BBQ Grail Note:  Rick is the guy that makes all my websites viewable.  He’s a first rate Web Guy and a good friend.  Here’s his Father’s Day MOINK Ball try.  Looks like he’s as good at making MOINK Balls as he is at designing websites.

(A Guest Post by Rick Hellewell, Web Guy)

I’m just a guy doing web sites, this one included. But you can’t help being influenced by all of the great BBQ posts around here. So, it was with much humbleness that I attempted my first batch of MOINK Balls.

I don’t have any fancy equipment.  In fact, there might be some serious BBQ types that would look with disdain on my humble propane-powered gas grill, even if it is a Char-Broil “Commercial Series” grill with four burners and a side burner. They might say that you can’t do “true BBQ” on a gas grill.

But, I did it anyway. On Father’s Day, I did my best.

I prepared the MOINK Balls according to Larry’s recipe. A full package of pre-cooked beef meatballs (about 60 of them), wrapped in a half-slice of thick-cut smoked bacon from the local grocery store. I sprinkled them with some McCormick’s Pork Rub, and placed them on bamboo skewers in a foil pan. The result looked like this:

Skewered MOINK Balls, ready for the grill

While the MOINK Balls rested a bit, I fired up the gas grill, getting the temperature to settle in about 250 degrees. I had some mesquite wood chips (from the local ACE Hardware store) in a smaller foil pan that had previously been soaked in water for about an hour, then drained. I put that on the left side of the grill under the hot gas burners for about a half-hour.

After the wood chips got warm and toasty (but not smoking yet), I put the foil pan of MOINK Balls on the right side of the grill, over the un-lit burners (only the single left burner — the one for the wood chips — is lit). This is how it looked:

MOINK Balls and Wood Chips on the Grill

I shut the lid, and let things cook for about 2 1/2 hours. I made sure the temperature stayed around 250 degrees. While the MOINK Balls were cooking, I prepared the raspberry preserves glaze — about a cup of raspberry preserves, 1/4 cup balsamic vinegar, and some garlic cloves, well mixed, then heated on the stove in a pan until everything was nice and liquidy.

After the 2 1/2 hours of smoking/grilling, I took the MOINK Ball skewers off the foil pan and put them directly on the grill, again away from the heat. I brushed both sides with the raspberry preserves glaze, and let that cook in for about 10-12 minutes. By that time, my daughters and their husbands, along with the five grandkids, were ready to try them. They looked like this:

MOINK Balls - Grilled, Smoked and Glazed

The result? Everyone liked them. In fact, everybody had at least three, and some had more. And all agreed that we should repeat the experiment.

So, there’s this web guys’ humble attempt at smoking MOINK Balls. Not bad for a first try.

Next time, I think that I’ll put the wood chips over a bit higher heat for a bit longer so that they will start smoking sooner. (This time, the chips didn’t start smoking until about halfway through the cooking time.) And I’ll change the recipe a bit: I’m going to sprinkle the rub over the meatballs before wrapping them with bacon. I think that will let the bacon juices ’soak’ the rub into the meatballs.

I may also use less vinegar (or maybe some olive oil) in the raspberry glaze, to make the raspberry flavor a bit more pronounced.

And, even though I just have a gas grill, there is more smoking in my future.

© 2010, The BBQ Grail. All rights reserved. On republishing this post you must provide link to original post.

I recently had a chance to receive an example of an amazing use of MOINK Balls from Phubar one of my friends ffrom the Dutch BBQ Association. His MOINK Ball pie is a great example of MOINK ingenuity.

Phubar started with a layer of Endive Stampot. Stampot is a traditional Dutch dish made with potatoes mashed with one or more additional vegetables. A layer of Parmeggiano-Reggiano covers the Stampot.

A layer of zucchini with some more Parmeggiano-Reggiano.

A thin layer of ground beef covers the zucchini.

.Next up a layer of Pesto alla Genovese and some additional zucchini and a little olive oil.

A layer of homemade tomato sauce. And some more ground beef.

More cheese, zucchini and a layer of MOINK Balls.

Into the oven to bake and you’ve got the world’s first MOINK Ball Pie.

© 2010, The BBQ Grail. All rights reserved. On republishing this post you must provide link to original post.

A new page has been created at WikQUEpedia on the MOINK Ball.

Just like every other Wiki on the internet this site is dedicated to educating others. At wikQUEpedia we are all about outdoor cooking. There are many definitions of what BBQ is. At wikQuepedia the term BBQ is simply a generic term. Something we can all hang our hats on, something we have in common. Whether it’s “low & slow” or cooking on a charcoal or gas grill, we can all come together to share information.

© 2009 – 2010, The BBQ Grail. All rights reserved. On republishing this post you must provide link to original post.

