Meatball Surprise

Normally, I cook on Sundays, but tomorrow we’re going out of town, and, in fact, I’m taking a couple of my ovens with me to loan to some friends for a week or so. The wife of the family is in charge of a church-run girl’s camp, and needs it for them.

So, today, I made a variation of a dish my own wife used to make when we first got married. It was kinda fun to get nostalgic with her over the meal.

Meatball Surprise

12” dutch oven
8-9 coals below
16-18 coals above
You’ll need a side fire, because this one runs over an hour.

• 2 lbs ground beef
• 1 egg
• 2 medium onions, chopped
• 2 Tbsp Worcestershire sauce
• A bunch of sprinkles of cayenne hot sauce (about 2 tsp)
• 2 Tbsp minced garlic
• Seasonings (I used salt, pepper, seasoning salt, some mixed dried chopped veggie thing I had (sorta like mrs Dash, but not chopped as fine)
  

• 1 8oz brick of cream cheese
• 2-3 small-med potatoes, quartered and sliced
• 2 cans of Cream of Mushroom Soup
  

• 1 Cup rice
• 2 Cups water or chicken broth

Start by mixing everything in the first set all together, stirring with a wooden spoon and getting it all blended really nice.

Then grab up a fistful and make a ball, about the size of a tennis ball, maybe a tich smaller. Make a hollow in the middle, and slice off a little bit of cream cheese. Put that in the middle of the ball and fold the meat mixture around it. Reform it into a ball, and put it in the dutch oven. In my 12” oven, I made a ring of about seven or eight meatballs, and two in the middle.

Then take the potato slices and scatter them in between the meatballs. Finally, ladle on and spread the Cream of Mushroom soups over the top of it all. After that, I salted and peppered on top (I love coarse ground pepper).

Set it out on and under the coals. Turn it every 15 to 20 minutes. In the meantime, in a smaller oven cook the rice. I normally would have done that in my 8”-er, but today, we had some rice leftover from Chinese take-out. Shhhh… Don’t tell anyone that I didn’t make it myself…

I cooked it for about 1 hr, 20 minutes, until the meat was done, the sauce was bubbling, and the potatoes were soft. If we’d had some, I probably would have sprinkled on some grated cheddar cheese just as it was finishing, and then set the lid back on to melt the cheese

When it’s all done, serve the meatballs on top of the rice. Spoon a bunch of the sauce over the meatballs and over the rice. It’s delicious!

On this particular day, I used my 10” to cook up some brownies from a mix. I know, I know, I’m a lazy butt. But it’s almost a hundred degrees out, and I’m not up to it. So, bleah…