Cocktail Meatballs & Wiener Recipe

Tis the season to eat cocktail meatballs and wieners. This is one of the items that will be served at my Christmas Open House. They are a HUGE hit and I always run out of them. No leftovers with this dish, drats! Every year I increase the amount by one pound of beef. So this year I'm up to 6 pounds for the meatballs and 2 pounds for the wieners. Let's see how far this take the crowd.

This recipe is for 6 pounds of beef. Adjusted it according to how much you need to make.

Cocktail Meatballs & Wieners (crock pot)

6 pounds of ground beef, turkey or chicken. I use 80/20 ground beef
2 large white onions, chopped/minced in food processor
3 large carrots, cleaned and chopped/minced in food processor
2 stalks of celery, chopped/minced in food processor
3 tablespoons of seasoning (your choice-I usually use seasoning salt)
1 tablespoon garlic powder
1/2 cup parmesan cheese
1 roll of crackers, crushed (Ritz or anything kind you have on hand)

Sauce

80 ounces of BBQ Sauce (largest that they had at store)
32 ounces Grape Jelly
1 cup orange juice

Mix all the ingredients together by hand (except the sauce ingredients). I wear food prep gloves to do this. Do it quickly because you do not want to over work the meat. Then get a small cookie dough scoop and form your balls. I do this so that they are all the same size. You can freeze them until ready to use or add to crock pot.

This recipe uses 2 large crock pots. Divide up the sauce ingredients into the 2 crockpots. Add in meatballs. Let cook on high for 4 hours. About 1 hour before serving add in the wieners if you want them. That is enough time to get them warm.

This particular recipe made 200 meatballs! YES that is a lot and YES they will all get eaten!