How To Make Porcupine Meatballs In The Slow Cooker

Meatballs with rice in a sweet and tangy sauce, these Slow Cooker Porcupine Meatballs are a blast from the past!

Today I am sharing my recipe for Slow Cooker Porcupine Meatballs. The Porcupine part of the recipe is the rice in the meatballs.

No porcupine meat, I promise! Below is a vintage recipe I found on Pinterest. I jazzed up this recipe with a tangy and sweet sauce. You can see my recipe farther down past the photos.

I start with a basic meatball recipe. I don't add the Minute rice until after I mix these ingredients together first.

ground beef, bread crumbs, barbecue sauce, eggs and onion in a bowl.

The Sauce is a mixture of ketchup, brown sugar and apple cider vinegar, very simple but packs so much flavor. I formed the meat mixture into 20 meatballs. I layered the meatballs and sauce into my slow cooker.

raw meatballs one a plate. Barbecue sauce mixture in a bowl.

Here is what the porcupine meatballs and sauce look like after being cooked on low for 5 hours.

The sauce is AMAZING, sweet and lots of tang from the cider vinegar.

porcupine meatballs on a plate served with a bowl of green beans

Try these other great meatball recipes too!

Slow Cooker Meatball Sliders
Slow Cooker Barbecue Meatballs
Slow Cooker Honey Buffalo Meatballs
Slow Cooker Sweet and Sour Meatballs
Slow Cooker Grape Jelly Meatballs

small video of fork slicing into a meatball

I do have to say these vintage recipeshave been my favorite to do on the blog, never feels like a chore to me. I hope you are enjoying them too! Have a great weekend.

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close up of porcupine meatballs

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Slow Cooker – 5 quart or larger

Meatballs!

▢ 1 1/2 lbs ground beef I use 10% fat beef
▢ 1/2 tsp. salt
▢ 1/4 tsp. pepper
▢ 1/4 tsp. garlic powder
▢ 2 eggs
▢ 1 cup diced onions
▢ 1/3 cup barbecue sauce
▢ 1/4 cup milk
▢ 1 cup crushed crackers I use Ritz
▢ 1 cup Minute Brand rice don't use standard rice

Sauce

▢ 2 cups ketchup I use Hunts
▢ 1/2 cup Sweet Baby Rays Barbecue Sauce
▢ 1/2 cup brown sugar
▢ 1 Tbsp. apple cider vinegar

In a large bowl add the meatball ingredients, except the rice. With clean hands mix these ingredients together, add rice and mix in evenly. Form the balls, I made them about the size of 2 tablespoons, I made a total of 20 meatballs.
Mix the sauce ingredients in a small bowl until combined.
Spray the slow cooker with non-stick spray. Add a layer of meatballs and drizzle over some sauce. Do this a few times, until all the meatballs and sauce are gone.
Cover and cook on LOW for 5 hours without opening the lid during the cooking time.

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Nutrition info is auto-generated. This information is an estimate; if you are on a special diet, please use your own calculations.

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