to brown them. I use high heat and peanut oil. They come fully cooked, so extra cooking can toughen them up. When most of the balls are mostly brown, add roughly equal amounts of jelly and cocktail sauce.
Since the meatballs are still frozen inside, they can handle being stirred up and flopped around to mix the sauce. As the jelly gets warms up, it mixes easily.
Turn the heat down, so the mixture is at a low boil. Tops of meatballs will be sticking out of the sauce. Stir it occasionally. The idea is to thicken up the mixture. Do this for about an hour. I left it simmer for five hours once, and the meatballs were like rubber riot pellets coated in hot-patch tar.
That’s it. Done and tasty.