Holiday party appetizer recipes: Dried Cranberry & Pork Meatballs

Holiday party appetizer recipes: Dried Cranberry & Pork Meatballs

• 12.04.2014

Recipe #1 from our festive natural greenery holiday party, DIYs, and Paleo-friendly recipes! I got totally inspired for this recipe and I was sure I'd find tons of others out there like it, but I really didn't! I know that cranberries are delicious with pork, and both are so seasonal right now (we just got 1/2 hog from a local farm and it is amazing), and meatballs are GREAT appetizers at parties... so I designed these!

Slightly sweet, tangy, and savory. Super easy to make, too!

As you can see, they were great for our holiday party shoot with a few other appetizers I'll be sharing with you soon!

And so cute in their individual dishes with a sprig of rosemary and a fresh cranberry.

Grain-Free Dried Cranberry & Pork Meatballs

Ingredients:

• 1 lb ground pork
• 1 egg
• 1/4 c. almond flour or meal (you can grind your own, see my tutorial here)
• 1.5 tbsp dried cranberries
• 1/2 tsp fennel
• 1/2 tsp sage
• 1/4 tsp corriander
• 1/2 c. chopped onion
• 1/2 c. chopped celery
• Lard, butter, or coconut oil
• Sea salt

Makes about 16 1 oz. meatballs. Double these ingredients for a large group!

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Saute onions and celery in lard, butter, or coconut oil. Add fennel, sage, corriander, and sea salt.
3. In a bowl, combine pork, egg, almond meal, and dried cranberries.
4. Combine sauteed veggies with pork mixture.
5. Heat some more lard, butter, or coconut oil in a skillet and form 1 oz. meatballs. Add meatballs to pan, separated from each other, and pan fry on one side for several minutes.
6. Put skillet in heated oven and bake 15 minutes. (Alternatively, you can flip the meatballs, but they'll end up less round and a little lumpy-looking, although browned.)

Serve!

These turned out super delicious. The spice combination is similar to the recipe for grain-free pork stuffing casserole in Beyond Bacon, which uses fresh cranberries so is less sweet but is a seriously delicious dish we've made for family before--and knocked their socks off. I love seasonal, festive flavors!

I guess some meatballs have flour or breadcrumbs in them, but since my time eating bread and my time eating meat haven't overlapped since I was a kid, I don't know what it's like to make that kind. The almond flour worked like a charm and gave a great texture! See my tutorial here to make your own or buy it online! You could also use cashew flour/meal or sunflower seed flour/meal for a nut-free option.