Name: Sweet and Sour Meatballs
Prep time: 10 min
Cook time: 20 min
Total time: 30 min
Cuisine: Asian-American
Ingredients: 1 (20 oz) can pineapple chunks in juice; 3 medium bell peppers, cut into 1-inch chunks; 1 small zucchini, cut into 1/8-inch thick rounds; 1 cup of sliced celery; 1/2 medium red onion, cut into slivers; 1/2 cup brown sugar; 2 tablespoons cornstarch; 1/4 cup soy sauce (or coconut aminos); 1/2 cup beef stock; zest and juice of 1 lemon; 1 Tablespoon minced garlic; 1 teaspoon ginger paste or fresh grated ginger; optional: red pepper flakes, to taste; 24-30 frozen meatballs (click the link to get my homemade meatballs recipe)

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Sweet and Sour Meatballs are delicious spicy meatballs, chunks of pineapple and crisp, fresh veggies coated in a simple, homemade sweet and sour sauce. A 30-Minute simple recipe your family will love!

Sweet and Sour Meatballs in a Cast Iron skillet with a wooden spoon

Sweet and Sour Meatballs is the next recipe in my meatball series. Guys, these are SO good! Serve over your favorite variety of rice and in less than 30 minutes you have a meal you’d be proud to serve to company.

The Meatballs

If you missed the very first post where I teach you to make the extraordinarily flavorful meatballs that are used as an ingredient in this Sweet and Sour Meatballs recipe, you’ll definitely want to check it out. It shows you how to use my favorite meatball recipe to make 126 meatballs in about an hour.

That’s enough for around 5 meals, for a family of six. The post includes instructions for freezing them, too, so you’ll be able to use them in all the other great recipes, like this one.

You can always buy a bag of frozen meatballs at the store, if that’s your preference. But, once you get used to keeping these delicious meatballs in your freezer, to create meals like Sweet and Sour Meatballs, you’ll never want any others. Go here to get the meatball recipe.

If what you want is a delicious weeknight family dinner, you’re gonna love this Sweet and Sour Meatballs recipe. But, be sure you also save my Meatballs in Brown Gravy recipe and Meatball Stew, too. You’ll want all three of these quick and easy dinner recipes in your menu rotation.

Sweet and Sour Meatballs on white rice served on a plain white plate sitting on a wooden table

The flavorful sweet and sour sauce in this Sweet and Sour Meatballs recipe only requires 6 common pantry ingredients.

Once you’ve prepared it, all you need to do is stir in the frozen meatballs and fresh cut vegetables.

Use up veggies you have in the fridge or choose the ones your family likes best. I used zucchini, all the colors of bell peppers, sliced celery and slivered red onion.

Serve Sweet and Sour Meatballs over brown rice, quinoa, udon noodles or even zoodles. You’ll have created a tasty Asian-inspired dinner that will zoom to the top of your family’s favorites!

The Ingredients

frozen meatballs (Get my Meatball recipe or use store-bought.)
canned pineapple chunks
brown sugar
cornstarch
soy sauce (or coconut aminos)
beef stock
zest and juice of 1 lemon
veggies of your choice (I used bell peppers, celery, red onion and zucchini)
minced garlic
ginger paste or fresh grated ginger
optional, red pepper flakes

How to Make Sweet and Sour Meatballs

Pull 24-30 meatballs out of your freezer stash. They don’t need to thaw. Just have them handy, since the recipe goes together quickly.

Start the sauce by dumping the pineapple into a 12″ cast iron skillet and turning the heat on to medium.

pineapple brown sugar, corn starch and lemon zest un a cast iron skillet

In a small bowl, whisk together the beef broth, soy sauce and the lemon juice and zest. Be sure all the liquids are room temperature or colder. They need to be cold so you can dissolve the corn starch in them.
Add the cornstarch to the liquids in your bowl and continue whisking until the cornstarch is completely dissolved. Then, pour the mixture into the skillet with the pineapple and stir to combine. It will begin to bubble and thicken in just 1 or 2 minutes.

Meatballs added to the pineaplle and sauce in a cast iron skillet

Toss the meatballs into your sauce and turn the heat down to low. Let the meatballs and sauce simmer long enough for the meatballs to be heated through (about 10 minutes).

adding vegetables to Sweet and Sour Meatballs in a castiron skillet

Add the fresh veggies to the skillet, stir to make sure everything is evenly coated and continue to simmer another 2-5 minutes. Cook long enough for the vegetables to be hot and to allow them to get to your desired degree of tenderness.
(For the fastest meal, I start a pot of my Perfect Brown Rice, (made with parboiled/instant rice), immediately after adding the meatballs to the sauce. The timing is perfect for it to be done, just as the meatballs are ready to serve.)

Brown Rice in awhite ceramic serving bowl. Bowl is sitting on a wooden trivet that rests on a concrete counter top with a blue and whitee print fabric napkin.

How to Serve Sweet and Sour Meatballs

Serve Sweet and Sour Meatballs over your family’s favorite carb or veggie base:

Brown Rice
White Rice
Wild Rice
Quinoa
Udon noodles
Zucchini Noodles
Cauliflower Rice
Sweet Potato Noodles

Variations and Substitutions

sliced veggies on a wooden cutting board with a chef's knife: zucchini slices, celery slices, slivered red onion,s red, yellow and green bell peppers

This recipe is the base formula for you to customize your Sweet and Sour Meatballs to your own personal tastes.

The easiest substitutions will be in the vegetables you choose to add. Some possibilities are snap peas, snow peas, broccoli florets, cauliflower florets, carrot slices or shreds, cabbage, water chestnuts, mushrooms or even shoe peg corn. Use what you have on hand and what your family loves to make your Sweet and Sour Meatballs truly your own.

You could also substitute 1/4 teaspoon of powdered ginger for the fresh ginger and/or 1 teaspoon of garlic powder instead of the minced garlic.

As mentioned before, you can always just purchase frozen meatballs ready-made. But, if you get the chance, I highly encourage you to try my meatball recipe and always have the most flavorful and delicious meatballs on hand in your freezer.

Enjoy this scrumptious Sweet and Sour Meatballs recipe! I hope you’ll make the recipe soon. If you do and find that it’s one you and your family really enjoy, I hope you’ll consider stopping back here to leave a comment letting me know, along with a 5 star rating. Your 5 star rating helps others find our recipe when they do a Google search.

Have a wonderfully blessed week and I hope you love Sweet and Sour Meatballs!

The Recipe