How to make meatballs in crockpot

In short, yes, you can put frozen meatballs into your slow cooker. There is no problem with this whatsoever. You then add the other ingredients and sauce etc as per the recipe. Putting them at the bottom will “doubly ensure” that they’re close to the heating elements and will get as hot/cooked as possible.

You can brown them in the oven. Or you can skip browning altogether and put the raw meatballs straight into the sauce to cook. POACHING Adding raw meatballs to the sauce and gently simmering till cooked yields ultra-tender results, and infuses the sauce with meaty flavor—a slow cooker gives great results.

The true secret is day-old bread, soaked in milk or water, to bring lightness to the mixture. When you cook beef, pork or veal for too long, it starts to get tougher. But the bread in meatballs never gets tough. Use a lot of bread and your meatballs will be perfectly tender.

Pop them in the oven for 15-20 minutes at 400°F, then broil them for another 5-10 minutes to make sure they get that deliciously crispy crust like pan frying gives them. Baking them gives the meatballs a little more flavor without additional oil since you are searing the outside under the broiler in your oven.

Although the meatballs are not browned first, they still cook though in the sauce and it is safe to add them to the sauce raw, as long as the sauce is kept at a simmer until the meatballs are cooked through. Cooking the meatballs this way means that they stay quite tender even when cooked.