Beef Meatballs in a Whisky Sauce
I am a sucker for a good meatball that travels well and these meatballs in a whisky sauce are exactly that. It might be a midwestern thing but we tend to bring food with us to so many events and this recipe is a good one to share with others.
Beef Meatballs in a Whisky Sauce
Ingredients
Meatballs
- 1 lb ground beef
- 1 cup breadcrumbs
- 2 eggs
- salt & pepper to taste
Whisky Sauce
- 1 small onion diced
- 3 cloves garlic minced
- 2 tbs butter
- 1/3 cup whisky
- Juice from one small lemon
- 1 cup beef broth
- 2 tbs Worcestershire sauce
- 1/4 cup packed brown sugar
- salt & pepper to taste
Instructions
For the Meatballs
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit
- In a bowl combine ground meat, breadcrumbs, eggs and season to taste with salt and pepper.
- Take a scoop of the meat mixture and form a ball in your hands by gently rolling the meat around.
- Place your meatballs on a greased baking sheet and place in the oven. Bake for 20 mins.
For the Whisky Sauce
- While your meatballs are cooking you can cook the sauce. In a pan add the butter and onions and sautee until the are soft – about 8 mins. Add the garlic and sautee for a few mins until they are fragrant.
- Add the whisky carefully – you don’t want to flambé anything so add this slowly and stir carefully. Let the alcohol cook off, this should only take a few minutes.
- Add the lemon juice, beef broth, Worcestershire sauce, and brown sugar. Let this simmer while the meatballs are cooking.
- When the meatballs are finished cooking take them out and drain them on some paper towels. Add the meatballs to the whisky sauce and toss around to coat them evenly. Serve warm.
I like this recipe since it uses my Basic Beef Meatball recipe so it’s not a lot of ingredients and a quick recipe to throw together. The meatballs come together quickly and the sauce is pretty simple too. You can make the sauce while the meatballs are in the oven. The sauce has a nice sweetness from the brown sugar which makes them a crowd favorite. They make great appetizers for any get together or you can make them into a meatball sub for a quick weeknight dinner.
I think that meatballs are a great and easy meal to throw together when you’re short on time. It seems like every time I hang out with my friends we end up talking about the food we are making for events that we are going to and it seems like meatballs come up a lot. People have their own recipes for meatballs and their own ways of throwing them together. I know a lot of folks end up buying premade meatballs and throwing in a sauce in a crockpot. I think this is a simple way to bring food to share. I really love cooking so I am always happy to make my meatballs and sauces to share with others.
The first time I had a great whisky sauce was at TGI Fridays. They had this really great Jack Daniels sauce on their ribs. When I was in college my boyfriend and I would go and get ribs at TGIF when we had the money to spend on a nicer dinner. It was nice because if I remember right, the prices weren’t too bad, but the food was always delicious, and the whisky sauce was super good.
This version of the whisky sauce isn’t too much like the one that I had from TGI Fridays but it’s a nice sauce that pairs really well with beef meatballs. One day I need to research and see if I can come up with something similar to what I remember from that Jack Daniels sauce. I must admit that I may need to make some tweaks to the sauce I remember. My pallet has changed a bit since I was in college and I’m a little less interested in things that are so sweet. I like this whisky sauce because it has some savory elements to help balance the sweetness of the brown sugar.
The nice thing about this recipe is that it calls for a lot of things you might already have in the house. We have a pretty decent liquor cabinet at our house and we always seem to have whisky on hand. I do use whisky or bourbon a lot for deglazing my pans when I’m cooking. I really love cooking mushrooms and adding them to a lot of the things I cook and as you’ll see in some of my recipes here, when I cook mushrooms I generally fry them in a pan and then add a little whisky towards the end of cooking process.
I like cooking with different alcohols to give what I’m making a different flavor. It also gets all of the good browned bits off of the bottom of the pan which adds even more flavor to the sauce that you are making. You can always play around with what whisky you like the best for this sauce. I like to get the smaller bottles of liquor when experimenting with sauces. You do need to be careful when cooking with alcohol to make sure you don’t set your pan on fire. You can poor in the alcohol slowly making sure not to splash outside of the pan.
More Recipes By Category
Midwestern Meatballs
We live in the Midwest and there are so many classic recipes that the rest of the country is missing out on. I’m here to help share those recipes in meatball form.
Classic Meatballs
I have some classic meatballs that are the foundation of a lot of my meatball recipes. You’ll find some basic meatball recipes and recipes that we are grew up with and love.
Stuffed Meatballs
I love stuffing meatballs – and once you start browsing the site you’ll see that I’m pretty creative with what I can come up with to stuff my balls with – and every recipe is delicious.
