Porcupine Meatballs (1930s)
Equipment
- Normal Kitchen Utensils
- Crock Pot or Instant Pot (Optional)
Ingredients
- 1 Lb Ground Beef (or Turkey, Pork or Chicken)
- 3/4 C Rice Cooked
- 1 C Crumbs Bread or Cracker
- 2 C Water
- 1 Can Tomato Sauce 15 oz.
- 1 Small Onion Chopped
- 1 Clove Garlic Minced
- 2 Tbsp Worcestershire Sauce
- 1 tsp Cayenne Powder (Optional)
- 2 tsp Poultry Seasoning (Optional)
- Salt and Pepper to Taste
Instructions
- Combine ground beef, rice, bread crumbs, onion, garlic, salt, pepper, cayenne (optional) and poultry seasoning (optional) and form into 2 inch meatballs (roughly 20).1 Lb Ground Beef, 1 C Crumbs, 1 Small Onion, 1 Clove Garlic, 1 tsp Cayenne Powder, 2 tsp Poultry Seasoning, Salt and Pepper to Taste, 3/4 C Rice
- The next step depends on your method of cooking:
- If baking, place the meatballs in a 9×13 baking dish. Mix the water, tomato sauce and Worcestershire sauce and pour over the meatballs. Cover with foil and bake one hour at 350. Uncover and bake an additional 15 minutes.
- If cooking on stovetop, place the meatballs into a wide bottomed pot and brown on one side. You can attempt to turn them and brown on multiple sides, but they really like to fall apart. Mix the water, tomato sauce and Worcestershire sauce and pour over the meatballs. Simmer, uncovered, for at least thirty minutes until the sauce is thickened and the meatballs are cooked through. Add more water if the sauce gets too thick.1 Can Tomato Sauce, 2 Tbsp Worcestershire Sauce, 2 C Water
- If cooking in a crockpot or instant pot, place the meatballs in the pot. Mix the water, tomato sauce and Worcestershire sauce and pour over the meatballs. Slow cook on high for at least two hours. Four preferred.
- Once cooked or baked, add salt and pepper to the sauce as desired.Salt and Pepper to Taste
- Serve five meatballs per person over rice.
Notes
- The large amount of onion, rice and bread crumbs in these meatballs can make them really crumbly. That being said, it is nice to brown them before cooking in the sauce, but turning them on multiple sides is a gamble. Handle with care.
- Another way to help the meatballs set better is to reduce the onion by half, grate the onion or add a raw egg as a binding agent.
- I honestly do not add the optional ingredients because they are not how I am used to my family making porcupine meatballs. But, they are in the original recipe from 1918, so I wanted to include them as an option.
- Worcestershire sauce is not an original recipe item, but is the ingredient that turned me onto porcupine meatballs in the first place. It really changes the flavor.
Porcupine meatballs remind me a lot of the Oklahoma Onion Burger, which was another product of the Great Depression. Since meat was so expensive, and onions were so cheap, people would smash piles of thinly sliced onions into small beef patties to create a more satisfying meal. If you’re lucky enough to find an onion burger in Oklahoma, give it a try.
The original recipe for porcupine meatballs comes from the book “Conservation Recipes”. You can see the recipe here on the same page as Brains, Creamed Kidneys and Kidney Saute. Yum…
Outside of the original-recipe style, these meatballs are excessively versatile. Instead of simple onion, you can add celery and bell pepper to the meatballs. You can also add spices like paprika, cumin and chili powder to the sauce. A popular rendition used to be substituting condensed tomato soup for the tomato sauce. You can essentially make them in your own way to suit your own tastes.
I have also heard of a Chinese-style recipe for porcupine meatballs (“Porcupine meatballs Chinois”), which sound a lot like dumplings without the wrapper. I am particularly interested in a 1969 recipe for “Porcupine Meatballs Paprika”, which has a base of cream of mushroom soup. I will definitely be trying that one.