Recipe: Sweet & Tangy Turkey Meatballs over Brown Rice (slow cooker)

Hubby has been working a 10:30AM-8PM shift this week, which means it’s a little hard to make lunch and dinner for myself, especially if Toby is being fussy and only wants to be held.  I decided to try out a couple slow cooker meals this week, since they’re so easy to throw together.

I’ve seen recipes using grape jelly to make slow cooker meatballs, so I figured I would try it out.  I made this recipe up based on ingredients I found in my kitchen and it came out pretty good…proud of myself haha :)

This recipe is meant for 2 people – dinner portions and then a lunch portion for leftovers.  You could easily double it for a family portion.

should have taken a better picture on my “real” camera but the iPhone will have to do for now

Ingredients:

• 1 small package of frozen turkey meatballs (I buy the 12 pack ones from Trader Joe’s)
• 1 1/4 cups reduced sugar grape jelly
• 1 cup honey barbecue sauce
• 1 teaspoon chili powder
• 1 package of minute boil-in-bag brown rice

Let’s Get Cooking!

• Add all ingredients EXCEPT brown rice into the slow cooker.  Cook on low for 4 hours.
• At the 4 hour mark, add in package of brown rice and stir.  No need to boil the rice previously as it will cook in the slow cooker with the sauce.  Don’t be alarmed if mixture is very liquidy at this point, as the rice will soak a lot of it up.
• Continue to cook on low for 2 hours, or until the the rice is plump and fully cooked.

Mmmm so good and really filling!  I hade 4 for dinner plus a decent amount of rice and I probably could have gone with just 3.  The mixture is very similar to a sweet and sour concoction, but this is more tangy because of the barbecue sauce.  There’s a slight kick from the chili powder, but my taste buds are pretty sensitive to spicy food, so you may want to add another 1/2 teaspoon to make it hotter.