Old-Fashioned Porcupine Meatballs in tomato sauce make a delicious and economical family meal. This recipe has been popular since the Great Depression when it was developed to make ground beef go further. Serve as is or over rice or mashed potatoes for a filling dinner.
Uncooked rice is mixed with ground beef to make Porcupine Meatballs. The rice kind of pops out of the cooked meatballs like porcupine quills, hence the name.
This particular recipe for Old-Fashioned Porcupine Meatballs is completely cooked in the oven. No need to do any cooking on the stove. The prep for these meatballs is super easy and the sauce only has 3 ingredients.
To make Porcupine Meatballs, one pound of ground beef is mixed with 1/2 cup of uncooked rice, water, onion, and seasonings. The mixture is shaped into large meatballs which are then placed in a baking dish. The tomato sauce is a simple mixture of canned tomato sauce, brown sugar, and Worcestershire sauce.
The sauce gets poured over the meatballs. The baking dish is covered with foil and baked for 40 minutes. Uncover and bake 15 more minutes.
Tips for making Porcupine Meatballs
Don’t use ground beef that is too high in fat. I use 10%.
You can use uncooked long grain rice or Minute rice. The baking time is plenty long for uncooked rice to get fully cooked and the water added to the meatball mixture along with the tomato sauce is all the liquid the rice needs to get soft.
More Old-Fashioned Favorites
Old-Fashioned Porcupine Meatballs
Ingredients
- 1 pound ground beef, I use 10%
- 1/2 cup uncooked long grain rice
- 1/2 cup water
- 1/3 cup finely chopped onion
- 1 teaspoon seasoned salt
- 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
- 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
- 1/4 teaspoon celery salt
- 1 (28-ounce) can tomato sauce
- 2 tablespoons light brown sugar
- 1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
Instructions
- In a large bowl, combine ground beef, rice, water, onion, seasoned salt, garlic powder, black pepper, and celery salt. Mix well and shape into 9 meatballs.
- Place in a lightly greased baking dish. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
- In a bowl, stir together tomato sauce, brown sugar, and Worcestershire sauce. Pour over meatballs. Cover baking dish with foil.
- Bake covered for 40 minutes. Uncover and bake 15 more minutes.
Nutrition
Want to Save This Recipe?
Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links.
Made for a Ladies Bible study and they loved them and several went back for seconds.
Works great and tastes great. I like spicy so substitute a samller can of hot red enchilada sauce with the base still being tomato sauce (less size of can of enchilada sauce). Add some crushed red peppers to meat mix and a little tapatios sauce to the mix. Also use Jasmine rice so i cook it at 470 for 45 and then uncovered per recipe uncovered for 15 mins at which time I add some parmesan/asiago cheese mix to the top.
Love them,
Everyone that I made it for also loved it.
My aunt used to make them whenever there was a get together
CANT GO WRONG!
I had such high hopes for these. My grandma used to make porcupine meatballs and I wanted that again. However, these are gross. The sauce doesn’t taste like what you need for these. I followed the instructions exactly as they are and the rice inside was still crunchy. Definitely not making these again.
I used the recipe, but with what I had in my house. I used turkey sausage and a jar of marinara (24 oz)with a bit of extra water as substitute for 28 oz. With the rice I added a bit more into the mix and it was perfectly cooked .It had wonderful flavor and was very filling. I also made it into 12 meatballs instead of 9