These low carb Mongolian beef meatballs will satisfy your craving for takeout food. Eat over cauliflower rice or take to your next party as a low carb appetizer.
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Every time we go to PF Chang’s I have to get Mongolian beef. It’s my all time favorite dish there. Well to continue my meatball craze I decide to make these low carb Mongolian beef meatballs. The sauce is the perfect level of sweetness and full of flavor to go with the meatballs. And the green onions surprisingly really add something to the fine dish. While I ate this for dinner I think it would also be a nice low carb appetizer.
Are you a meatball fan? If so I have many different kinds of meatball recipes such as gyro meatballs, chicken apricot meatballs, buffalo chicken meatballs stuffed with blue cheese and even a huge cheesy meatball stuffed pepper (that one’s my favorite).
Mongolian Beef Meatballs Recipe
In this recipe I keep the meat simple and gluten free. It’s just beef and pork with a little garlic and ginger mixed it. I wanted it to be meaty and not have any filler. The sauce is a mixture of soy sauce, brown sugar, garlic and ginger. And of course you have to have green onion slices sprinkled through out. A note about the brown sugar: the first batch I made I used Just Like Sugar brown sugar. It was good but it had an artificial taste. The second batch I made was much better because I made my own brown sugar.
Make Your Own Low Carb Brown Sugar
Did you know you can make your own low carb brown sugar? Today I just use molasses and Swerve sweetener. The basic recipe is 1 cup sugar or sweetener to 1 teaspoon molasses. It worked great in this recipe and I liked it better than the Just Like Sugar brown sugar. Kim at Low Carb Maven has a great post about low carb, sugar free brown sugar. So if you use a lot of brown sugar, check out her post.
Also I wanted to talk about thickening the sauce. I used a thickener called glucomannan. It’s a powder made from the konjac root and it’s used to thicken foods. You can read more about it here. For this dish it was a good substitute for cornstarch in thickening the sauce but it’s not necessary. Your sauce just may be a bit thin.
This recipe makes approximately 64 meatballs and a serving size of 8 meatballs is:
357 cals / 23.5g fat / 2.5g carbs / 0.6g fiber / 31.4g protein =1.9g net carbs
You might also like my friend Mira’s keto teriyaki sauce with these meatballs!
Low Carb Mongolian Beef Meatballs
These low carb Mongolian beef meatballs will satisfy your craving for takeout food. Eat over cauliflower rice or take to your next party as a low carb appetizer. Only 2.4g per 10 meatballs.
Ingredients
- 1 lb ground beef
- 1 lb ground pork
- ½ teaspoon fresh ginger, grated
- 1 teaspoon crushed garlic
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- ½ cup soy sauce
- ¼ cup water
- 1 tablespoon crushed garlic
- 1 teaspoon grated ginger
- ½ cup Swerve sweetener
- 1 teaspoon molasses
- 3 green onions, sliced
- 1 teaspoon glucomanon (optional) +2 T water
Instructions
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Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
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In a small bowl, mix the molasses and Swerve sweetener to make a brown sugar.
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In a large bowl, mix beef, pork, ½ teaspoon of grated ginger and 1 teaspoon crushed garlic. Form into meatballs and set aside.
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In a large oven proof skillet, add oil and brown meatballs.
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Take out meatballs and add soy sauce, ¼ cup water, 1 T garlic, 1 t grated ginger and brown sugar mixture. Whisk to combine and incorporate brown bits from meatballs.
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Add back meatballs and place in oven to bake for 20 minutes.
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Take out of oven and toss with green onions.
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If you wish a thicker sauce, you can mix 1 teaspoon of glucomanon powder with 2 Tablespoons of water and then mix in with sauce. Cook of medium heat until the sauce thickens.
Debbie Butler
Is the molasses necessary? Omitting it would allow this recipe to be considered Keto. Total carbs would be negligent. Love the recipe otherwise.
Denise
Hi Debbie, thanks for bringing that to my attention. The molasses is mixed with the regular Swerve sweetener to make brown sugar. You could easily use Swerve brown sugar sweetener or as you said just eliminate it altogether. I need to remake this recipe with the Swerve brown sugar so I’m glad you stopped by and commented! Hope you enjoy it.
Veena Azmanov
Thanks for your delicious recipe. Definitely a treat to my family.
Stephanie
Where are you finding 15g of fiber? I came up with .2g per serving making the net carbs much higher (via MyFitnessPal). Am I missing something? The only vegetable of substance is the green onion. Thank you. It does look delicious if I can lower the carb count.
Denise
Hi Stephanie,
I used Swerve sweetener and it contributes 15g of carbs but 15g are erythritol and don’t affect blood sugar. I just took it out of the calculation because I can see where that is confusing and it has 0 cals and 0g net carbs. Here is a link to their site which states:
“ZERO NET CARBS. The ingredients in Swerve do not affect blood sugar, so the carbohydrates it contains are considered non-impact.”
Hope that makes sense. Please let me know if you have any other questions.
Stephanie
Thanks, Denise. I had the erythritol math figured out. I just saw the high fiber and was thrown. I see the adjustment to the nutrition info and it makes a lot more sense. I can’t wait to make these! Cheers!
Denise
Hi Stephanie,
No problem. I’m glad you pointed that out. I should take out the Swerve from all my recipes as it’s just confusing and I know other bloggers just leave it out. Hope you like them!
June
Do you use fresh grated ginger or powdered?
Denise
Hi June,
I used fresh grated ginger. I’ll go fix the recipe right now.
Thanks for bringing that to my attention and I hope you like them!
Patti
It’s so hard to watch your diet when you go to a party. These would be a big help!
Denise
Yes it would Patti!