Easy Baked Porcupine Meatballs (2024)

Why you’ll love them

These old fashioned porcupine meatballs were designed to help stretch your dollar by making meat go further. The best part might be how are hands-off they are once you get them in the oven since there’s absolutely no messy frying involved!They’re paired with a simple tomato sauce that’s savory and flavorful with just a few pantry seasonings.

Ok, so why are they called porcupine meatballs, anyway? It’s because the rice cooks and sticks out so they look a bit like porcupines.That’s about it, which is actually pretty charming for a name. Basically, they’re a fun recipe that the kids will enjoy as well. For how few ingredients you need to make them, these easy meatballs are a weeknight winner any time of the year.

Ingredients you’ll need

For the meatballs

• Lean ground beef – the meatballs are cooked right in the sauce, and you don’t want the sauce to be too oily, so we like 90% lean
• Long grain white rice – jasmine, basmati, or generically labeled “long grain white rice” is what you’re looking for
• Egg – binds the meatballs so they don’t fall apart
• Seasonings – chopped onion, minced garlic, dried Italian seasoning, salt & pepper make up the tasty flavorings

For the sauce

• Canned tomato sauce – for my UK/Australian readers, tomato sauce here in North America is similar to passata
• Chicken broth – it helps thin the sauce and infuse flavor
• Worcestershire sauce and garlic powder – to level up the savory flavor even more!
• Brown sugar – takes the acidic edge off the canned tomatoes to balance everything out

How to make porcupine meatballs

This is an overview with step-by-step photos. Full ingredients & instructions are in the recipe card below.

Add meatball ingredients to a large bowl. Gently combine the meat mixture with your hands without overworking it.

Form into meatballs that are 1.5″ and place into a 9×13″ baking dish, evenly spaced out. Add all sauce ingredients to a mixing bowl and stir well.

Pour the sauce directly onto the meatballs in the baking dish. Cover with foil tightly and bake until the rice is fully cooked and they’re tender.

Substitutions and variations

• You can swap the ground beef for ground pork or ground turkey if you prefer.
• Change the flavors up a bit by replacing the salt with seasoned salt or another salty seasoning such as Cajun seasoning such as Tony Chachere’s Original.
• If using brown rice, the meatballs may take up to 2 hours to cook, and you may need to add a little more liquid to the sauce partway through baking. Or pre-cook it before adding it into the meatballs.