Easy Slow Cooker Crock Pot Meatballs Recipe

It’s amazing what you find when you find yourself travelling (and what you see, me oh my)…hours and hours staring at backs of aeroplane seats and launching oneself over the international dateline gives you an inordinate amount of time to go through your computer zapping the cr*p from it …while doing this I was dreaming of home-cooked food, (alongside scheming making the home-made version of the waffles and pancakes that have helped the contours of my upper arms over the last two weeks) and while not just thinking about comfort food I actually found pictures of it and decided that the week we get back from California, these easy tomato sauce meatballs in the slow cooker will be on the menu.

I blogged before I went away that I have been thinking a lot about cooking and dinners recently and I’ll be cooking my way through a few cookbooks when I get back to real life, because it’s all got a little bit boring in our old cottage, I need inspiration, but I need to be realistic and realise that it’s all very well stuffing a mushroom but in my life as mum to three and often dinners at all different times of the evening I need convenience and ease over mushroom stuffing…which is where my slow cooker comes in time and time again…

So if you are in the same boat, and if you love your crockpot as I do (or maybe you haven’t fallen in love with her yet but are desperately trying to), if that little baby sitting on the counter has saved you on countless occasions, if you love coming in to a dinner all done and dusted and, apart from all that, like a small amount of washing up and comfort food in one big delicious hit (and go here for a one-bowl, super delicious recipe, tried and Beach Cottage male tested that is one bowl and so easy), well this will tick all of those boxes, and some.

I have been tinkering with meatball recipes for a very very very long time and, pretty much, always failed. In my humble opinion, meatballs can be horribly wrong or blooming fantastic, many recipes I have tried have been the former. Add in a mediocre sauce to a factory made meatball and the whole thing, rather than comfort food and labour saving, turns into a bland blah of mess – and I hate that. So after years of fiddling around, I’ve finally settled on this recipe here, it’s easy, uses simple ingredients and it’s really good.

This recipe uses ready-made meatballs, I don’t buy many things ready-made and meatballs are hit and miss but sometimes I like to combine the convenience of ready-made things for their time saving abilities with natural ingredients so that I get the ease of throwing it in but, hopefully with less of the nasties… There are two ways to get the meatballs for this recipe – make your own or buy them, obviously. With the latter I find there is a huge huge variation in taste and pretty much have found that price does not always reflect quality here. And I know you’ll laugh, and I will have to re-iterate that I am NOT sponsored by IKEA, but along with freezing my own (but really holding my hands up it’s not that often I have ball making session), I also keep a huge stash of IKEA meatballs in my freezer…yup on my expeditions to IKEA in go 10 bags of meatballs for occasions such as this. IKEA meatballs are good and they are just easy to have in the freezer for occasions such as these. So this recipe assumes you too have a stash of meatballs around and about your person, secret, homemade, stolen from any passing Italian mama, or not. I find having stashes of ready made good quality bits and bobs in my freezer can really help out when you have either not gone shopping or get that brain dump where thinking what is for dinner can seriously tip you over the edge, or you want to get something going in the middle of the day but don’t want to think about it too much. Of course you can do make this with meatballs you make on the day and for that, if I am making it in the crockpot I make sure that there is enough time for them to be fully cooked through (so that’s a good few hours) and brown them first with the onions, but mostly I make this from meatballs dumped in from the freezer…

Slow Cooker Crock Pot Meatballs in Tomato Sauce Recipe

2 400g tins tomatoes 1 handful fresh garden herbs 3 cloves garlic minced 2 onions finely diced 25 meatballs 1 1/2 cups mushrooms 4 fresh tomatoes (optional if you haven’t got them) 3 cups chicken stock 1 chorizo sausage finely diced 1. pop all your ingredients in the slow cooker and cook for 6 to 8 hours on high for the first few hours and then turn to low – you will need to check the liquid content, about an hour or so before the end of cooking check if you need to either add some more stock and turn it back up to high or leave the lid of the slow cooker ajar to reduce the liquid (all slow cookers cook differently it seems, even if you buy the same brand, which is why I think a lot of people have fails with slow cookers, I think it takes a few attempts to get to know your slow cooker and how it cooks). So there we go, easy meatballs you can chuck in early in the day, are delicious and not too much effort. That’s it from me, broadcasting from our old cottage will be back soon, with news from what’s going on in the garden, I’m starting a room makeover (the laundry, it’s long overdue and I am on the hunt for a vintage laundry tub sink, watch this space), planning the outdoor shower (which has now extended to outdoor bath..it’s happening, oh my gawd!) and I have some beautiful Californian beach photos to share from my trip…oh and news on my little studio by the sea.. So long. Sarah if you are interested in real family recipes tested by my fair hands in my slow cooker go here if you’d like to see my most popular and most superrrrrr-duperrrrr easy crock pot recipe you’ll find it here…trust me it rocks xx

The post Easy Slow Cooker Crock Pot Meatballs Recipe appeared first on Beach Decor Blog, Coastal Blog, Coastal Decorating.