Juicy Lucy Meatballs

The steak sauce and the onions actually make this meatball easier to mix together which is always fun. It helps combine everything into a nice mix that makes for a nice meatball base to work with. When making stuffed meatballs it’s always good to have enough meat to cover the cheese and cover the cheese well to help prevent the cheese from oozing out. This all really depends on how big you cut your cheese cubes or if you are using store bought cheese cubes how big those are. This will also have an impact on how many meatballs you get from this recipe so keep that in mind as you’re making them.

Another thing about working with cheese stuffed meatballs is that there is a really good chance that the cheese will ooze out as they cook. There are some recipes and some ground meats that prevent this better than others – also there are some cheeses that have a higher melting temperature that help this problem. There is nothing wrong with the cheese oozing out but the biggest goal is to make sure that you don’t lose all the cheese in the cooking process. A couple of tips to help this is to make sure your meatball mixture is mixed well – making sure that the meat, eggs and breadcrumbs are thoroughly together so you don’t have clumps of meat or clumps of breadcrumbs in the mixture. You can also either make sure your cheese is really cold or even freeze it in advance before you stuff the meatballs.

The nice thing about this recipe is that you can choose whatever cheese you’d like! You can use your favorite habanero jack cheese if you’d like a spicy Juicy Lucy meatball, if you prefer to top your burgers with swiss you can cube up your favorite swiss as well! You can buy some fancy blue cheese and chop that up into cubes and have a blue cheese stuffed Juicy Lucy meatball instead of a cheddar stuffed Juicy Lucy.

If you are more interested in having multiple cheeses in your meatball you can get provolone and cheddar and either get sliced cheese to combine and stuff you meatball with or get block cheese and create your own cheese cube combo. The options are endless with this particular meatball since the options for Juicy Lucy’s are endless as well. Be on the look out for some other creative Minneapolis inspired variations of Juicy Lucy’s to come!

When cooking the meatballs it makes it easier to get them off the cooking sheet or foil by adding cooking spray to the baking sheet. Beef meatballs – or at least the ones that I tend to make don’t really stick to the pan because I don’t use really lean beef. Once the meatballs are finished cooking I take them off the baking sheet with tongs and set them on a plate with paper towels to drain and remove the excess grease from both the meat and possibly the cheese depending on the cheese you choose. 

You can also add your favorite condiments to these little mini versions of our Minnesota staple. Of course ketchup and mustard are the go to condiments for these little cheese stuffed meatballs but if you love a good burger with BBQ sauce – use that! I’m a huge fan of pickles on burgers too but you can always swap those out for pickled jalapenos for a little kick.

One serving suggestion for these meatballs is to serve them just like you would serve your favorite burger or slider. I get little slider buns and tear up some fresh lettuce and slice up some cherry tomatoes to serve mine with. The cherry tomatoes always have a little punch of flavor and they are the perfect size to top a meatball with. These meatballs are also great served on toothpicks where your guests or family can grab as many as they’d like. These are always one of my go-to recipes for my meatball parties. I have meatball parties with friends to try out recipes and mostly just to have folks over so I can feed them.

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