The history of the MOINK Ball along with the original recipe has been posted on Char-Broil’s “Sizzle On The Grill” website.  Check it out! 

Sizzle On The Grill

Who would have thought…

© 2009 – 2010, The BBQ Grail. All rights reserved. On republishing this post you must provide link to original post.

Sauced and ready

Everyone knows of the popularity of MOINK Balls.  I figured it was time to start a blog in honor of this tasty BBQ treat.  You can check out “All Thinks MOINK” by clicking right here.

Do you have a MOINK Ball picture or story you’d like to share?  If you do send them to bbqgrail@earthlink.net

© 2009, The BBQ Grail. All rights reserved. On republishing this post you must provide link to original post.

Two of my favorite BBQ appetizers are the MOINK Ball and the Fatty.  Aaron McCargo, Jr of Food Network’s “Big Daddy’s House” has sort of combined both ideas into a tasty “hot dog” treat.  Aaron’s talks about cooking these in the oven, but here at The BBQ Grail we are going to encourage you to grill or better yet, smoke yours.

Aaron’s video is sponsored by Wright Brand Bacon and they’ve sent me five coupons for free Wright Brand Bacon.  If you’d like a chance for a coupon, leave a comment on this post.  On July 1st I’ll draw five winners and notify you through email.

If you’d like a copy of the recipe emailed to you just ask in the comment section.

Thanks for playing along.

© 2009, The BBQ Grail. All rights reserved. On republishing this post you must provide link to original post.

My friends at the Dutch BBQ Forum love to make MOINK Balls. This weekend several of them decided they would make MOINK Balls and send their photos to me for the BBQ Grail. (For a history of MOINK Balls click here)

One special note. “Official” MOINK Balls are made with pre-made frozen 100% beef meatballs. Finding pre-made meatbals in the Netherlands is a difficult task sometimes, so you’ll see “homemade” meatballs in most cases here.

Here they are:

Abraham Van de Vuurst (Spakenburg, Holland)

Wrapped and ready to be smoked.

Cooking away!

Sauced and almost ready to eat

"Bram" ready for some MOINK Balls

Peter Eyckmans (Hersett, Belgium)

Ingredients ready for MOINK Ball wrapping

Using indirect smoking

Off to a great start!

Let's eat some MOINK

Frits de Jonge (Oosterhout-Nijmegen, Netherlands)

(Frits will receive the special “Spirit of MOINK” Award. He made his own “pre-made” meatballs by making them three days ahead of time and freezing them. Only to thaw them out on Saturday to make his MOINK Balls.

Meatballs ready for cooking

Pre-cooked, ready for freezing

Assembled and ready to cook

MOINK Balls and a fatty cooking away

Fritz and his MOINK

Robert de Meij (Rhoon, Netherlands)

I'm going to call these "Popsicle" MOINK Balls

On the Weber. Looking good!

Robert and his MOINK Popsicles

“Noskos” (Westland, Netherlands)

MOINK! It's what's for dinner

Sauced and ready

Noskos rocking the BBQ Brethren hat and MOINK Balls

“Spiffs: (Den Helder, Netherlands)

MOINK ingredients

Almost ready

Great looking MOINK Balls

Spiffs showing off his balls.

A special thank you to all my great new friends over at the Dutch BBQ Forum. You guys did MOINK proud.

If any other Dutch BBQ enthusiasts (or anyone else worldwide) that has some MOINK Balls to show up. Email them to me at bbqgrail@earthlink.net

© 2009 – 2010, The BBQ Grail. All rights reserved. On republishing this post you must provide link to original post.

When people see my surname I am often confused for someone who subscribes to a particular neopagan religion that worships Gaia or Mother Earth.  But that couldn’t be further from the truth.  My last name GAIAN is only two generations old.  If my great grandmother had not gotten mad at my great grandfather many years ago I would still have my Irish ancestors surname of GAHAN.

My Irish ancestors came to this country through Nova Scotia, Canada just after the turn of the 20th Century.  They eventually found themselves living in and around Lowell, Massachusetts.  They left their homeland in the hope of a better life during the potato famines.

My English ancestors came to this country much earlier as part of the Puritan movement that settled here shortly after the Mayflower first landed.  These ancestors eventually found themselves throughout what became “The South.”   Settling in the Carolinas and Georgia as farmers these people eventually helped to develop the southern cuisine that I love today.

Finding a menu that encompassed these three cultures and still enable me to incorporate bacon in each course proved to be much easier than I had anticipated.  It appears bacon has been a staple of my ancestors for centuries.  Maybe that’s why some people think I might have bacon grease flowing through my veins instead of blood.

