Crockpot Mississippi Pot Roast Meatballs

Crockpot Mississippi pot roast meatballs take the ranch, au jus, butter, and pepperoncini combination from the chuck roast and put it on a bag of frozen meatballs instead.

The sauce here uses pepperoncini brine in place of water and gets a quick cornstarch slurry in the last 15 minutes, so it clings to the meatballs as a gravy instead of pooling thin and greasy at the bottom of the crock.

It takes 5 minutes to load and about 4 hours on low.

Why You’ll Love It

• 7 ingredients plus a cornstarch slurry, 5 minutes of prep
• Meatballs go in frozen, no thawing
• Works as a party appetizer or dinner over mashed potatoes
• Sauce thickens into a gravy, not a puddle
• Holds on the warm setting for 2 hours
• Freezes for 3 months

Ingredients

This serves 6 as a main course or about 12 as an appetizer.

1 (32 oz) bag frozen homestyle beef meatballs, not Italian-seasoned

1 (1 oz) packet au jus gravy mix

1 (1 oz) packet ranch seasoning mix

½ cup low-sodium beef broth

¼ cup brine from the pepperoncini jar

8 whole pepperoncini peppers

½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, cut into 8 pieces

1 tablespoon cornstarch

1 tablespoon cold water

2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley (optional)

Steps

1. Empty the frozen meatballs into a 6-quart slow cooker; a 32-ounce bag is 60 to 70 meatballs, and a 4-quart crock stacks them too deep to heat evenly.

2. Keep them frozen, because thawed meatballs break apart the first time you stir.

3. In a 2-cup glass measuring cup, whisk the au jus mix, ranch mix, beef broth, and pepperoncini brine until there are no lumps of powder left.

4. Pour that over the meatballs and turn them a few times with a spoon so most of them are coated.

5. Lay the butter pieces across the top and tuck the pepperoncini in among the meatballs.

6. Cover and cook on LOW for 3½ to 4 hours.

7. Stir once at the 2-hour mark with a silicone slotted spoon so the meatballs touching the sides do not scorch in the salty sauce.

8. Do not use HIGH; frozen meatballs on high brown unevenly against the crock and the sauce reduces too fast and turns very salty.

9. The meatballs are precooked, so you are heating them through, and an instant-read thermometer pushed into a meatball from the middle of the crock should read 165°F (74°C) before you serve.

10. About 15 minutes before serving, stir the cornstarch and cold water into a smooth slurry, pour it in, stir gently, cover, and cook on LOW for 15 more minutes until the sauce coats the back of a spoon.

11. Skip the slurry if you want a thin, au jus style sauce for dipping bread.

12. Sprinkle with parsley and serve straight from the crock on WARM with bamboo cocktail picks, or spoon over mashed potatoes.

Helpful Tips & Substitutions

The two seasoning packets are salty by design, which is why this uses low-sodium broth and unsalted butter; do not add any salt until you have tasted the finished sauce.

If you are sensitive to salt, use half of each packet and add ¼ teaspoon black pepper to make up for the lost seasoning.

The full stick of butter is what makes the sauce taste like the roast version; you can cut it to 4 tablespoons, but the sauce will be thinner and sharper.

Pepperoncini are mild, so 8 whole peppers give flavor rather than heat; for actual heat, slice 3 of them open and add another tablespoon of brine.

For almost no tang, use 4 peppers and swap the brine for an extra ¼ cup of beef broth.

Homestyle or original beef meatballs are the right kind; Italian-style ones have fennel and parmesan that fight the ranch, and turkey meatballs work but are softer, so stir them gently.

Homemade raw meatballs do not go in raw; bake them at 400°F (200°C) for 15 minutes first, or they fall apart and leave the sauce greasy.

If you skipped the slurry and the sauce still looks thin, take the lid off and cook on HIGH for the last 20 minutes to reduce it.

Slow cooker liners keep the salty, buttery residue from baking onto the crock, which is worth it when you are serving from the pot at a party.

Serving Ideas

For dinner, spoon them over garlic mashed potatoes or buttered egg noodles with plenty of the sauce.

For sliders, put 2 meatballs on a split slider roll with a half slice of provolone and broil for 2 minutes until the cheese melts.

At a party table, run these next to the Spooky Crockpot Grape Jelly Meatballs so there is one sweet pot and one savory one.

If this makes you want the full roast version, the Savory Slow Cooked French Onion Pot Roast is the chuck roast route in the same slow cooker.

Leftover meatballs and sauce stirred into a batch of Crockpot Creamy Garlic Pasta turns two leftovers into a second dinner.

Make-Ahead & Storage

Refrigerate leftovers in an airtight container for up to 4 days.

The sauce solidifies when cold because of the butter; that is normal, and it melts back as soon as it is heated.

Reheat in a covered saucepan over low heat with a splash of beef broth for about 10 minutes, or in the microwave in 30-second bursts, stirring between each one.

Freeze cooled meatballs and sauce together in freezer bags laid flat for up to 3 months, then thaw overnight in the fridge.

Thawed sauce can look separated; keep stirring while it reheats and it comes back together.

For a party, cook the full 4 hours on LOW, then switch to WARM for up to 2 hours, stirring every half hour and adding 2 tablespoons of broth if the sauce tightens up.

The brine is doing more work than it looks like it is.

Its acid cuts through the butter and the two seasoning packets, which is why the sauce tastes like pot roast and not like warm ranch dip.