Tis’ the season to be entertaining! Meatballs are an easy crowd pleaser. This meatball recipe has been around for decades. It is amazingly good and super easy! Three ingredients total, with a prep time of 5 minutes! You do need a crockpot for this recipe. This recipe is a great dish to take to any party, gathering, or potluck.
What makes this recipe so good are the quality ingredients. If you buy other brands for this recipe I cannot guarantee that it will be as good. Buying these specific brands are what make it top notch!
Ingredients
1 bag of Costco Meatballs (I use only 1/2 the bag, because it is a lot of meatballs).
These are the Kirkland brand that are labeled “Italian-Style Beef”. The full bag is 6 lbs, so use 1/2 (3 lbs of meatballs). They are precooked, just make sure to thaw them before putting them in the crockpot. You can also defrost in the microwave like I did recently, if you forget to thaw in advance.
18 ounce jar of Welch’s grape jelly
Yes, grape jelly. It sounds weird, but this recipe has been used for many years and it is delicious. I wish I could say I invented this one myself, but I never would have thought of using grape jelly with meatballs.
40 ounce bottle of Sweet Baby Ray’s Barbacue Sauce
You may not use the entire bottle of barbecue sauce. The goal is to have about a 2 to 1 ration of sauce to jelly. I like mine really saucy, so I use the whole bottle. Keeping it extra saucy also prevents the meatballs from sticking to the sides and bottom of the crockpot.
Mix all three ingredients together in a crockpot. Heat them up in the crockpot and serve. Since they are precooked, you don’t want to cook them more if possible. I turn my crockpot on high for about 45 minutes to get it nice and heated up and then turn it down to warm.
