MOINK Balls
If Moo = Cow & Oink = Pig, what is the result when you combine Cow + Pig? Well, of course that combo = MOINK Balls
It first happened some time in the second half of 2008, when the members of the BBQ Brethren got together in Kansas City. They blame it on a silly waitress and extra time on their hands. Somehow, I suspect there might have been beer involved. wikQUEpedia has the full story.
MOINK Balls are one of those creations that are the essence of simplicity. In their most simple construction, they are simply a pre-made, store bought, meatball, wrapped in half a slice of bacon. Of course a bit of BBQ rub and a nice glaze don’t hurt either. Not long ago, the International MOINK Ball Appreciation Society decreed that it was acceptable to get fancy and use home made meatballs, just so long as they are all beef and no fancy binders are used. The Grand Poobah of all things MOINK is Larry Gaian from The BBQ Grail who is said to be the one who coined the name.
Not content to leave any recipe alone, I decided to have a little bit of fun with my first attempt at making MOINK Balls. Nothing too fancy though, as I didn’t want the men in the black Tahoe to hunt me down as I stood at the Q.
I started with a giant bag of Kirkland Italian style meatballs, just like the ones that No Excuses BBQ used in their tutorial. I dumped them out on a baking sheet and let them thaw so we could get a toothpick through them. Once the Moo Balls were thawed, I rolled them around in my own secret homemade BBQ rub. Then, Mamma G and I got down to the serious business of wrapping the Moo Balls with Oink strips. As we were feeding them to our family of 5 for dinner, rather than apps, we went through a full 2 packages of bacon!
Ok, so I’m not that revolutionary. I just thought the bacon fat around the outside would help the rub seep into the meat.
While all of this was going on, the BBQ was heating up our cast iron smoker box, which I had filled with applewood chips. That’s right, we were gonna have applewood smoked MOINK Balls!
Onto the grill went the baking sheet full of MOINK and off went the heat on that side of the grill. For the most part I was able to keep the lid shut for an hour and a half or so to keep all that smoky goodness inside. When the oink strips began to look done, it was time to apply our glaze.
The original MOINK Balls were glazed with a raspberry balsamic sauce, but we didn’t have any raspberry in the pantry so I did what I always do and improvised. We heated up a half a jar of mango chutney we had left over from some Indian dish or other and as it heated bubbled on the stove it occurred to me that a dash of rum might be in order. A quick shuffle through the cabinet turned up a mini bottle of spiced rum. Perfect! I got out my big floppy silicon brush and mopped the sticky goodness all over my balls. Twice. Umm…maybe I should just leave that alone!
That’s it, that’s all. All we had left to do was eat them up! MOINK Balls are so awesome that I’ll bet you can’t make it from the Que to the kitchen without eating at least 1 of them. I ate 2!
The bacon had crisped up nicely and the meaty beef in the middle was perfect. The mango glaze offset the heat of my rub nicely.
Last year we served home made sliders at our annual New Years Eve bash and a few months later, President’s Choice began marketing sliders. We’ll definitely be pulling out the MOINK Balls to ring in 2011, so you can be sure to see these bad boys in stores soon!
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