For The Love of MOINK!

It wasn’t all that long ago that it took quite a bit of luck to become an internet phenom. Today it just takes a funny or inspiring video and one or two well placed emails and you can suddenly find yourself all over the internet. Be it good or be it bad…there you are. And MOINK Balls are a prime example of how easy it is to make a name on the internet.

MOINK is a very minor BBQ and internet story of fame. Because on various BBQ Forums there appears to sometimes be an unhealthy amount of time spent on MOINK Balls I thought I would take a few minutes to tell the story of MOINK!

Last June I had the good fortune to venture out to Wichita, Kansas to spend the weekend at one of my internet friends homes along with a bunch of other bbq enthusiasts cooking and eating our way through the entire meat scale. We ate brisket, chili, ham, brats, spam, pork ribs, and a few other meat items. If it wasn’t for Steve’s wife Linda forcing a salad or two down our throats we would have been pretty much vegetable free for the three days.

A few of us had made plans to fly into the Kansas City airport, rent a car and drive to Wichita, causing untold BBQ havock along the way. For three of us the journey to KC was pretty much uneventful. However, when we all rendezvoused in KC one of us was missing, It seems our Los Angeles brother was kicked off his airplane for wearing blue jeans. (There’s a valid reason, but that’s another story, for another day.)

After talking Neil into catching another flight wearing the appropriate flight attire we had to wait the four hours or so for him to arrive. So what do three BBQ enthusiasts do in KC with a four hour wait? Go find some BBQ, of course. Because we didn’t wish to stray to far from the airport we ended up at a local BBQ establishment, not one of the famous places, that advertised itself as the #1 BBQ Restaurant in KC. (The restaurant shall remain nameless to protect the guilty).

Because this is not a review of the restaurant we won’t discuss how bad the food was. But the beginning of MOINK was born there. As we finished our meal we commented to our waitress about the baby back ribs we ordered. It came as quite a shock to us when she informed us that their baby backs were beef. It was a comment that, of course, we could not just let pass. After laughing about it for a sometime we came up with the term MOINK. Beef = MOO and Pork = OINK. MOINK!

Later in the summer I had the chance to do a little catering for the daughter of a good friend. I wanted something special and decided to wrap a pre-cooked, italian style meatball in bacon, rub it with a little Plowboy’s Yardbird Rub and smoke it for about 90 degrees. As I was plating them up I was asked what they were called. Without really thinking about it I called them MOINK Balls.

The most important thing to remember about MOINK Balls is they are supposed to be simple. Official MOINK Balls are only made with pre-cooked, frozen (but thawed) meatballs. Anything else is a faux MOINK Ball.