Smoked Meatballs w/Sauce over Kraut

May 29 2014

I wanted a recipe to use some of my homemade kraut with. I found the perfect one by Kukla at food52.com. It was beer braised meatballs over quick sauerkraut. There was a photo of it used to make a sandwich and it looked delicious! Food 52 is my favorite site for recipes and ideas I can adapt to my pellet smoker cooking. There are some great cooks there.

Kukla used a mix of beef chuck and veal for her meatballs and I used beef chuck and pork steak. It was a beautiful day to cook out and I enjoyed taking my time with the cooking and having some good beer! It’s always fun to try a new recipe for the first time.

About noon I got all my ingredients ready for the meatballs, ran it through my grinder using the coarse blade. I just made half of her recipe and it made 12 meatballs. I placed them in the fridge until I was ready to cook.

I cleaned out my smoker, put a new layer of foil on the drip pan and filled the pellet bin. I mixed up the mustard sauce and I had an hour and a half to enjoy the day before firing up the smoker to cook.

Kukla used a good Belgium lager beer and I used a Yuengling Hoppin Helles, a Germen Helles style beer in my cooking steps.

At 4:00 I put the meatballs on smoke, 170 to 180 deg. F for an hour and then went to 250 deg. grill level temp. They would cook another hour so I had plenty of time to get my ingredients ready and do the kraut. I used a half head of cabbage and about a pint of my kraut and only used a tablespoon of the vinegar. The carrot I sliced with a veggie peeler and then cut about 1 inch long. I toasted some mustard seeds and then added the olive oil, carrots, onions and mushrooms and sautéed until soft. I added the cabbage and covered for about 10 minutes on low heat. I uncovered and added in my brown sugar and vinegar and cooked a while then added in the kraut.

In between cooking the kraut at 1 hour 15 minutes I placed the meatballs in a cast iron skillet and back on the smoker at 325 deg. After 20 minutes I added the beer and lowered the temp to 180 deg. I went in and added the beer to the kraut and let it and the meatballs all get happy until 6:00 and served it all up.

I served the wife and I both 3 meatballs topped with the sauce over the kraut. We had some Italian bread and butter with it. We both loved this dish! I used Dusseldorf mustard in the sauce and it is on the mild side; for me it could have been spicier or some added horseradish would kick it up some. My wife liked the sauce the way it was. This is definitely a keeper recipe for us and if I don’t have any of my kraut on hand I know it will be good per Kukla’s recipe. Thanks Kukla for a great recipe and permission to repost it!

Printable recipe by Kukla

Mustard seeds and coriander

Meatball ingredients

Making the meatballs

For the sauce

For the kraut

Meatballs after 1 hour on smoke

Onions, carrots, mushrooms and mustard seeds sauteing

Cabbage added

Meatballs getting happy!

My supper

May 30th
The wife, daughter in law and grandson went out for supper tonight, this was so good I stayed home and had a sandwich from it.