Japanese Pork Meatballs (Niku-dango) with Two Sauces

Pork meatballs are deep fried, then coated in flavoursome sauce. By just changing the sauce, you will get quite different meatball dishes – one with sweet and sour sauce, one with sweet soy sauce like teriyaki sauce. Both are really tasty.

I saw Nagi’s post, Oven Baked Italian Meatballs few weeks ago, where she talked about posting a meatball recipe every month. This inspired me to post the Japanese Meatball recipe as I am sure Nagi does not know how to make it.

Japanese meatballs are called niku-dango (肉団子) which is a direct translation of meat (niku, 肉) ball (dango, 団子). The meat can be beef, pork, chicken, even fish. But in the case of chicken meatballs, Japanese usually call them tsukune (つくね). Fish meatballs are often called tsumire (つみれ). You can read more about tsukune and tsumire in my post, Tsukune (Japanese Chicken Meatballs).

Since beef was introduced to Japan much later than other meats, the dishes using beef meatballs tend to be used in the Western style dishes such as stews, pasta, soups. But unlike beef, pork meatballs can be flavoured with very authentic Japanese sauce as well as used in the Western style.

In Japan, you will find more recipes using pork meatballs than beef meatballs. Perhaps because of this, people tend to assume that nikudango uses pork mince (ground pork).

My pork meatballs are deep fried. It is a bit of an effort to do deep frying and I know some people avoid it as much as they can. But I find that it can make near perfect round balls more easily by frying than sautéing or grilling. If you use a small pot, you don’t have to use a lot of oil to fry either.

To make near perfect round meatballs all the same size, I used a measuring tablespoon to take a consistent amount of meat mixture and placed each of them on a cutting board, then rolled the meat into balls. See the meatballs are similar sizes.

Pork meatballs are often served in sweet and sour sauce called amazu-an (甘酢あん or 甘酢餡). Amazu (甘酢) means sweet vinegar and an (あん or 餡) means thick sauce in this context.

You might recall the amazu dressing recipe in my post, Japanese Dressings. Amazu dressing is a clear, sweet vinegar consisting of just rice vinegar and sugar with a dash of salt. But when you make amazu-an, soy sauce is added to give a salty flavour, and cornflour to thicken.

Amazu-an is similar to the Chinese sweet and sour sauce, but the flavour is not as complex and the sauce is not oily.

Meatballs with amazu-an (sweet and sour sauce).

Japanese people love sweet soy sauce flavours like teriyaki sauce. They use this kind of sauce for many dishes and pork meatballs are no exception. Instead of coating the meatballs in sweet and sour sauce, I sometimes use sauce with teriyaki flavour which is called amakara-so-su (甘辛ソース). The word “甘辛” means sweet and salty.

Amakara-so-su is made in a similar way to the teriyaki sauce you can find in my recipe Teriyaki Chicken. But a small amount of dashi stock is added to make the flavour less strong and more suitable for meatballs.

Both sauces are based on soy sauce, therefore the colour of the sauce is almost the same. But the flavour is quite different. So, I decided to add two sauces to go with the pork meatballs in today’s recipe. It is up to you which sauce you pour over the meatballs.

Meatballs with Amakara-so-su (teriyaki sauce flavour).

You can freeze fried meatballs. It is convenient to stock up meatballs in the freezer. Simply defrost in the microwave, then serve with the sauce. I had extra meatballs so I made sweet and sour pork using these meatballs instead of cubed pork. I call it Sweet and Sour Pork Meatballs. I will post this dish soon.

Yumiko

5 from 6 votes

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Japanese Pork Meatballs (Niku-dango) with Two Sauces

Prep Time

15 mins

Cook Time

20 mins

Total Time

35 mins

 

Pork meatballs are deep fried, then coated in flavoursome sauce. By just changing the sauce, you will get quite different meatball dishes – one with sweet and sour sauce, one with sweet soy sauce like teriyaki sauce. Both are really tasty.

