What’s a MOINK Ball? MOO = Beef OINK = Pork, MOINK!
Frozen meatballs, wrapped in bacon, dusted with your favorite BBQ rub, grilled or smoked and glazed with pepper jelly make awesome appetizers.
I guess I’m late to the party, but I just learned of these babies from Paul Haight at NoExcusesBBQ.com a few weeks ago, who says that Larry at thebbqgrail.com invented these.
It’s a really, really simple recipe:
- 1 bag of pre-cooked meatballs, slightly thawed (Mama Lucia’s Italian Style -96 meatballs)
- 3 lbs bacon, each package cut in half
- your favorite bbq rub or dust
- a jar of pepper jelly – we’ve used Braswell’s Hot Jalapeno Jelly, Four Monks – Mild Green, even Heinie Hurtin’ Hot Sauce (recommended!)
That’s it! You wrap each meatball with a 1/2 slice of bacon, either toothpick each one, or put a bunch on a skewer like we did this time and dust with your bbq rub or seasoning.
You can smoke them in your smoker for a few hours (2 – 2 1/2 hrs, or until bacon is done) , or just grill them over indirect heat (these *will* flare up over the coals!) for about 20 -30 minutes. I prefer the grilled method.
Baste them near the end with the pepper jelly, and you have candy from the grill!
Plate of MOINK Balls ready to eat!
The recipe above makes about 96 meatballs. The first time we did these, we used 1 1/2 lbs bacon and half the bag of meatballs. Of course that was not enough, but it’s a good starter version.
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- Plate of MOINK Balls ready to eat!
These will go faster than devilled eggs at your next family reunion.
I would love to know how you cook these balls-o-candy on your grill or smoker. Have you done a variation on these? If so, how?
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{ 11 comments… read them below or add one }
Very nice! Thanks for mentioning my website. Those are some first rate MOINK Balls.
Hey Larry, we’re lovin’ em! Thank YOU!
Wow that looks so good. I would be afraid I would burn those little guys on my q. I might have to give them a try.
Hi Brian,
We are doing a series on our blog “28 Ways to Eat Pepper Jelly”. We came across your site and this recipe about a week ago and grilled it tonight. We tried the meatballs with 3 different types of pepper jelly and our favorite for this recipe is Pineapple Cherry Habanero Pepper Jelly. We will be updating our blog in a few days and will certainly give you guys credit for the recipe. This one is really great. Thanks!
Jeff
Pineapple Cherry Habanero? Oh yum yum, nice call!
Every time I have made these my guests want more. I have also used the same recipe, but substituted shrimp.
.-= A post from Habanero Pepper Jelly’s blog …Blackberry Jalapeno Pepper Jelly from Heidi 12 oz =-.
Can I bake the Moink Balls?
Hi, thanks for the great video. I made them for the first and they were great. I used cherry habanero jelly. I put the jelly in the micro wave to turn it into a liquid. It turned right back into jelley very quickly. How do I keep it in a liquid state longer? Thanks
You could try keeping it warm in a sauce pan. Every commercial “pepper jelly” has a different consistency – some are thin right out of the jar, some are very gloppy (and need to be thinned out by heating, as you did), and some are in between.
We typically baste the MOINK balls on the grill at the very end, and pull them off before it burns.
We had a delicious Red Jalapeño Pepper Jelly from Cyndi’s Pepper Jelly, http://cyndispepperjelly.com this weekend, that was a nice thin jelly – would be great on these!
Thank you for your reply, I’ll give that a try next time.
We make these quite often. A “thin” pepper jelly that you will not need to microwave is Hurricane Hot Sauce’s Key Lime Datil Pepper Jelly. http://www.armadillopepper.com/Key-Lime-Datil-Pepper-Jelly-JELLY-HCKLD.htm. It is thin.