Korean Barbecue-style Meatballs

These tasty Korean barbecue-style meatballs are made with both pork and beef, seasoned with garlic, ginger, brown sugar, soy and gochujang paste. Roasted in a hot oven, they caramelize beautifully! 

Serve these delightful sweet and savory bites simply with forks or toothpicks as an appetizer or with rice and/or vegetables as a main course. I like to drizzle the rice with kecap manis – sweet soy sauce – or just more regular soy sauce. Either way, the meatballs are wonderful and bursting with flavor.

Korean Barbecue-style Meatballs

The meatball mixture can be made ahead, covered and refrigerated for three hours or even overnight. You can use all beef for the mixture but make sure it is at least 80 lean/20 percent fat so you don’t end up with dry meatballs. I prefer the mix of beef and pork. This recipe is adapted from one in New York Times Cooking. cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1019763-korean-barbecue-style-meatballs

Ingredients

8 oz or 225g ground beef 

8 oz or 225g ground pork 

4 whole green onions/scallions

2 in or 5cm knob fresh ginger, peeled

5 cloves garlic 

1/2 cup or 38g panko 

2 tablespoons low-sodium soy sauce

2 tablespoons gochujang paste

2 tablespoons, firmly packed, dark brown sugar

2 teaspoons toasted sesame oil

1/4 – 1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt

A few generous grinds of black pepper

Optional to garnish: chopped cilantro or parsley leaves

Method

Heat your oven to 425° or 218°C. Use a small food processor to mince the ginger, garlic and the white parts of your green onions. Chop the green part of the green onions with a sharp knife.

In a large bowl, combine all of the ingredients, including the minced items and the chopped green onion.  

Use your hands or a firm spatula to gently mix it all together till homogeneous.

At this point of any meatball or patty recipe, I always recommend you cook just a little of the mixture to see if it needs more salt. This pan is my tiny one for frying a single egg so you can see how little I cooked. Add more salt, if needed. 

Use a spoon or small cookie dough scoop to divide the meat mixture on to a baking pan lined with foil or a silicone liner. With damp hands, shape the meat into balls. As you can see from the baked photo. I made 27 bite-sized balls.

Bake until golden and cooked through, about 10-12 minutes. Broil for a further 2-3 minutes if you’d like them darker brown. The pan looks like the juices burned but I am here to tell you that once it cooled, we were scraping that off with our bare fingers and eating it! So good! 

Serve warm, sprinkled with a little chopped cilantro or parsley, if desired.

If you are going the rice route, pop the meatballs on top with a little extra soy or sweet soy sauce. 

Enjoy! 

Welcome to the 11th edition of the 2024 Alphabet Challenge, brought to you by the letter K. Many thanks to Wendy from A Day in the Life on the Farm for organizing and creating the challenge. Check out all the K recipes below:

• A Day in the Life on the Farm: Kwasnica (Polish Sauerkraut and Pork Soup) 
• Jolene’s Recipe Journal: Key Lime Pie Cocktails 
• Mayuri’s Jikoni: Khamang Kakdi 
• Sneha’s Recipe: Kala Chana Batata Chaat 
• Culinary Cam: Purple Napa Kimchi 
• Faith, Hope, Love, & Luck Survive Despite a Whiskered Accomplice Kalamata, Mozzarella, & Tomato Couscous Salad 
• Blogghetti: Key Lime Mousse Tarts 
• Karen’s Kitchen Stories: Kung Pao Chicken 
• Food Lust People Love: Korean Barbecue-Style Meatballs 

Here are my posts for the alphabet challenge, thus far:
A: Anchovy Deviled Eggs
B: Spicy Braised Ginger Pork Belly
C: Cecilie's Favorite Coleslaw
D: Cajun Chicken Eggplant Dressing
E: Everything Pizza Tartin
F: Baked Chicken and Feta Meatballs
G: Grape Juice Jigglers
H: Crispy Bacon-wrapped Chicken Hearts
I: Raspberry Rhubarb Ice Cream
J: Java Dry Spice Mix Chops 

K. Korean Barbecue-style Meatballs - this post!

Pin these Korean Barbecue-style Meatballs! 

