Fans have valid reasons for considering this oddball meatball dish a fringe food classic. And it’s all about unsuspected, exotic flavour. We’re back in ‘swicy’, ‘swavoury’, smoky territory again with this quirky combo. Which way you go is up to you!
Grape Jelly Meatballs look great. And you can make them
smoky or swicy or swavoury, to suit your preference!
This is another ‘game day’ slow-cooker dish that’s meant to be as easy and quick as you can imagine. And, as you can imagine, it’s especially prone to short-cutting in a number of ways…
You’ll never believe how easy this ‘recipe’ is. And once you’ve seen the details, you’ll never reveal them to the folks you feed this dish to! There are literally just 4 ingredients – yet you can bend and twist the flavour any which way you want!
So, what’s the secret, already?
There’s more than one. So I’ve broken them down by ingredient…
The Meatballs
You can use any prepared, frozen oven-ready meatballs you choose. But plain, unflavoured ones (rather than, say Italian-style, with the herbs and spices in the meat) work best. I suggest you go with ‘Swedish’ or ‘Plain’ meatballs. Bake them in the oven as directed on the package for meatiest base flavour. Then place in a slow cooker.
Turn on the cooker to ‘low’, just hot enough to keep the dish nice and warm for serving, and at or above the safe holding temperature (165 F). Add the ‘secret’ BBQ sauce blend and warm to serving temperature, stirring gently from time to time to distribute the sauce evenly over the meatballs…
The Sauce
Here’s where the parallel flavour universes diverge. You need to choose one (and one only) pre-made BBQ sauce on which to base your custom flavour drench. The source recipe recommends light- to medium-smoky. But my experience suggests a savoury, not too-spicy base sauce works best. Because whatever we start with, we want to end up with a flavour profile featuring fruity, sweet, even floral shades and overtones contributed by the Grape Jelly. And we don’t want to drown that out!
The Grape Stuff
Nothing too complicated, here. And experience, again, suggests keeping it simple (and inexpensive) is best. So go with house-brand ‘clear’ Grape Jelly. At most elaborate, good, old, dependable Welch’s or Smucker’s.
The Heat
This dimension of the flavour profile. Use a gentle touch. It’s easy to overwhelm the fruity overtones you’re adding with an overdose of spice or heat.That will make the final result muddy-tasting. Which is guaranteed to be a disaster. And if that happens, there’s no way to fix it. You’ll have to start from the beginning with all-new ingredients.
My take
If you thought the notion of Grape Jelly in a BBQ sauce sounded vaguely familiar, you’re right. There was a brief but frantic fad for an earlier version of this dish a few years back. But it fizzled out pretty quick, largely because many fans found it was just generally too sweet. Proponents of this new ver-sion, however, say the slightly hot ‘upper edge’ and any hint of ‘low end’ smokiness you opt for make all the difference in the overall impression this sauced delivers…
I suggest you not make this dish the very first time for company. You’ll want to experiment and prac-tice balancing the flavour, to be sure you can replicate the final result just the way you want it every time you make it.
But once you can reliably reproduce your signature blend, you’ll have something unique that will keep your family and friends guessing which exotique global cuisine it hails from, and what’s in it!
These ‘game day’ meatballs are absolutely made to be eaten hot, straight off a cocktail pick, chased by an ice-cold beer…
~ Maggie J.