Baked Sticky Ginger Meatballs with Sweet & Spicy Pineapple Sauce

Currently, this baked sticky ginger meatball recipe may or may not be holding court as my favorite thing to eat of all time, ever.  I know, I know, some of you are thinking "wow, that's a bold statement, especially for a meatball," but these aren't your mama's average meatballs.

Continuing with my underlying life theme of "let's make everything including ground meat sweet," I've found the perfect balance of spicy, salty, and sweet by making this an Asian-inspired dish.  Which leads me to my next personal observation, apparently I can't stop making everything with an Asian flair.  Don't like basic meatballs? Add coconut aminos.  Can't eat traditional pasta with tomato sauce? Let's add some ginger and sriacha and call it Pad Thai.  I'm honesty surprised I haven't come up with an Asian ice cream flavor or something...hmmmm...things to ponder..

So back to these meatballs that I can't seem to shake.  We're working with some honey, some ginger, some garlic--all the things that make life wonderful.  I recently saw a meme online that was something along the lines of "one clove of garlic is never enough, unless it's a recipe on how to cook one clove of garlic...and even in that case, use two," and I seriously couldn't agree more.  The more garlic the merrier I say!  We love this little spice so much, our old childcare provider use to alway joke about how Bear would smell like it...I mean, when your mom is a paleo food blogger, your house is in a constant state of smell fluctuation!

There isn't a lot of special points about this recipe, because it's really THAT SIMPLE.  One thing I will point out is to make sure you line your pan with some foil if you don't want to deal with stickiness during clean up.  These meatballs are so rad, especially paired with my Sweet and Spicy Pineapple Dipping Sauce, where we add, yep you guessed it, MORE ginger and garlic goodness.  Although we just ate this skewered up with some cauli rice, I bet they'd go well with a homemade Pad Thai or something equally as fun!

Baked Sticky Ginger Meatballs with Sweet & Spicy Pineapple Sauce

Ingredients:

Meatballs

• 1 lb ground beef

• 1 lb ground pork

• 4 tsp grated fresh ginger

• 1 egg

• 3 cloves garlic, minced

• 3 tbsps coconut aminos

• 1/4 cup honey

• 1/4 cup finely minced onion

• 1 tsp salt

• 1/2 tsp pepper

• 1/2 tsp garlic powder

• 1/2 tsp onion powder

• 1-2 fresh green onions, chopped

Sweet and Spicy Pineapple Dipping Sauce

• 20 oz can of crushed pineapple, drained

• 16 thin slices of fresh ginger root

• 2 green onions, roots snipped

• 3 garlic cloves

• 1/4 cup honey

• 2 tbsp coconut aminos

• 1 tbsp sesame oil

Directions:

For Meatballs

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.  Line a baking sheet with foil, and lightly grease.

2. Combine all ingredients in a large bowl and mix until well blended.

3. Make into meat balls that are approximately golf ball size, and arrange on baking sheet with space between each meatball.

4. Bake in the oven for 20 minutes, flipping once halfway through.

5. Serve with dipping sauce and ENJOY!

For Sauce

1. Combine all ingredients in a food processor and blend until smooth.

2. Serve and ENJOY