One of my family’s favorite meals is Venison Meatballs with our homemade meatball sauce or as my son’s call this recipe–“deer balls.” Yeah, we are a weird bunch.
Feel free to print our recipe card:
Ingredients
- Meatball Ingredients:
- 2 lbs of ground deer burger
- 2 egg
- 4 Tbsp. ketchup
- 1 1/2 cup of dry instant oatmeal
- 1/2 tsp. of black pepper
- 1/2 tsp. of garlic powder
- 3 tsp. of soy sauce
- 1/2 cup finely chopped onions
- If you don't want to use onions, you can use 1 tsp. of onion powder or omit it altogether.
- Sauce Ingredients:
- 1 14 oz can of jellied cranberry sauce
- 12 oz. of chili sauce
- 1 Tbsp. of lemon juice
- 2 Tbsp. of brown sugar
Instructions
- Let's make the sauce first. Put all ingredients in a saucepan and stir until smooth. Heat slowly and simmer for one minute.
- Now let's make the meatballs. Mix all ingredients in a large bowl and take a tablespoon full of the mixture and roll it into a ball and place it in a baking dish. I like to put my balls in a 9" x 13" casserole dish.
- Continue making meatballs until the bowl is empty. If you get to the bottom of the bowl and there’s not enough mixture to make the same size balls as you already have, it’s okay to make a little ball but try to make your balls as close to the same size as possible so they will all get done at the same time.
- Pour meatball sauce over the meatballs. Bake at 350F for about 30 minutes or until done.
Please keep in mind, the bigger the balls, the longer you will need to keep them in the oven, so if your balls are big it’s going to take longer than 30 minutes 😉
This is great with fried taters (potatoes), corn on the cob, and big old cat-head biscuits. These meatballs are also great to make for party appetizers. Just make them small since they are appetizers and not the main course.
Please watch and like our video…
I normally provide nutrition facts, but because it is truly time-consuming I am going to leave that to you if you desire. MyFitnessPal.com is a great tool to use for calculating the facts. You just simply enter in all of the ingredients and how many are being served and they calculate it for you. It’s really easy. However, I will still give you some tips to make this recipe more diet-friendly. Maybe late on when I have more time I will come back and calculate it for you.
The good, the bad and the delicious…
- Venison Meatballs are low in saturated fat and high in vitamin C and protein.
- They are also very high in sodium and sugar and might be a little too high in cholesterol and fat for those of you on special diets.
To make this recipe more diet-friendly…
- To help lower the cholesterol and fat use less fat in your ground venison burger. You could also omit the two eggs, but the meatballs might not hold together as well.
- To lower the sodium, try using a salt substitute like “No Salt” or “Nu-Salt” or lessen the amount of added salt and use low sodium soy sauce and chili sauce or you could replace all of the chili sauce with plain tomato sauce, and completely omit the soy sauce, which would drop the sodium drastically. This will also change the taste quite a bit so be cautious.
- To help lower the sugar content, you can omit the brown sugar in the meatballs and use less oatmeal. You could also skip adding the sauce to the meatballs or opt for a healthier sauce.
- Whatever changes you make to your Venison Meatballs, you can calculate the nutrition facts at myfitnesspal.com
Venison Meatballs hold up well if frozen as well. So if you have any leftovers, who am I kidding–you are NOT going to have leftovers, but if for some odd reason you do, pop them in the freezer for a quick meal later. Just be sure to use a FoodSaver or a good quality brand of freezer bags so they don’t become freezer burned. Enjoy!
Bon Appétit
Yum 🙂 I can’t wait to try these. Is this sauce good with chicken too? I’d like to try it, but I am out of deer meat.
Yes, but keep in mind that it’s sort of sweet. We grilled chicken thighs with it and everyone loved it. Good luck and come back to let us know if you like it.
Looks yummy 😀 thanks for the recipe
Thank you and you are very welcome. I hope you’ll try it.
These are excellent, however, misleading by calling them spicy, but I have made them twice in 1 week as they were good. I think I’ll spice them up a bit on the third round!
I’m glad you like them! Something I have found out is that people all over the world have different opinions of what is spicy and what isn’t. I would love for you to come back and let us know what changes you made to the 3rd round so everyone else can enjoy your spicier recipe as well.