In Episode 084 we making a Hoisin Glazed meatball for dinner. This is a Homemade Asian style meatball that is flavored with soy, sesame, ginger, and scallions. They are baked to tender perfection and then tossed in a homemade Hoisin Glaze that is made with hoisin sauce, fresh ginger, garlic, sesame and all the crave-worthy Asian flavors.
Serve this up with some steamed rice and roasted broccoli for a great dinner!
Transcript
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Intro: Hey, hey everybody. Welcome to another episode of Let’s Make Dinner, your audio library of amazing dinner recipes you can always get on the table. I’m your host, Susie Weinrich.
Susie Weinrich: What’s up, everybody? I have to tell you that it has been quite a morning. Okay. I am recording this episode on a Tuesday morning. It’s the morning that my kids went back to school from spring break. If you are part of my newsletter, which you’re not signed up for, there’ll be a link in the show notes for you. If you’re a part of my newsletter community, then you know that we are in the middle of a huge renovation of our basement.
We have a large unfinished basement. We’re putting a full kitchen down there, well, not a full kitchen, a three-quarter kitchen, like a three-quarter bath and a bedroom, a living room, a bathroom. Today there are no construction workers here. So I thought, ah, the perfect time to record a podcast episode. I have been working on recording this episode for over an hour. Something happened with my settings in my recording platform and it all got messed up. So I am hoping, fingers crossed. Please, please, please that this episode comes out okay. Let’s get on to talking about food and not my crazy life.
Okay, so today on this episode of Let’s Make Dinner, we’re going to make a delicious Asian-style meatball with a homemade hoisin glaze that goes over the top. It’s a wonderful kind of Asian-style dinner when you’re craving takeout, but also want to eat at home. This is a great option. I bet if your family loves Asian-style takeout, then everybody’s going to love this one.
The full recipe has two parts. You’re going to make an Asian-style meatball, and then you’re also going to make that homemade hoisin glaze. Just like a couple of episodes back where we made the Veggie Pad Thai, and we said there’s a ton of ingredients involved, but if you buy these ingredients for the veggie pad Thai or for the Asian meatballs, chances are you’re going to have all of the ingredients you need and you can go ahead and make any of these recipes then. So once you buy oyster sauce and sesame oil and soy sauce and ginger, there’s a myriad of recipes that you can make in that Asian flavor family.
So this recipe is going to make probably around 20 meatballs. I always say you can serve probably about four meatballs per person as long as you have those side dishes with it. With this, we’re probably going to serve something like steamed rice and a veggie. So I would say this recipe is going to serve about five people. It’s going to take you probably about half an hour from start to finish to get this done. You are going to make the meatballs, and then while they bake, you’ll make that sauce. Once they’re done, you coat them in that sauce and then you’re ready to go. So, as I said, probably about half an hour from start to finish. Not bad.
Tips and Tricks: Let’s go over a couple of tips and tricks when we’re talking about making these Asian meatballs. First of all, for the meatballs, any meatball recipe that I have on Mom’s Dinner, which is where I share all of my recipes, momsdinner.net. Any meatball recipe that you find is going to contain some kind of a panade. A panade is basically a starch and a liquid that’s mixed together to keep any kind of ground meat recipe tender and juicy. So for this recipe, we’re going to use a mixture of soy sauce, sesame oil, egg, and then panko breadcrumbs. That’s going to mix together and be added to the ground beef. It’s going to add flavor, but it’s also going to keep those meatballs nice and tender like I said.
Now let’s talk about the ground beef that you’re going to use for your meatballs. What I recommend with almost any meatball that you make that has beef in it, is using 85% lean ground beef, or up to, I would say 90. A 90/10 or an 85/15. What that means is that 85%. Of that ground meat mixture is going to be lean ground beef, and then 15% of that is going to be fat. The fat, you don’t want to go any fat or super low fat, like a 7%. You want a little bit of fat in there because number one, it keeps your meatballs juicy. Number two, it adds flavor to the ground beef. You could also look at 80/20, but when you get to that 80/20, you have so much fat content that you risk it being a little bit greasy. Anytime you’re making meatballs, meatloaf, or anything like that, go for that 85% or 90% lean ground beef.
