Instant Pot Cocktail Meatballs
An easy recipe for instant pot cocktail meatballs. Delicious homemade meatballs cooked in a rich sticky sauce are juicy and flavorful
Ingredients
For meatballs:
- 1 pound ground beef (450 grams, see note 1)
- 1 teaspoon salt
- ¼ teaspoon black pepper
- ¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 1 teaspoon garlic powder
- 1 teaspoon thyme
- 1 egg (preferably small-medium)
- 1 tablespoon pickled jalapeno (finely chopped, optional)
- 1.5 tablespoons oil (see note 3)
For sauce:
- ½ cup BBQ sauce
- ¼ cup ketchup
- ½ cup water
- 1 tablespoon honey
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Instructions
- In a mixing bowl, combine all the ingredients for meatballs. Use your hand for the best distribution of seasonings. With a small cookie dough scoop, scoop out the meat and place it onto a tray. Roll each into a ball.
- Turn on your instant pot and press SAUTE. Pour in oil. When hot, add meatballs add brown them for about 4-5 minutes (they don’t have to be completely brown on all sides). Pro tip: Lift the inner pot and shake it to save time turning each meatball over.
- Meanwhile, in another bowl mix the sauce ingredients and add the mixture to the pot with browned meatballs. If there are a lot of pieces stuck to the bottom of the pot, deglaze it (using the sauce to scrape off the pieces). Cancel the SAUTE program.
- Cover with a lid and lock it into its position. Turn the steam release valve to SEALING and set the timer to 4 minutes. When the cooking cycle is finished, manually release the pressure by turning the valve to VENTING (be careful, the steam is hot).
- Check the thickness of the sauce and reduce down if you like (see note 5). Transfer the meatballs onto a serving plate and pour the sauce over.
- Enjoy!
Video
Notes
- Ground beef can be substituted with pork, chicken, turkey or a combination of these. Note that each meat has a different flavor and a different fat content. This means some meatballs may be less juicy than others.
- You can omit jalapenos completely, if you don’t like spicy food.
- Oil - you can use olive oil, sunflower or vegetable oil. You might need to add more oil, in case your ground meat is very lean. However, start with 1 or 1.5 tablespoons and add only if it is needed. It should be enough for browning the meatballs and there should not be any need to drain it, as only a little should stay on the bottom of your pot.
- This recipe yields 21-22 meatballs when using a small cookie dough scoop. You might get more or less meatballs out of this recipe, especially if you are rolling them by hand or if you loosely fill each scoop with meat mixture. If you end up will less than 18 meatballs, I recommend increasing the cooking time to 5 or 6 minutes.
- You can reduce the sauce by letting it simmer away or you can thicken it with cornstarch or flour slurry. To make flour slurry, mix about a teaspoon of flour with 1 tablespoon of water (or more). Stir in some of the sauce (this will temper the slurry) and now you can add it to the sauce. I recommend adding a little at a time until it reaches the consistency you like.
- This recipe was developed for a 6-quart (6-liter) instant pot pressure cooker.
- The overall time does not include the time that the pot needs to come to its pressure. Count with an extra 8 minutes.
Nutrition
Calories: 85 kcal (4%), Carbohydrates: 5 g (2%), Protein: 4 g (8%), Fat: 6 g (9%), Saturated Fat: 2 g (13%), Polyunsaturated Fat: 0.4 g, Monounsaturated Fat: 3 g, Trans Fat: 0.3 g, Cholesterol: 22 mg (7%), Sodium: 232 mg (10%), Potassium: 89 mg (3%), Fiber: 0.1 g, Sugar: 4 g (4%), Vitamin A: 53 IU (1%), Vitamin C: 0.4 mg, Calcium: 9 mg (1%), Iron: 1 mg (6%)
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