First True Experiment

We are getting ready to move. Some of the most creative dishes come out of looking at your refridgerator and freezer and trying to fiugre out what to do with what you've got left so you don't have to move it. That's where this dish came from. I was looking in my freezer and found a half package of frozen meatballs. I think I originally used them to make a meatball soup. I thought that I could make that recipe again but that seemed kind of heavy when it's nearly 100ºF. Instead I decided to pair these meatballs with the sweet & sour sauce recipe posted earlier and see what happened.

The ingredients:

Sweet & Sour Sauce

1 cup chicken broth
1/3 cup sugar
1/3 cup rice vinegar
4 tsp cornstarch
1 Tbsp soy sauce

Stir together ingredients in a small bowl; set aside. After cooking meat and vegetables, stir sauce; add to empty skillet. Cook and stir until bubbly. Cook and stir for 2 minutes more.

Here is the mixed-up sauce.

I decided to saute the frozen meatballs in a bit of oil. They browned fairly easily in 7 minutes or so.

To get them to heat all the way through, I covered them for a while.

I over browned them a bit on one side but it didn't really hurt the flavor. The meat was a little tougher in that area but not enough to really be detrimental.

After cooking the meat and frozen stirfry vegetables, I removed them to a dish so I could cook the sauce.

When the sauce starts bubbling, it takes just a couple of minutes to get it to a glaze consistency. I've learned with this sauce, you want to be patient and make sure you've allowed it to bubble long enough otherwise you end up with a really runny sauce that doesn't fully coat the meat and vegetables.

I added some pineapple to the vegetables and meat when I mixed them into the sauce. They added a nice sweetness to compliment the sauce.

The finished product: this was okay. The meatballs and sauce we really good together. I was actually surprised at how much I enjoyed the beef meatballs (which could just as easily have been in Swedish meatballs or even some Italian dish) covered in sweet & sour sauce. The vegetables were definitely the low point. The cheap frozen mix I found at Walmart was not that great. After having the sauce paired with fresh carrots and peppers in my sweet & sour pork recipe, I really think the fresh vegetables are crucial to making this a really nice dish. They may add some prep time to this recipe (at least doubling it), I think they would most assuredly be worth it.