 .

Pepperoni Pizza Meatballs

These Pepperoni Pizza Meatballs are seasoned with Italian herbs, onion, garlic, anchovies and sun-dried tomatoes then they are stuffed with pepperoni and mozzarella. Delicious!

Way back in June of this year, my fellow Sunday FunDay bloggers and I were sharing burger recipes and I was particularly intrigued by the pepperoni pizza burger my friend Wendy made. She stuffed the actual burger patty with pepperoni and mozzarella then added pizza sauce as a condiment. She topped it with cooked onions, green peppers and mushrooms. Doesn’t that sound delicious? You can find her original recipe here: Wendy’s Stuffed Pizza Burgers.

For my meatball version, I seasoned the ground beef with Italian seasonings and added anchovies and sun-dried tomatoes to the mix, then stuffed them with pepperoni and little fresh mozzarella balls called ciliegine. So good, guys! Perfect as an appetizer for your New Year’s Eve party.

Pepperoni Pizza Meatballs

My package of ground beef happened to weigh 1.66 lbs, which I know is a random weight. If yours is a little bigger or just a bit smaller, it won’t matter. Honestly. 

Ingredients

1.66 lbs or 753.96 80/20 ground beef

2 cloves garlic

1/4 medium onion

6 anchovies in oil, drained

1 egg

freshly ground black pepper

1 tablespoon Italian herb mix 

fine sea salt, if necessary

1 1/2 oz or 42g sun-dried tomatoes (not in oil)

Pepperoni

12-13 ciliegine mozzarella balls

Optional for garnish: small and/or sliced basil leaves

Method

Blend the garlic, onion, anchovies and egg until smooth. (I use a hand blender.) 

Put the beef in a large mixing bowl and give it a few generous grinds of the black pepper and sprinkle on the Italian herb mix.  

Use a wooden spoon or your clean hands to mix the blended ingredients thoroughly into the beef along with the seasonings.

Fry a heaped teaspoon of the meat mixture in a small pan and taste for salt. Add a little, if needed. We’ve been trying to watch our salt intake so if I’ve added something salty like anchovies, this is a good way to see if the meat really needs more salt. 

Finely chop the sun-dried tomatoes with a sharp knife or a small food processor and mix them in with beef. 

Use a 1/4-cup ice cream scoop to divide the meat into portions. Use your clean hands to divide the portions into two and make a well in each. 

Tuck a slice of pepperoni and one ciliegine mozzarella ball between the halves.

Roll them into a meatball. Place on a baking tray and continue the process until all the meatballs are formed. Chill until ready to bake. 

To bake the meatballs, preheat your oven to 400°F or 200°C. 

Bake the meatballs for 22-28 minutes or until they are well-browned and cooked through. 

Leave to rest for 5 minutes before serving. 

Garnish with basil, if desired. 

These can be served immediately as an appetizer or simmered in your favorite spaghetti sauce to serve with pasta. See mine here with my eggplant Parmigiana recipe. 

Enjoy! 

It’s Sunday FunDay and today we are sharing recipes for New Year’s Eve. People have different traditions so I was interested to see what my fellow bloggers came up with. In my family, we usually just do appetizers, no big meal. Check out all the lovely dishes below! Happy New Year, everyone! 

• ABC Dip (Artichokes, Brie and Crab) from A Day in the Life on the Farm
• Crispy Pimento Cheese Cups from Palatable Pastime
• Ham and Brie Crostini with Jam from Making Miracles
• Neapolitan Cake from Amy’s Cooking Adventures
• Pepperoni Pizza Meatballs from Food Lust People Love
• Trollkrem - Norwegian Lingonberry Dessert from Pandemonium Noshery
• Wine Fruit Cake Sneha’s Recipe

We are a group of food bloggers who believe that Sunday should be a family fun day, so every Sunday we share recipes that will help you to enjoy your day. If you're a blogger interested in joining us, just visit our Facebook group and request to join.

Pin these Pepperoni Pizza Meatballs!

 .