Orange Chicken Meatballs

I am somewhat secretly a fan of “for a limited time only” foods from the Discounters I pass by on my daily walks. Eastern Europe Week, Mediterranean Week, Asian Week…my absolute favorite is European-Sourced Caricatures of American Food Week. They put their flyers out a week or more before they put out the food, so occasionally “stop in on Thursday for this thing” lands on my weekly chore list. Most of the processed snack/heat-and-eat offerings are terrible, so I’ve learned to limit my enthusiasm to ingredients (and alcohol).

Last week was “XXL Week.” Food in Germany is normally sold in half-serving packages, but periodically a Discounter will make reasonably-sized packages, and right there in the flyer was a pound and a half of ground chicken! Ground chicken! In meatball-recipe quantity! I can never find ground chicken when I want it, and there are dozens of better ways to use a breast filet, so I was super-excited about the chance to finally make some new chicken meatballs!

Until I got it home, and realized the word “gewürzt” on the label didn’t mean “salt and pepper”, like on premade beef patties, but included a whole range of plant material. Paprika, onion, chili, lovage. Someone thought the ground meat would be cooked in a pan and consumed plain. SighWTF.

I chose to remain excited, but the word “curry” limited the available flavor directions. Fortunately, I have a pile of printouts labeled “meatballs to make”, and this Orange Chicken Meatball was nestled inside it. (“15 minutes” prep time is, uh, ambitious. Barely covered dicing, zesting, and juicing.)

The panko crumbs were soaked in the milk before mixing. The resultant mass was very wet, similar to Iowa Ham Balls, which are also baked and then served with a sweet sauce that is prepared separately. Because the meat was pre-seasoned, I left out the salt and pepper, and halved the garlic.

It made 24 golf-ball sized balls. I had to crowd my Backblech.

Paired with my Discounter meat: fancy-ass sweet-and-juicy organic oranges from Spain purchased from a fruit specialty store earlier in the week (special offer, kilogram price less than supermarket price).

I don’t own a zester, so I use a box grater for oranges and lemons. I like the big bits of peel.

It’s a basic sweet-and-sour sauce, with vinegar, sugar, ginger, soy sauce, and red chili flakes. While I cooked, I was listening to a very interesting podcast about comets hitting the earth and wiping out megafauna, and I forgot to take a picture of the baked meatballs before I bathed them in the sauce.

I paired them with plain rice and plain veg, there was enough sauce cover the whole dish.

The baked balls remained juicy, and were a bit spongy (but in a good way). Mr Radish said they were too flavorful, and then he ate ten of them, so draw your own conclusions. The sauce was extremely delicious. I will make these again with plain chicken, if I ever find any.