Sweet and sour meatballs (with hidden veggies)

This is yet another from double delicious.  Again I have to kind of laugh because this recipe was specifically mentioned in negative reviews for a couple of things - a typo - says to pre-heat the oven to 350 then never uses the oven.  There were also a lot of gripes about the texture of the meat being so soft.  I had no issues with either because #1 I didn't even try to pan fry the meatballs.  I stuck them all on a cookie sheet and baked them all at 400.  I didn't try rolling them by hand, I just scooped them out with my cookie dough size scoop. Didn't have either problem.

However, my super picky 3 year old at 3 of these meatballs.  Remember he is super picky.  He won't eat ground beef - wont even try it.  So I really didn't have super high hopes of him liking this one, but maybe the softer texture of these meatballs agreed with him.  I don't know, I'm just happy he ate 3 and got some great protein and even some veggies mixed in.

I also have to say I loved the sauce.  It reminded me of a sauce I've had on a chicken dish from a low fat cookbook.  It too used some orange marmalade and steak sauce.  Apparently I like that combination.  YUM!

I also have to say that I did double this recipe from the original (feel free to 1/2 it)  I used greek yogurt not regular (maybe that helped the texture?? - they were still super soft for a meatball) and I used ground beef not chicken or turkey.

Here is my version 

Meatball Ingredients

• 1 Tablespoon coconut oil
• 1 large onion, finely chopped (use 1/3 for the meatballs, 2/3 for the sauce)
• 1 teaspoon garlic minces
• 4 slices wheat bread, crust removed, torn in pieces (I used my home made wheat)
• 1 cup greek yogurt
• 2 eggs
• 1 pound lean ground beef (93%)
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon nutmeg
• 1/2 teaspoon pepper

Sauce ingredients

• 1 Tablespoon coconut oil
• rest of onion (see above)
• 1 1/2 Tablespoons brown sugar
• 1 cup beef stock
• 2 Tablespoons ketchup
• 4 teaspoons steak sauce (1 T + 1 t)
• 1/2 cup crushed pineapple in juice
• 2 Tablespoons orange marmalade

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 400.  Heat coconut oil in a large skillet.  Add the onion and cook until soft and fragrent.  Add the garlic and cook 1 minute more.  
2. Place the bread in a large mixing bowl.  Add the cooked onion and garlic, yogurt, broccoli puree, egg, beef, salt, nutmeg, and pepper.  Beat with an electric mixer until smooth.  (I found that this seemed to pull out the fat in my meat or something.  I ended up with some globs which I removed.  It was actually kind of gross.  Not sure if I'd want to beat it soo much next time.  :)
3. Line a large baking sheet with parchment or a silicon baking sheet.  Scoop meat mixture onto cookie sheet and bake for 15 minutes or until cooked through.  
4. Meanwhile, prepare the sauce by heating the coconut oil in a pan.  (I just used my onion pan since it was empty and I was just going to saute some onions again.)  Add onion and brown sugar.  Cook 7-8 minutes stirring occasionally until the onions are soft and starting to brown.
5. Add remaining ingredients, bring to a boil, and cook 1 minute more.  (Surely I cooked mine a lot longer than necessary because I was heating as I was measuring and adding and the sauce was winning --boiling faster than I was finishing adding ingredients. :)  Puree with an immersion blender or food processor until smooth.  I put mine in my immersion blender container and blended it there. Then it was in a nice container I could pour out of when I served.
6. I served this with a bit of linguini noodles, some meatballs, and some sauce on top.