Asian Beef Meatballs with Pineapple Soy Glaze
These delicious Asian style beef meatballs are made with ground beef, mushrooms, bell pepper, green onion. They are baked in oven and coated with pineapple glaze. Serve with rice!
Everyone seems to like meatballs. I do, too. These Asian beef meatballs with pineapple soy glaze has to be my kid’s favorite.
I love my mother’s meatballs. She mixes ground beef with finely chopped mushrooms, bell pepper, and garlic, then coat with flour and egg, and pan fry them in little oil. They are flavorful and so good with a bowl of rice.
Although my mom’s meatballs are great the way they are, I wanted to take her beef meatballs and cover with delicious pineapple soy glaze to give a little twist. And the result is fantastic!
The savory meatballs are so well balanced with slightly sweet glaze made with pineapple juice, and my kids went nuts over them. If your kids love Asian dishes, they will love these Asian beef meatballs.
The beauty of this recipe is that you can bake these meatballs, which will reduce the fat intake, and they are gluten-free as long as you use gluten-free soy sauce.
If you don’t mind mincing the vegetables (or use one of those mini food processor to make your life easier), the recipe itself is very easy and quick to make. Once you taste these meatballs, they might become one of your favorite Asian meatballs recipe.
If you want exotic Arabic style meatballs, try my middle eastern meatballs with yogurt dipping sauce. With fragrant herbs and garlic, you can enjoy savory and rice meatballs as finger food for parties or dinner. So good!
For Beef Meatballs
Combine the ground beef (preferably ground sirloin), finely chopped mushrooms, red bell peppers, green onion, garlic, rice flour, egg, and season with salt and pepper.
Mix well with a folk.
Roll them into your desired size meatballs. Mines are about 1-1/2″ in diameter. Place them over a greased pan.
Bake them in a preheated 375 degree F. oven for 18-20 minutes, turning them once in the halfway of cooking.
For Pineapple Soy Glaze
When meatballs are almost done baking, mix all the glaze ingredients in a bowl.
Boil the sauce in a hot skillet to thicken.
Add the meatballs and coat them will with the delicious glaze.
Sprinkle your nutty love~ (the toasted sesame seeds!), and they are ready to sit on top of steamy rice.
Whenever I make something that is Korean style, I usually recommend to serve with Kimchi. But this is one of the dishes that I DO NOT recommend to serve with Kimchi, though.
I think the flavor of kimchi will over-power the glaze. Instead try with sugar snap peas. I found the combination is just perfect to go together.
The weather is so beautiful these days. The bright rays of a spring sun is boosting me up when I step outside and I feel like all of my daily stress is getting washed out.
I hope you soak up the sun as well, and be happy. Enjoy this recipe!
Other Asian Beef Dishes
- Classic Thai Beef Salad (Yum Nua)
- Easy Ground Beef Curry Recipe (Beef Keema Curry)
- Middle Eastern Meatballs
Beef Meatballs with Pineapple Soy Glaze
Ingredients
For meatballs
- 1 lb ground sirloin
- 2 oz button mushrooms, minced
- 1/4 red bell pepper, minced
- 2 green onion, finely chopped
- 1 clove garlic, minced
- 1 egg
- 2 tbsp rice flour , or 2 tablespoon plain bread crumbs
- 1/2 tsp kosher salt
- dashes pepper
For pineapple soy glaze
- 6 tbsp pineapple juice
- 5 tbsp soy sauce
- 1 garlic clove, minced
- 1/4 tsp ginger paste
- 3 tbsp sugar
- 2 tbsp rice wine vinegar
- 2 tsp cornstarch
- 1 tbsp sweet rice wine (mirim), optional
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 375ºF.
- For the meatballs, combine all the ingredients in a large mixing bowl and mix well with a folk. Roll into the desired size of meatballs, or about 1-1/2″ in diameter. Bake the meatballs in the preheated oven for 18-20 minutes until done. Turn the meatballs to the other side during the half way of cooking.
- For the pineapple soy glaze, combine all the ingredients in a mixing bowl and stir very well to dissolve the sugar.
- Heat a skillet over med-high heat, add the glaze mixture and boil until it becomes a thick glaze, stirring constantly. Add the meatballs and coat with the glaze. Serve these meatballs over steamed rice.
Hello! With the winter Olympics on TV, my family has been taking a great interest in Korea. We invited another family here for lunch and cooked your Beef Meatballs with Pineapple Soy Glaze and your Japchae Salad. It was awesome! We are sweltering in a summer heatwave in Brisbane but the food took us to Korea!! Thank you so much for your recipes.
Andrea, Brisbane, Australia
I made them yesterday and they turned out as beautiful as they are on your pictures and as yummy as I expected them to be! Thank you 🙂
I made a big batch but I was a bit late so there was no rice. Next time I will start soaking rice in time.
Your recipes are very well written and detailed, congratulations.
