• Skip to main content
  • Skip to header right navigation
  • Skip to site footer
Umami Days

Umami Days

Meaty with a dash of veggies

  • Pick a meal
    • One Bowl Meals
    • Breakfast
    • Lunch / Dinner
      • Appetizers
      • Salads
      • Soups
      • Main Courses
      • Side Dishes
      • Sweets
    • Snacks
    • Drinks
      • Summer drinks
      • Cold weather drinks
      • Cocktail hour
  • Pick your protein
    • Chicken, duck & turkey
    • Meat
    • Seafood
    • Eggs
    • Mushrooms
    • Tofu
    • Vegetables
  • Pick your carb
    • Rice & grains
    • Noodles
    • Bread
  • Newsletter
  • Sidebar
    • Kitchen
    • Dining
    • Edible Garden
    • Food Tales
  • Newsletter sign-up!
  • Recipe index
    • By Meal
      • One Bowl Meals
      • Breakfast
      • Lunch / Dinner
        • Appetizers
        • Salads
        • Soups
        • Main Courses
        • Side Dishes
        • Sweets
      • Snacks
      • Drinks
        • Refreshing summer drinks
        • Cold weather drinks
        • Cocktail hour
    • By Main Protein
      • Chicken, duck & turkey
      • Meat
      • Seafood
      • Eggs
      • Mushrooms
      • Tofu
      • Vegetables
    • By Carb
      • Rice & grains
      • Noodles
      • Bread
  • Sidebar
    • Kitchen
    • Dining
    • Edible Garden
    • Food Tales
  • About
  • Privacy
  • Copyright
  • Contact
Meat Lunch / Dinner Main Courses

Meatballs in sweet sour sauce

Published: 03.31.2017 » Last updated: 09.02.2022

Light and bouncy meatballs made with ground pork, shiitake, dried shrimps, vegetables and spices are deep fried and served with homemade sweet sour sauce.

Meatballs in sweet sour sauce

Meatballs. Strangely comforting for their rustic simplicity. Anyone can make meatballs with ground meat. But flavoring meatballs and giving them the best texture means adding the right ingredients in the correct amounts. That should explain why the list of ingredients for making meatballs in this recipe is rather long.

Adding chopped shiitake, black fungus and dried shrimps to the pork add such lovely flavor to meatballs. And, instead of breadcrumbs and egg to bind the ingredients together, I used a mixture of flour, corn starch and water. Unbelievable how much better the texture of the meatballs turned out! Light and bouncy, the meatballs left none of that bread-y sensation in the mouth.

Now, the sauce. The most common way of making sweet and sour sauce is to boil vinegar and sugar, add a red coloring agent (ketchup is a popular choice), drizzle in starch dispersed in water and stir until the mixture is thick.

But I find that starch is not essential in making sweet sour sauce. The better way is to boil sugar and vinegar until a syrup is formed. It’s the same technique I use for making sweet chili sauce (if you need a visual guide, see the linked post below) No starch but make a syrup instead. Sweet sour sauce cooked this way never clumps. And it coats the meatballs better too.

Homecooked sweet chili sauce (no starch)

Sweet chili sauce

Sweet chili sauce is available in Asian stores. But most are thickened with starch. In this recipe, starch is omitted. Instead, the ingredients are boiled until reduced to a syrupy consistency.

Read moreSweet chili sauce

Meatballs in sweet sour sauce

Connie Veneracion
Add nuance to the flavor of plain meatballs by mixing in chopped mushrooms and vegetables, and adding garlic, ginger and Chinese five-spice powder. Season boldly with salt, pepper and oyster sauce. Give the meatballs a lovely nutty aroma by drizzling in sesame seed oil.
Meatballs in sweet sour sauce
Print Pin Recipe
Prep Time 20 mins
Cook Time 12 mins
Total Time 32 mins
Course Main Course
Cuisine Asian Fusion, Chinese
Servings 4 people

Ingredients
  

Meatballs

  • 400 grams ground pork - with at least 20% fat
  • 2 shallots - finely chopped
  • ¼ cup finely chopped black fungus
  • ¼ cup finely chopped fresh shiitake - caps only
  • 2 tablespoons dried shrimps - soaked then finely chopped
  • ¼ cup finely chopped carrot
  • 1 teaspoon minced garlic
  • ½ teaspoon grated ginger
  • salt
  • ground black pepper
  • ¼ teaspoon Chinese five-spice powder
  • 1 tablespoon oyster sauce
  • ¼ teaspoon sesame seed oil
  • 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
  • 1 tablespoon corn starch

Sweet and sour sauce

  • 1 white sugar - use the amount that suits your preference
  • ½ cup rice vinegar
  • ¼ cup rice wine
  • ½ teaspoon minced garlic
  • ½ teaspoon grated ginger
  • 1 teaspoon paprika - or 1 tablespoon tomato paste
  • salt - to taste
  • black pepper - to taste

To complete the dish

  • cooking oil - for deep frying
  • 1 red onion - diced
  • 1 small carrot - thinly sliced
  • 1 bell pepper - diced
  • 1 stalk celery - thinly sliced

Instructions
 

Marinate the ground pork

  • In a bowl, mix together the ground pork, chopped shallots, wood ears, shiitake, dried shrimps, carrot, garlic, ginger, a teaspoon of salt, a quarter teaspoon of pepper, the five-spice powder, oyster sauce and sesame seed oil.
  • In a small bowl, mix the flour and starch with two tablespoons of water until smooth. Pour into the ground pork and mix well.

Make the sweet sour sauce

  • Dump the sugar into a thick-bottomed pan.
  • Pour in the rice vinegar and rice wine.
  • Boil over high heat, uncovered, until the sugar dissolves.
  • Add the rest of the ingredients.
  • Lower the heat to medium and continue boiling, uncovered and without stirring (stirring causes crystallization, for some reason), until the mixture is almost syrupy. Ten to twelve minutes. DO NOT wait for it to turn too thick as the sauce will thicken some more as it cools.

Fry the meatballs

  • Form the ground pork mixture into two-inch balls.
  • Heat enough cooking oil in a wok or frying pan to reach a depth of at least two inches.
  • Over medium-high heat, fry the meatballs in the hot oil until nicely browned and cooked through, about 8 minutes. Scoop out and set aside.
  • Pour off the cooking oil leaving only about two tablespoonfuls.
  • Reheat the oil. Stir fry the onion, carrot, bell pepper and celery with a little salt and pepper for a minute or two.
  • Add the meatballs to the vegetables. Pour in the sweet and sour sauce. Cook until the sauce is bubbly and the meatballs are glazed.
Print Pin Recipe
Keyword Meatballs, Sweet Sour Sauce

About Connie Veneracion

A retired lawyer and journalist who spends most days (and nights) dreaming up recipes. [Read more]

Newsletter department

  • #17 Fish en papillote
    03.15.2023
    Or the art of cooking the unpronounceable
  • About
  • Recipes
  • Privacy
  • Copyright
  • Contact
Pork ribs sinigang

Sinigang, the iconic sour soup from the Philippines

Korean stir fried vegetables and glass noodles (japchae)

Korean stir fried vegetables and glass noodles (japchae)

Frying green beans tempura in carbon steel wok

Buying a wok? Make it carbon steel.

Stir frying chicken, vegetables and quail eggs in carbon steel wok

Guide to stir frying

Stir frying in wok

When stir frying, always use oil with a high smoke point

Potatoes and green beans salad

Umami Days is powered by Apple, Canon, coffee & one bowl meals · Copyright © 2023 Connie Veneracion · All Rights Reserved