These delicious Waikiki Meatballs make up a wonderful, appetizing dish served with rice. These meatballs have all the flavorsome delights you would expect from a Hawaiian-style recipe. Yummy pineapple, bell peppers, soy sauce, and ginger are what make this recipe fun and delicious. It’s also relatively quick to prepare.

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Are you looking for a different, yet tasty way to serve ground beef, turkey (or any ground meat)? This is it. Waikiki Meatballs is one of our favorite Betty Crocker recipes. I found this in my old 1972 edition cookbook shortly after we were married and I’ve made it many times through the years.  This beef entree is tasty, economical, and a change of pace from many boring ground beef recipes currently available on the Internet.

You can easily make this recipe gluten-free by changing out the bread crumbs for gluten-free. If you want more color, use red, orange or yellow bell peppers along with or instead of the green bell peppers. Consider trying this quick and easy Waikiki Meatballs recipe for your family some time soon. It is such a delightful recipe and everyone enjoys it.

When I initially posted this recipe in July 2012, my pictures were taken with a cheap iPhone 3 (all that I had at the time) so they were blurry, dark, and less than appealing. I’ve been remaking all my first year blog recipes since none of them were originally taken with a good camera and reshooting the pictures for better presentation and display.

I recently remade this recipe (October 2015), but this time I made the recipe entirely gluten free. I save the end pieces off of gluten free bread and freeze them. Then I crush them into crumbs with my rolling pin and refreeze. Here, I dried the bread on cookie racks for about a week, then I froze them bread, pulled it out of the freezer whole, and ran my rolling pin over to crush them.

The crumbs did not have all the parsley and Italian seasonings that normal bread crumbs come with–but they also didn’t have any high fructose corn syrup or other garbage in most bread crumbs. This has always been one of our favorite meatball recipes and it tastes well using either regular or gluten free bread crumbs. It’s quick, easy and delicious served over hot, cooked rice.

4C brand now makes gluten free bread crumbs. I find them at my local Walmart.

Waikiki Meatballs over hot, cooked rice makes a delicious supper.

Serve Waikiki Meatballs over hot, cooked rice.

These meatballs are so easy and quick to make. You can have dinner ready in under an hour.

Here’s what I did.

I used these ingredients. I crushed the frozen gluten free bread with a rolling pin to produce bread crumbs.

Place ground beef in large mixing bowl. Add bread crumbs, diced onion, an egg, salt, ginger and milk.

 Mix all ingredients by hand until well mixed.

Melt oil in saucepan. (I actually did not use any oil). Form beef mixture into golf ball-size meatballs. Add to oil in skillet and brown until meatballs are completely cooked through and there is no pink showing. 

Remove cooked meatballs from pan and set aside. Drain grease.

While meatballs are cooking make sauce ingredients. Place cornstarch in bowl. Add brown sugar. Stir to combine pressing out all the lumps. Chop up a green pepper and set aside. Drain a can of crushed pineapple and reserve the juice. Press all the juice out of the pineapple and allow the juice to drain into a bowl beneath the colander.

Add the cornstarch/brown sugar mixture to reserved pineapple juice. Add apple cider vinegar and soy sauce. I used a gluten free low-sodium soy sauce. Stir all ingredients together for the sauce.

Place sauce ingredients in pan and cook over medium heat until mixture thickens.

Add cooked meatballs.

Add drained crushed pineapple and chopped green pepper. Stir to combine.

Stir all the ingredients together. Keep heat on low. 

Meanwhile, make rice. I use a higher quality brown rice. The first thing in the morning I set out a cup and a half of rice and covered it with water. It was 5 or 6 hours later when I drained the rice and cooked it. Soaking the rice releases phythates which are hard for the body to digest. Additionally, it releases digestive enzymes making the rice more digestible. Soaking helps all grains, seeds and beans to be more easily digested. I cook the rice in a 3 to 1 ratio. Three parts water to one part rice.  Cook the rice about 30 minutes until it’s done.

Waikiki Meatballs are wonderful served with hot, cooked rice. You can also serve it with Fried Rice.

Here’s the recipe.

WAIKIKI MEATBALLS

(Recipe from Betty Crocker Cookbook)

Here’s a serving of this economical and delicious meal. If you enjoy Polynesian-style food, you’ll enjoy Waikiki Meatballs.

These meatballs are tender and juicy. You can also serve them over noodles if you prefer.

You may also enjoy these delicious recipes!

Swedish Meatballs

Pizza Meatballs

Baked Penne with Italian-Style Meatballs