Love from Italy and Happy Easter
Andrea
Happy Easter to you, too, Andrea! These meatballs are quite easy and quick to put together, right? Glad to hear that they turned out beautifully for you. Thank yo so much for liking my recipes. Cheers from Argentina!
Hi Holly, once again I’m compelled to write and thank you for sharing your food with the world! My husband loves it whenever I cook from your blog. I’m in grad school and haven’t been able to cook as much as I’m used to, but I made these meatballs for Valentine’s Day and they were a huge hit. Thanks again!
That is just wonderful, Jodi! It is not easy to spare much time in cooking when you are a student in grade school. Glad to hear the you had a delicious meal for Valentine’s day with your husband. Thanks for the sweet comment!
Would these taste as good if I substituted ground chicken for the beef or half chic/half beef?
Sure, I think any type of meat would go well with the sauce.
I made this recipe for dinner but doubled it, it was so delicious, especially with white rice! My roommate who is a finicky eater ate seconds=)
How wonderful! That is so great that it turned out so well. Thank you so much Liz!
Hello Holly,
thank you very much for this wonderful recipe. I will try it asap. Love all this asian style cooking and the special taste of the typical herbs.
Thats why I will follow your blog to get some nice inspirations. It’s not so easy to get all this stuff in Germany but I will try my best.
Keep on cooking
Hardy
Hi Hardy
Great to hear from you. I totally understand how hard it is to get the Korean ingredients in Germany. Hope you get to try some of my recipes. And congratulations on Germany’s championship in World Cup. It was a great game!
this is wonderful. Mouthwatering while reading. I will give it a try asap. Thank you very much for this recipe. Think I will find lots of inspiration on your blog.
Hello Holly . Thank you very much for a other great recipe.
Can’t wait to taste the meatballs. I am a big fan of meatballs.
Question: Do you normally use a oven with a fan. I could not find any remarks about it in your blog. Thank you. Greetings.
Harald, Switzerland
Hi Imesch
I use the oven without the fan. If you do, reduce the cooking time to 15 minutes. They are lovely Asian style meatballs to serve with rice. Hope you like them!
Hello Holly.
Thanks for the tip.
I cooked the meatballs on Saturday and again tonight.
They are just Great!
Best Regards.
Hi Harald
So great to hear that you tried this recipe twice in a row. It is very tasting meatballs, isn’t it? Thanks for your awesome comment.
Excellent recipe. Will definitely make again. The meatballs were so tasty I might consider serving the sauce on the side, as a dipping sauce.
Glad to hear that you liked. Serving the sauce as dipping sounds very nice. It will be a wonderful finger food.
Excellent recipe. Came together easily.
Tried this for dinner and my family love it! Thanks
Hi Holly,
I made these meatballs today and my two boys devoured them to their hearts. I did not have pineapple juice so I puree some fresh pineapple chunk to use as the base of the glaze. It was so yummy. I think they will go well with bread too because my older boy loves bread.
I also love this recipe because of the vegetables that are in the meatballs. Way to go for my boys to have some of veggie intakes. They did not notice the red pepper or the mushroom until I told them.
Thank you for the recipe!!!
Hi Trang
So happy to hear that you boys liked these meatballs. My kids love them, too. This is great way to hide some vegetables in the meatballs to feed them if they are no so keen on veggies. Yes, I think they will go well with bread, too.
This looks so good. I’m really glad to see there’s a way to make this gluten free. We are trying to reduce our gluten intake and I’ve never thought about using rice flour in place of bread crumbs. I will try this soon. Thank you.
Oh my…I am totally drooling from looking at these photos!!! I love the flavors. Meatballs are totally awesome.
Hi Holly, tried this recipe for Lunch today and the verdict is…my whole family loves it! Especially my 3 years old son! These sweet and sour bursting with flavour meatballs are just so satisfying with a bowl of hot rice. This will definitely be one of my regular recipes. Thanks alot for this recipe!
Meatballs are so versatile. They can be made with so many different flavors and served in so many different ways. It’s no wonder why everybody loves them!
My mouth is watering like crazy!!!! Can’t wait to try it!
Ha ha! Thanks Lucy.
Sounds delish! Gotta try this one! I love the combination of sweet pepper with the beef, somewhat similar to what my own mother used to make, though hers had tomatoes too. Thanks, Holly, for this great idea.
Glad that you like this. Tomatoes sounds good in the meatballs. It is so intriguing to know how versatile everyone’s meatballs are.
Hi, the first ingredient under the glaze is pineapple glaze. Is that supposed to be juice or is pineapple glaze sold in a bottle?
Thanks,
Janet
Oh, it is pineapple juice. I corrected it. Thanks for pointing it out.
I don’t think I’ve ever had a meatball I didn’t like. Oddly enough, I rarely make them myself. Weird. I gotta get over that! This would be a wonderful place to start — these look terrific. Thanks.