Now as far as the Asian-flavored glaze, the hoisin glaze, there are a few ingredients that I want to talk about here, and we’ve talked about a couple of these before. So if you are a listener of this podcast, then you’ve heard me talk about fresh ginger and using fresh ginger. You can absolutely buy the brown knobs of ginger at the grocery store. Peel them with just the edge of a spoon. You take an edge of a spoon and scrape it. Then you can mince it, you can grate it you can chop it however you want to use that fresh ginger. What I like to do in my kitchen is buy something called Dorot Gardens, and they’re little frozen ginger cubes. Just go to the freezer section of your grocery store where they’ll have the veggies. They should have a frozen herb section and buy those little ginger cubes. Each cube is a teaspoon of fresh ginger and it works perfectly. They melt into the sauce really fast and it tastes exactly like fresh ginger. Well, because it is fresh ginger, it’s just frozen.
Another ingredient that you need is hoisin sauce, and if your grocery store has an Asian foods aisle or section, you’ll be able to find and sauce right there. Basically, it’s kind of a sweet, tart, and tangy sauce that looks like molasses, and it adds a really nice flavor to this glaze.
Another ingredient is rice vinegar for this sauce. You’ll see in the grocery store, or maybe in your fridge, there’s either seasoned rice vinegar or plain rice vinegar. So seasoned rice vinegar just has a little bit more sugar than plain rice vinegar, and so really either one will work here. The last ingredient that I want to talk about is something in the recipe card called sambal oelek. I don’t even know if I’m saying it right. I apologize right now if I’m saying that wrong. I always just call it sambal. What that is is basically a chili garlic sauce or garlic chili sauce. Again, you could find it in the Asian foods area or section of your grocery store, and it looks like sriracha. It’ll be red with chili flakes and garlic mixed in, and it is so good. I actually like it better than Sriracha. Sometimes the sriracha, at least on my palette, is an off-flavor. I don’t know if it’s the additional garlic, I don’t know what it is, but some ball has a much cleaner chili flavor than sriracha, so I highly recommend you try it.
Hoisin Meatballs Recipe: All right. I think that’s all of my tips and tricks for this recipe. So let’s go ahead and get into making the full recipe. As I said before, what you want to do is start by making the meatballs, and then while the meatballs cook, we’re going to make the sauce.
So for the meatballs, You’re going to want to preheat your oven to 400 degrees and then get a large-rimmed baking sheet. Then line that with foil and lightly spray it with a non-stick cooking spray. Then in a mixing bowl for the meatballs, you’re going to combine one egg, three tablespoons of soy sauce, and one tablespoon of sesame oil. It’s a lot of sesame oil, but trust me, it makes the meatballs taste so good. You’ll need a three-quarters teaspoon of kosher salt, a quarter teaspoon of red pepper flakes, and a quarter teaspoon of ground ginger. Two garlic cloves that you mince and then add those three-quarters cup of panko breadcrumbs. Give that all a really good stir. Then what I like to do is let it just sit and soften and come together for just a few minutes. Once those panko breadcrumbs start to absorb all of that liquid, you’re going to add your ground beef and three scallions that are chopped. With the scallions, I like to use white and light green and just a little bit of dark green. Once you get to the top of the scallion, there’s really not a lot of onion flavor there. That seems to be, to me anyways, more of a garnish than an addition to onion flavor. So go ahead and combine the one and a half pounds of ground beef and the three chopped scallions into that egg and breadcrumb mixture.
Now it’s time to form your meatballs. You will just form them into golf ball-sized meatballs. Place them on your prepared baking sheet, and then you’re going to spray the tops of the meatballs with that cooking spray. That’s just going to help your meatballs get nice and golden and delicious. So pop those in that 400-degree oven and you’re going to bake them for about 15 to 18 minutes until they register about 100 to 165 degrees. I like to use my Thermo Works Thermo pen to just do the temperature really quickly. It’s an instant-read thermometer, so you get that temperature right away.
