Meatballs with minced meat and rice are a complete lunch dish. Someone likes to add a side dish to it, but I think this is already superfluous. Yes, they can be served with mashed potatoes and boiled pasta, but they already contain meat and cereals. Do you need something else for a complete meal?

When I was little, I didn’t even know the word “meatballs”. In our family, they were always cooked with rice and therefore were called hedgehogs. They got this funny name for the similarity of rice grains peeping out of minced meat, with protruding hedgehog thorns.

And it still happens that somewhere in a public dining room on the distribution table I ask for "hedgehogs". And you know, they always give me meatballs and don't ask me again. This means that they were not the only ones in our family who were called that.

Hedgehogs can be cooked in different ways: you can add cabbage or carrots to them, make tomato sauce or sour cream filling. There are many options. In today's article, I would like to consider the 3 most popular recipes for meatballs with minced meat and rice: with tomato sauce, with sour cream sauce and mixed tomato-sour cream sauce.

Classic meatballs in tomato sauce in a pan

The classic version of meatballs with gravy appeared in Soviet times. Therefore, the gravy traditionally includes tomato paste, a product sold in cans and stored for a long time. Such cans were in every home and this paste was used in literally all dishes.

Ingredients:

• 500 g minced meat (pork, beef, chicken)
• 250 g of boiled rice until half cooked
• 1 egg
• 0.5 tsp ground red pepper
• 1 tsp ground paprika
• 1 tbsp seasoning for meat
• 1 head of onion
• Refined sunflower oil for frying

From 100 g of dry rice, 300 g of boiled rice is obtained. 50 g dry rice is about 1/4 cup

Tomato sauce:

• 500 ml of plain cold water
• 150 g tomato paste
• Salt, ground black pepper - to taste
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 1 tsp flour
• 3 bay leaves
• 1 carrot
• 1 head of onion

Preparation:

1. In one bowl combine minced meat, half-boiled rice, one egg, spices, salt and pepper. Mix everything well.

To boil the rice until it is half ready, you need to rinse it under running water, put it in a saucepan and pour the water just enough to cover the rice with it. Then turn on low heat and when the water boils away, the rice will just be half ready.

2. Finely chop one onion and fry in a pan with vegetable oil until golden brown. This will take about 5 minutes. Add the onion to a common bowl and mix again, first with a spoon, and when the onion has cooled down, with your hands.

3. The meat is ready, we start sculpting hedgehogs. We moisten our hands in cold water (so that the meat does not stick), pinch off a small piece of meat, roll it into a ball and put it in the pan in which the meatballs will be cooked.

4. Prepare the gravy. Finely chop the onion and send it to the pan with vegetable oil. Then wash the carrots and rub them on a coarse grater. Add the carrots to the onions, which by this time have already begun to gilded and fry, stirring occasionally until the carrots are soft. This will take about 10 minutes.

5. While the vegetables are fried, put the tomato paste in a separate bowl, add salt, pepper, flour to it, pour in water and whisk everything with a whisk until a homogeneous mixture.

6. Then add the cooked carrots and onions to the sauce and mix again.

7. Fill the meatballs with the prepared sauce and put the bay leaf on top.

8. Cover the pan with a lid and put it on low heat. When the sauce boils, we mark for another 30 minutes. Then the meatballs with tomato sauce are ready.

Bon Appetit!

Delicious minced meatballs with rice in tomato sauce with sour cream

The meatball sauce can be softened and the sourness of the tomato sauce can be smoothed out with sour cream.

