Served with chips, rice or vegetables, these simple microwave porcupine meatballs are cooked from scratch in under 10 minutes – saving not only time, but saving money too as there’s no need to turn the oven on! The chips, rice or vegetables can also be cooked in the microwave if you wish!

Pin It for Later! Pinterest, Porcupine Meatballs

Save Money: To ovenbake porcupine meatballs would mean having an electric oven on for 45-60 minutes; using the microwave for 10 minutes is a fraction of the cost.

There is a slight difference in how porcupine meatballs look as the pieces of rice don’t stick out individually as when you oven bake porcupine meatballs, but they are still the same meal and taste the same. Porcupine meatballs can be made in a gravy, or in tomato sauce; if you want to microwave porcupine meatballs in Gravy then omit the sauce instructions, make your gravy and carry on!

Porcupine Meatball Ingredients:

• 250-300g beef mince
• 60g cooked basmati rice, cooked/cooled or you can use a rice pouch
• 1/2 onion, chopped up finely
• ~1 teaspoon oregano
• ~1 teaspoon garlic granules
• 1 medium egg
• salt/pepper to taste

Tomato Sauce Ingredients:

• Half tin of Campbells Cream of Tomato Soup (by eye)
• 1/4 cup/60ml Worcestershire sauce
• 1/4 cup/60ml water

How to Make Porcupine Meatballs:

In a bowl, combine the mince, rice, onion, oregano, garlic granules and egg; add a little salt/pepper.

Combine the porcupine mix thoroughly, squashing it together with your hands (or a big spoon if you’re squeamish about touching raw meat!)

Divide your mixture into 6-8 meatballs, you choose the size/number you want. Today I chose to make six porcupine meatballs. Place the porcupines onto a microwave safe dish, so they’re spread out a little bit. Cover the dish and microwave on high power for 3 minutes on high. Drain off the excess fat that’s oozed out, turn the meatballs over and microwave for a further 2 minutes on high.

Remove the dish of meatballs from the microwave oven and put it to one side while you make the sauce.

To make the tomato sauce, combine the condensed tomato soup, Worcestershire sauce, water in a microwave safe jug or bowl. Stir thoroughly and microwave on high power for 2 minutes. You can decide how thick you want your sauce to be by not adding any/all of the water if you wish.

Stir the tomato sauce and add the meatballs, ensuring the meatballs are coated in the sauce.

Microwave the meatballs in sauce for 2 minutes, until the sauce and the meatballs are hot.

Plate up and serve! This whole meal was made in the microwave – the peas were cooked in the microwave and I microwaved frozen chips!

What To Do With Leftovers!:

The above recipe made two portions, the second portion I put into a microwave safe plastic takeaway box and into the fridge, they will keep in the fridge to be eaten within 2-3 days. You can also freeze porcupine meatballs if you wish, with or without the sauce. Simply place in a freezer safe container or bag and freeze; you can defrost frozen meatballs in the fridge, or just microwave from frozen for 2-3 minutes.

The second portion was reheated the next day with plain basmati rice and a few peas; I used my microwave steamer to cook rice and peas in the microwave, which takes about 10 minutes.