Now, while those are cooking, I recommend that you go ahead and make that glaze sauce. We’re going to make this on the stovetop. It comes together super quickly. So what you do is on the stovetop, over about medium-low heat with a saucepan, you’re going to add one tablespoon of vegetable oil or canola oil, two chopped garlic cloves, and two teaspoons of fresh ginger. Let that saute around the pan for about one minute. You just want it to heat through and soften. You don’t really want to brown anything at this point. Then you’re going to stir in three-quarters cup of hoisin sauce, three tablespoons of ketchup, just good old ketchup, two tablespoons of rice vinegar, two tablespoons of water, one tablespoon of that sambal, that chili garlic paste. One tablespoon of soy sauce and one teaspoon of sesame oil. Just whisk or stir all of that together and bring it to a simmer and let it cook for about five minutes. You just want to stir it occasionally so it doesn’t burn to the bottom of the pan. All right. Once your meatballs are done cooking in the oven, you just basically want to toss them in that sauce that you just made. Then maybe garnish them with some more green onions and some sesame seeds and they’re ready to serve.
Like I said in the beginning, what you want to do is serve these maybe like four per person and serve them with either steamed rice or sticky rice, or my kids really like vegetable fried rice, and I gotta tell you, we buy frozen rice. We love frozen rice. Rice can be tricky. Unless you have a rice cooker, then that’s great. But I love to buy frozen brown rice or frozen basmati rice at Trader Joe’s. You put it in the microwave for three minutes, and I’m telling you it’s perfect. Take these shortcuts when you can get them. Or the fried rice, the frozen fried rice at Trader Joe’s is also amazing. Then for my family, we love to serve this with just roasted broccoli. I’ll either put it in the oven or in the little air fryer that I have on my countertop and make some roasted broccoli and it is an amazing dinner.
So that’s it. That does it for this episode of Let’s Make Dinner. As always, any recipe that I talked about in this episode or any equipment, in my newsletter, everything will be linked right in the show notes.
If you’d rather read these episodes, you can actually see the full transcript by clicking through to the show notes.
Outro: So until next time. I hope this episode of Let’s Make Dinner makes your dinner time a little easier. See ya.
Double Dip: All right, now it’s time for you on Double Dip. If you are enjoying these episodes of Let’s Make Dinner and you love to cook along with me on Thursdays, then I want to let you know what’s coming up next week so you can be prepared and have the groceries you need and get everything ready. So next week on Let’s Make Dinner, that’ll be on Thursday. We are making an Enchilada Suiza. If you know me if you’ve been here for a while, if you’ve been around the Mom’s Dinner community for a while, you know that I love enchiladas. It’s probably one of my favorite foods. You know, people say like, Ooh, if you were on an island and you had to eat one thing forever, what would it be? Mine would probably be enchiladas. I absolutely love them. So Enchilada Suiza is basically like a chicken enchilada, but instead of a red sauce, it has a creamy, cheesy Verde sauce. Amazing.
So let me go over the full ingredient list so you know what to have for dinner next Thursday. You will need about 10 to 12 yellow corn tortillas. Three cups of cooked chicken. If you have a Costco nearby, go and grab that rotisserie chicken and cut the two chicken breasts off. Shred them up while they’re still warm in your stand mixer with the paddle attachment, and that is perfect. You’ll need half a cup of chopped cilantro, two teaspoons of cumin, one teaspoon of chili powder, half a teaspoon each of kosher salt, onion powder, and garlic powder. You’ll need two four-ounce cans of diced green chilies. A 10-ounce can of Verde or green enchilada sauce, a quarter cup of sour cream, half a cup of heavy cream, and an eight-ounce block of Monterey Jack cheese. Of course, I will link the full recipe in the show notes for you. So if you want, you can go and check out the full ingredient list with your eyes instead of your ears. You can actually, if you’re on your phone, from the recipe card, you can actually text yourself the full recipe or the full list of ingredients and a link back to the recipe. So I hope that makes it super easy for you, and I hope you guys will use that feature.
I just also want to say, you can find all of my recipes at momsdinner.net. We’ve got the podcast, which is called Let’s Make Dinner. But all of the recipes that I share are over on momsdinner.net. So I hope I see you guys over there. If you make any of these recipes, I would love to have you comment on the recipe and if it’s so deserved, give me a five-star rating.
All right. Until next week, have a great one.
Recipes Mentioned
Next Week
I hope you will join me every Thursday for a new podcast episode and a new dinner recipe you can make!
Next week we will be making Suiza Enchiladas, click through and grab the ingredients to cook along on Thursday.
Pro Tip: If you are on your phone you can text yourself the ingredient list and link to the recipe straight from the recipe card. Look for the button that says “text me the ingredient list”.
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