Minnesota Porcupine Meatballs

    I found a recipe for Porcupine Meatballs and when I read it I thought to myself, I can make this recipe even more Minnesotan if I just add wild rice! 

    Minnesota Porcupine Meatballs

    Prep Time: 1 hour 5 minutes
    Cook Time: 22 minutes
    Servings: 22 Meatballs
    It’s funny and it may just be that I’ve lived in Minnesota way too long, but I always thought Porcupine Meatballs were made with wild rice! It’s the official grain of Minnesota and to me, it reminds me more of a porcupine than white rice would, but hey, that’s probably just me. I researched some recipes for Porcupine Meatballs and since they all had white rice in them I decided to make mine with a good Minnesota/Midwestern twist and use wild rice.
    Wild rice in Minnesota is a little different than other parts of the country I think. First of all our wild rice is usually pretty gray, not black like I see in a lot of stores. It also cooks so much quicker than the stuff you see at normal grocery stores. We met a Native American man at a farmers market that said “do you know how to tell when that store-bought wild rice is done?” and we said “no, how?”, and he said, “you put a rock in the pot as your cooking it, once the rock is soft you’ll know the rice is done!”. We laughed and laughed! It does take a little longer to cook the store-bought black wild rice but for this recipe, I think it works because it gives the meatballs a little texture and reminds me more of a porcupine!
    Print Recipe

    Ingredients

    Meatballs

    • 1 lb ground beef
    • 1 cup Italian breadcrumbs
    • 2 tbs Worcestershire Sauce
    • 2 eggs
    • 2 cloves garlic minced
    • 1/2 tsp paprika
    • 3/4 tsp onion powder
    • 1 1/2 cups cooked wild rice
    • salt & pepper to taste

    Simple Tomato Sauce

    • 1 small onion diced
    • 2 cloves garlic minced
    • 2 tbs butter
    • 1 can tomato sauce
    • 1 can diced fire roasted tomatoes
    • 1 tbs sugar
    • 1 tbs balsamic vinegar
    • 1 1/2 tbs Italian Seasoning
    • 1/4 tsp cayenne pepper

    Instructions

    • Start by cooking the wild rice according to the package instructions. When I cooked mine it took about 45 mins to get it to the consistency that I wanted for these meatballs.
    • Once the wild rice is cooked and cooled off add the wild rice to the bowl and combine the ground meat, breadcrumbs, Worcestershire sauce, garlic, paprika, onion powder, eggs and season to taste with salt and pepper.
    • Grab a scoop of the meatball mixture and form a ball in your hand by rolling the meat around gently.
    • Place your meatballs on a greased baking sheet and place in the oven. Bake for 22 mins.
    • While your meatballs are cooking you can throw together the sauce. In a medium sauce pan add the onion, garlic and butter. Sauté these on high for 5 mins.
    • Add the tomato sauce, fire roasted diced tomatos, sugar, balsamic vinegar, Italian Seasoning, and cayenne pepper and let the sauce simmer until the meatballs are done
    • Once the meatballs are out of the oven and drained, put the meatballs in the sauce. You can let them simmer in the sauce until you are ready to serve them.

    I made this recipe when I was on a Midwestern Meatball kick and we had a bunch of meatballs as leftovers and when we heated them up and tried them all again, my husband kept saying how much he loved these meatballs! It’s funny because I also made My Sloppy Joe Stuffed Meatballs, Mike’s Sloppy Joe Stuffed Meatballs, and Beneke’s Hideaway Sloppy Joe Stuffed Meatballs that were all a lot more time consuming to make, and to me, a lot more interesting. He really loved the simple sauce that I made and the cayenne gave it a nice kick. The meatballs had a really nice texture because of the wild rice too.

    When mixing the ingredients together you just need to make sure everything is well incorporated and the wild rice and bread crumbs are evenly distributed. The last thing you want is for there to be lumps of breadcrumbs in your meatballs. This can easily happen so making sure once your ingredients are in the bowl to mix everything around as evenly as possible before you start really getting your hands in there to incorporate everything.

    These meatballs are really quick to throw together once you have your wild rice cooked. You can always save on time as well and get either the store bought, pre-cooked wild rice in those pouches or even the canned already cooked wild rice. That would shave about 45 mins off of this recipe. I really enjoy cooking and being in the kitchen watching my cooking shows so making the wild rice for me is just fine. If you live in the Midwest or can get ahold of the “good stuff” the wild rice won’t take as long to cook as the normal wild rice that you find in the store. It does have a different texture than the black variety you can find in most grocery stores. It’s softer and breaks open a little bit more than the regular store bought variety. Just things to keep in mind when making these meatballs. If you change some of the ingredients it will change the outcome of the meatball.

    I really enjoy making really simple tomato sauces as opposed to buying store bought sauces. Part of it is I can really keep an eye on how much salt and sugar are in the sauce. There are so many canned tomatoes out there that have no sugar added and are low in sodium. It also really allows you to add whatever your favorite ingredients are to the sauce. For this particular sauce I chose to use one can of tomato sauce and add in some fire roasted diced tomatoes for some additional flavor and texture. We like a good herby sauce in our house so I added a good amount of Italian seasoning as well to punch up the flavor. I do add a little sugar to my sauces to help with the acidity from the tomatoes, but I try to keep that as low as possible. I think things like balsamic vinegar helps to add a little sweetness to the sauce without having to add a ton of sugar. I also am in love with balsamic vinegar – both the white and the regular – and you’ll see that in a lot of my recipes. 

    Garlic and onions are also a staple in a lot of my recipes and my everyday cooking. Both of these things are staples in our house and I use them in a ton of dishes even outside of all my meatballs. I’m a big fan of fresh vegetables and aromatics in my food so I try to use those as much as I can as opposed to things like garlic powder or onion powder.

    Of course there are definite places for both of those ingredients and depending on what you have on hand they are a great substitute. For this recipe as an example when I went to make the meatballs I realized I only had one onion in the house. I decided that the fresh onion would be better used in my sauce than in the meatballs so I substituted the fresh onion I probably would have used for some onion powder. I think the meatballs turned out great with the ingredients I chose.

    I decided for this recipe I was going to serve these meatballs over rice. I checked out different Porcupine Meatball recipes and it looked like a lot of people served them that way – probably because they make them with white rice in the meatball itself. Since these balls are served in a tomato sauce I think that they would be great over noodles as well. One other idea that would make these even more Minnesotan is to serve them over a bed of wild rice or wild rice pilaf. 

    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.

    Learn more about us!