If you love your meat, it’s hard not to like meatballs. Italian and Spanish meatballs may be the most common, but in our family, we love this Japanese version, with a tangy sauce. Eating it with some steamed Japanese rice, salad & miso, also makes the overall meal lighter than say eating spaghetti with meatballs. It’s worth making a double recipe and freezing half (cooked or uncooked) for another meal.
For the salad, I made a Japanese style coleslaw, with sliced cabbage & carrot and a dressing made with a little tahini, dash of mayo, rice vinegar, soy sauce and mirin.
This recipe is by Reiko Hashimoto, and was given to me by a friend. I have made a few changes, as I don’t like to deep fry and it’s hard to reuse oil when you have fried meat. Hashimoto calls for a mix of beef and pork, and although you can use only one kind of meat, a combination is a more favourful. You need to get your hands dirty to get the meatball mix to the right consistency.
| Prep Time | 30 min |
| Cook Time | 10 min |
| Servings |
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Ingredients
For the meatballs
- 200 g minced beef
- 200 g minced pork
- 6 spring onions (white parts for meatballs, green parts for garnishing)
- 1 tablespoon grated ginger
- 1 egg
- 2 teaspoon sesame oil
- sea salt
- white pepper use black if you don’t stock white
- 1 tablespoon cornflour plus extra for dusting
- vegetable oil for frying
For the sauce
- 100 ml Kikkoman soy sauce
- 1 teaspoon dashi powder
- 3 tablespoons sugar
- 2 tablespoons sake
- 4 tablespoons rice vinegar
- 100 ml water
- 1 tablespoon corn flour made into slurry with about 3 tablespoons water
- toasted sesame seeds for topping
Ingredients
For the meatballs
For the sauce
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Instructions
- First put all the ingredients (except the cornflour) for the meatballs into a large bowl and squelch and squeeze together with your hands to mix it well.
- Now sprinkle the 1 tablespoon of cornflour, and mix until the meat feels slightly elastic.
- Het a frying pan with about ½ cm of vegetable oil for pan-frying.
- Whilst the oil is heating, shape the mixture into walnut-sized meatballs. Dust lightly with cornflour.
- Once the oil is hot, gently lower them into the pan and fry turning them over frequently to get a crisp brown surface, about 2-3 minutes Take the meat balls out onto the plate with lined with kitchen paper. The meatballs won't be cooked through yet.
- Place all the ingredients for the sauce except for the corn flour slurry into a pan. Turn the heat to medium. When the sauce mixture starts to bubble, add the browned meat balls into the pan.
- Cook the meat balls for about 1-2 minutes, shaking the pan to get them fully coated in the sauce. Then pour the corn flour slurry and stir gently until the sauce thickens.
- Serve with Japanese rice and sprinkle on finely sliced spring onion greens.
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