Asian Meatballs

by
Jump to Recipe Print Recipe

Last Updated on

ginger garlic lime cilantro meatballs with coconut rice

I’ve got an easy recipe for delicious ginger garlic lime and cilantro meatballs with coconut rice here today. My starting point for this recipe was a pound of beef from the round that I had in the fridge and didn’t know what to do with. Beef round cuts are very tough so I knew I had to resort to extreme measures and that extreme measure was the food processor. I just ground it all up and voila, the toughness problem was solved.

Next, the flavor. I like to marinate beef in soy sauce, ginger, garlic, lime juice and cilantro but instead of marinating, I just mixed all that good stuff into the beef here (I soaked the lime juice into bread cubes along with some milk, a trick I learned from America’s Test Kitchen). For a little bit of heat I threw in some crushed red pepper flakes and then just fried these guys in peanut oil. I served some coconut rice (recipe courtesy of the Food Network) to go along and altogether got a fantastic meal.

More delicious Asian-inspired recipes:

ginger garlic lime cilantro meatballs with coconut rice
Print Recipe
0 from 0 votes

Asian Meatballs

An easy recipe for delicious ginger garlic lime and cilantro meatballs with coconut rice.
Prep Time30 mins
Cook Time1 hr
Total Time1 hr 30 mins
Course: Main Course
Cuisine: Chinese
Keyword: asian meatballs
Servings: 2
Calories: 1120kcal
Author: Nicole Branan

Ingredients:

For the coconut rice:

  • 1 cup jasmine rice
  • 3/4 cups water
  • 1/2 cup coconut milk
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt

For the meatballs:

  • 1 pound beef, from the round
  • 1/2 cup milk
  • 1 teaspoon lime juice
  • 2 slices sandwich bread
  • 1/3 cup finely chopped cilantro
  • 3.5 teaspoons soy sauce
  • 2 garlic cloves, minced or pressed
  • 1 teaspoon freshly grated ginger
  • 1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
  • 1 egg

Instructions:

For the coconut rice:

  • Place all ingredients together in a bowl and bring to a boil.
  • Cover, turn the heat down to low and simmer the rice for 18 minutes.

For the meatballs:

  • Cut the beef into about 1-inch cubes and put in the freezer for 20 minutes to make it easier to process.
  • Meanwhile mix milk and lime juice together in a bowl, cut the sandwich bread into 1/2-inch cubes and soak in the milk mix for 10 minutes.
  • Take the beef out of the freezer and process in a food processor until you have finely ground beef.
  • Transfer the wet bread cubes into a bowl (discard excess liquid) and mush them up a bit with a fork.
  • Mix in the beef.
  • Mix cilantro, soy sauce, garlic, ginger, red pepper flakes and egg into the beef/bread mix.
  • Form small meatballs (about 1.5 inches in diameter) and fry in peanut oil until crispy and brown on the outside and cooked on the inside.

Nutrition

Calories: 1120kcal

Made this recipe? It would be awesome if you could leave a rating. No need to type anything, just tap or click the stars in the recipe card and you’re done. Thanks!

Want to save this recipe idea for later? Pin it:

ginger garlic lime cilantro meatballs with coconut rice

11 comments

  5. Nagi@RecipeTin Eats says:

    I almost broke my laptop reaching in to grab one of those babies….this is my kind of flavours!! My kind of food!!

    You probably get sick of hearing me say this but I love your photo…as usual….in particular, I like that this one is pulled back compared to most that you share which is basically just you showing off the breadth of your skills ;) Thanks for the tips as well!

    Reply
    • Nicole B. says:

      Aw, thank you, Nagi! (I actually would have liked to step back even further here but couldn’t because the metal tray in the background wasn’t wide enough). :)

      Reply

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.