It wasn’t hard to find people to share my visionary meal.  I quickly found four other couples to join my wife and I with my theme meal.  With the assistance of two of my favorite cookbooks: The Bacon Cookbook: More than 150 Recipes from Around the World for Everyone’s Favorite Food and Seduced by Bacon: Recipes & Lore about America’s Favorite Indulgence I was able to come up with a menu that I could adapt to my love of BBQ and keep within the theme of my blog.

The menu consisted of:

• MOINK Balls Appetizers (More on MOINK later on)
• Southern Shrimp & Pea Salad w/cracklings
• English Bacon & Cheddar Bread
• Southern Style Smothered Chicken w/bacon and lemon slices
• Southern Style Sauteed Green Beans w/bacon and shallots
• Irish Colcannon
• Southern Red Velvet Cake w/bacon cream cheese frosting
• Pecan, Brown Sugar, Bacon Ice Cream

Utilizing a several types of bacon was critical to trying to get the authenticity of each dish.  The English Bacon & Cheddar Bread and the Irish Colcannon required English/Irish bacon.  Slab bacon was used on the Southern Shrimp & Salad, Ice Cream. And your normal everyday sliced bacon was used on the others.

English/Irish bacon differs from traditional bacons found in the U.S. because it’s made from the meat of the back of the pig instead of the belly meat.  English/Irish bacon closely resembles “canadian bacon.”  But as you can see from this picture it has a layer of fat surrounding it, while canadian bacon is made from the leaner loin of the pig.

English/Irish Bacon

The highlight dish of the evening was the Colcannon.  This traditional Irish potato dish utilizes cabbage to make the potatoes go further.  The English/Irish bacon along with the cabbage gave the dish a great flavor profile. 

The Southern Style Smothered Chicken was my opportunity to incorporate my Traeger smoker into the meal.  Instead of tying the whole chickens I decided to spatchcock and smoke them for an hour with cherry wood.  The smoked but still raw chickens were then transfered to the dutch oven on the stove to finish cooking them.  The smoke flavor along with the bacon and lemon gave the chickens are nice country taste.

Spatchcock chicken

Chicken In The Pot

 The course that generated the most conversation amongst our guests was dessert.  The Red Velvet Cake only had bacon as a garnish on the top of the frosting.  The original idea was to substitute finely chopped crisp bacon for the pecans in the frosting.  After making the ice cream we decided to only sprinkle crumbled bacon on the top of the cake.

The Pecan Brown Sugar Bacon ice cream was good, but the texture of the bacon after being in the ice cream mixture turned a little soft and chewy.  If I were to do this again I’d cook the bacon crispier and use half the amount.

Red Velvet Cake w/Bacon Ice Cream

 Last but not least were MOINK Balls.  I came up with MOINK Balls last summer for a wedding I was asked to cater.  I needed a different type of finger food.  I wrapped a pre-made meatball with bacon, seasoned with one of my bbq rubs and smoked it for about 90 minutes.  They were a hit.  After posting them on the BBQ Brethren Forum you can now find MOINK Balls made all over the world.

The name MOINK comes from a visit I had to a Kansas City BBQ restaurant last June, with Ron L. and Neil T., where our waitress proclaimed their baby back ribs came from  a cow.  Anyone with any bbq knowledge knows that baby backs are pork ribs and not beef ribs.  And with that little mistake MOINK was born.  Beef = MOO, Pork = OINK…MOINK.

MOINK Balls

A few other pictures from the evening:

English Cheddar & Bacon Bread

Lots of Red Food Coloring In the Cake

Green Beans With Bacon & Shallots

Shrimp & Pea Salad with bacon

© 2009 – 2010, The BBQ Grail. All rights reserved. On republishing this post you must provide link to original post.

I got myself a new Weber Smokey Mountain this week and had a chance to put it together Saturday and it went to immediate use.

I did a little cooking for the wedding of some friends daughter and the WSM came in handy. Here’s a few pictures of everything. It was a great time. Exhausting, but fun.

Here’s a couple of my smokers hard at work. The ever faithful UDS (Ugly Drum Smoker) and the new WSM.

I came up with an new appetizer for the wedding. Pre-made and cooked beef meatballs wrapped in a little bacon, sprinkled with a good dose of Plowboy’s Yardbird Rub and smoked until the bacon was crispy. I call them MOINK BALLS (Beef = Moo, Pork = Oink. Put them together and you have MOINK.)

Here they are smoking away on the WSM:

The Moink Balls were then glazed with a Raspberry Chipotle Balsamic sauce:

Here’s a few pictures of the rest of the spread. Hoisin Pork and Teriyaki Chicken rounded out the little menu.

© 2008 – 2010, The BBQ Grail. All rights reserved. On republishing this post you must provide link to original post.

© 2008 – 2009, The BBQ Grail. All rights reserved. On republishing this post you must provide link to original post.