Ingredients:

• Minced meat - 500-600 g
• Chicken egg - 1 pc
• Onions - 1 piece
• Garlic - 1-2 cloves
• Mustard - 1 tsp
• Dried Herbs / Minced Meat Seasoning - 1 heaped tsp
• Salt - 1-2 pinches
• Ground black pepper - 1-2 pinches
• Rice (dry) - 70-100 g

• Vegetable oil - for frying
• Onions - 1 piece
• Carrots - 1 pc
• Wheat flour - 2-3 tbsp
• Tomato paste - 1-2 tablespoons
• Broth / water - 400-600 ml
• Sour cream - 200-250 g
• Bay leaf - 1-2 leaves
• Dried herbs to taste
• Spices - to taste Sugar - 1 tsp
• Salt to taste
• Ground black pepper - to taste
• Fresh herbs to taste

Preparation:

1. Cook the rice until half cooked. To do this, rinse it in running water, fill it with two glasses of boiling water, add a pinch of salt and simmer for 10-15 minutes (until the water boils away).

2. In one bowl, mix the minced meat, mustard and egg. Pre-beat the egg with a little salt. In the same bowl, add finely chopped onion and herbs with spices.

After the minced meat is ready, it is advisable to beat it off for 2-3 minutes so that it becomes viscous and dense.

In order to beat off the minced meat, take it in your hand and sharply throw it back into the bowl. And so several times

3. When the minced meat is ready, mix it with the rice.

4. Wet hands with cold water and form meatballs with a diameter of 5-6 cm from minced meat.

5. After this comes an optional, but very desirable step. If you have time, be sure to do it.

We moisten our hands in vegetable oil and once again roll each meatball in our hands. The oil will create a protective film and the meat will be softer and juicier. After all the meatballs are greased, we send them to cool in the refrigerator for 20 minutes.

6. While the meatballs are cooling, prepare the sauce.

Finely chop the onion and fry in a pan with vegetable oil over medium heat for 2-3 minutes. Then add the grated carrots to the pan and fry, stirring occasionally, for another 3-5 minutes. Then add flour and fry it for a few more minutes until it changes color.

7. The next step is to put tomato paste in a frying pan, mix and fill with water (or broth).

8. Add sour cream, bay leaf, salt and spices to the resulting gravy. Mix everything thoroughly, reduce the heat to a minimum and cook for 3-4 minutes.

9. We take the meatballs out of the refrigerator and send them to fry in a separate pan with vegetable oil. Fry them over medium heat for 5-7 minutes on both sides until golden brown.

You can skip this step, but pre-frying gives the meatballs a special flavor.

10. Put the meatballs in a pan with tomato-sour cream sauce, close the lid and leave to simmer over low heat for 20-25 minutes.

Ready. Bon Appetit!

How to cook hedgehogs for kids with egg-free sour cream gravy

The difficulty of cooking for children lies in the fact that they do not like onions, they do not like carrots, and it is also not worth peppering dishes intended for children. Also, children are often allergic to chicken eggs. This recipe just takes into account all these points. It contains no vegetables, eggs or spices. Except for salt. Tender sour cream sauce.

Ingredients:

• Minced meat - 800 g
• Rice - 100 g
• Flour - 3 tablespoons
• Water (boiling water) - 500 ml
• Sour cream - 400 g
• Salt to taste

Preparation:

1. There are no peculiarities in the cooking of the hedgehogs themselves. You just need to mix the minced meat with washed raw rice, stir until smooth and roll out balls 4-6 cm in diameter from this minced meat.Fry the finished meatballs in a pan with vegetable oil over medium heat for 2-3 minutes on each side until golden brown.

2. All the zest of the recipe in sour cream sauce. Although there are no difficulties with him. First you need to fry the flour in a dry frying pan. That is, we put the pan on medium heat, wait for it to heat up and pour flour into it. Fry for a few minutes until the flour turns yellow.

If you make a gravy with regular flour, it will taste bad. It is the frying of the flour that makes the recipe special.

3. Pour sour cream into a jug, pour in the fried flour, add half a liter of boiling water and mix everything well.

4. Put the fried meatballs in one pan and fill them with sour cream gravy. Turn on high heat, wait for the gravy to boil, then reduce the heat to low and cover the pan with a lid.

After 30 minutes, the meatballs with sour cream sauce will be ready. Bon Appetit!

These are the recipes for making hedgehogs. As you can see, all options are quite simple to prepare and do not require any cooking skills. So you can always easily feed your family with a hearty and delicious lunch.