Recipe Type: Main

Cuisine: Japanese

Serves: 3 -4

Author: Yumiko

Ingredients (tbsp=15ml, cup=250ml)

Meatballs

• 500 g (17.6oz) pork mince (ground pork)
• 1 onion, very finely diced
• 2.5 cm (1”) cube ginger, very finely chopped or grated
• 1 tbsp sake
• 1 egg
• 2 tbsp cornflour/corn starch
• 1 tsp salt
• Oil to deep fry

Sweet and Sour Sauce (Amazu-an) (note 1)

• 2 tbsp soy sauce
• 2 tbsp mirin
• 2 tbsp sake
• 2 tbsp rice vinegar
• 1 tbsp cornflour/corn starch mixed in 3 tbsp water

Teriyaki Sauce Flavour (note 1)

• 2 tbsp soy sauce
• 2 tbsp mirin
• 2 tbsp sake
• 1 tbsp sugar
• 3 tbsp Japanese dashi stock
• 1 tbsp cornflour/corn starch mixed in 2 tbsp water

Serving

• Shallots (scallions), white part only, finely julienned (note 2)
• A few lettuce leaves
• A couple of coriander or parsley sprigs

Instructions

Making Meatballs

1. Add all the Pork Meatballs ingredients excluding oil in a bowl and mix well.
2. Take 1 tablespoon heap of the meat mixture and place the meat on a cutting board or a large baking pan.

3. Repeat step 2 and use up all the meat mixture. I ended up with 24 meatballs, about 3.5cm (1⅜”) in diameter.

4. Wet your hands and roll each meatball to a near perfect ball. You will need to wet your hands from time to time to avoid the meat sticking to your hands.

5. Heat oil in a deep frypan or a pot to 170-180C (338-356F). The depth of oil should be more than the diameter of the meatball. (note 3)

6. Gently drop each meatball into the oil. Do not overcrowd the oil. I used a 18cm (7”) pot and fried 6 at a time.

7. Fry for about 3-4 minutes or until the meatballs are cooked through. (note 4) Transfer to a tray lined with a couple of kitchen paper towels.

Making Sauce (same method for two different sauces)

1. Add the sauce ingredients, excluding cornflour with water, in a small saucepan and heat over medium high heat.

2. When it starts boiling, reduce heat to low and add corn flour with water to the sauce. Mix well until the sauce is thickened. Turn the heat off.

Serving

1. To serve with teriyaki flavour sauce, place the meatballs on a serving plate/bowl. Pour the sauce over the meatballs, then place julienned shallots on top.

2. To serve with sweet and sour sauce, place lettuce leaves on one side of the serving plate, place meatballs, then pour the sauce. Place the coriander or parsley sprigs on the side.

Recipe Notes

1. The quantity of each sauce is for half of the meatballs made in the recipe as I presented them in two different sauces. If you are making the same amount of meatballs with one sauce, you would need to double the quantity of the sauce.

2. To make julienned shallots curly, leave them in cold water for 10-15 minutes. If you julienne diagonally, it curls more.

3. To check the temperature of the oil without a thermometer, use one of the following. 

a. Drop small bits of meat into the oil. The bits will sink half way and then come up with small bubbles around them.

b. Stick a pair of bamboo chopsticks into the oil. Bubbles appear around the chopsticks and come up constantly. 

It is important to have sufficient depth of oil to deep fry. If the oil is too shallow, the meatballs will stick to the bottom of the pot/pan. If you use a small pot or a fry pan, you can minimise the amount of oil to fry. You would need to fry meatballs in batches, though.

4. The time taken to cook meatballs depends on the size of the ball. When the meat is cooked through, you will feel the meatball is very light when you pick it up.

5. Fried meatballs can be frozen. Ensure that meatballs are placed without touching each other. Once they are frozen, you can put them in a bag.