Beer Balls

           

Beer Balls?

Accompanied with “The Temper Trap” by The Temper Trap

A brief history

A friend of mine makes a dish very similar to this whenever she hosts parties. I shouldn’t say very similar – I should say that I totally stole this idea from her. It tastes amazing when she makes it, and I can’t in any way shape or form take credit for it. However, I’m still following my one rule which is to attempt to make something I’ve never made before. I have a few quick notes before we continue. First, she makes this using kielbasa, and I’m making this with meatballs. Second, as you can probably tell by my use of a question mark in the title, I’m not entirely sold on the name. “Beer Balls” is, I think, too simplistic and maybe even a little misleading. But they are, like everything else in life, in a constant state of evolution and will most likely grow into a more mature and proper name over the years. For now, they’re Beer Balls.

A Brief History

Apparently The Temper Trap has been around for a fairly long time, but I first heard of them about a week ago. I think I was listening to Foster the People Radio on Pandora and they popped up under “related artists.” The sticker on the front of the album promised me “Infectious melodies and effervescent sounding beats.” That was a little disappointing to see, but impossible to avoid. I really wanted to listen to the album without anyone’s opinion possibly skewing my thoughts. But alas, I soon found myself chillin’ in my car waiting to hear these infectious melodies and effervescent sounding beats. It turned out to be a pretty perfect description of the album: I can see why that statement made it onto the cover.

What You’ll Need:

BBQ Sauce

Hot Sauce

Brown Sugar

Large Bowl

Large Frying Pan

Ground Beef*

*I already had the beef mixture made from a day before, but I will tell you what is in it: Approx 1 lb of ground beef, ½ lb of Ground Turkey, a tablespoon of bread crumbs, a tablespoon of grated parmesan cheese, 1 egg, and a sprinkle of salt, garlic powder, and onion powder.

You may be asking yourself an important question: Where is the beer? Well the answer may surprise you…I forgot to include it in the picture.

 I formed about 30 mini-meatballs. Note the quarter in the upper right corner of the picture for scale.

After browning the ground beef for about 3-4 minutes on medium heat, I added a two tablespoons of BBQ sauce and 1 tablespoon of hot sauce.

A sad moment when I dropped a meatball in the transfer to the stovetop.

Mix in the BBQ sauce, add the beer, give it a stir, and turn the heat to low

In keeping with the alcohol theme of this dish, I filled up a 2-oz shot glass with brown sugar. I did this three times. So you don’t go scurrying off to find a calculator or if you choose not to keep shot glasses as handy as I do in my apartment, I’ll help you out: That’s ¾ cup of brown sugar.

That’s roughly what it looks like after all of the ingredients have been added. The total elapsed cooking time at this point is about 10 minutes. And you’re done. I’d say let this slow-cook for about an hour, but I feel like slow-cooking involves a crock pot. So since this is going to simmer for an hour I’m going to call this step The Temperature Trap.

Which completely accidentally takes me back to this album. “The Temper Trap,” is in many ways exactly like this dish. All you need to do is pop it into your CD player and just kind of let it simmer in the background. Songs like “London Burning,” “Rabbit Hole,” and “Where do We Go from Here,” are songs that a lot of bands would be thrilled to have as their signature song. Listening to this CD will add a pleasantly stimulating buzz to whatever is that you’re doing.

The picture on the left is what this will look like after about 45 minutes of cooking, and the picture on the right is when I called it quits, about an hour after adding the ingredients together. They aren’t burnt, that’s the crystallization of the brown sugar you are seeing. Don’t be like me and get discouraged while it’s simmering – I had to call my friend and she reassured me that nothing really happens during the first 40 minutes. But after 45 minutes, the beer starts to rapidly disappear. 

Listen up – the presentation of this dish leaves a lot to be desired, but if the worst thing that happens is I screw it up cosmetically, I can live with it. I personally care a lot more what my food tastes like than what it looks like. It’s also hard to shape these meatballs perfectly when you have to deal with brown sugar clumping up and embedding itself into the meatballs. If you plan on making this photo recipe and e-mailing it to Martha Stewart I’d discourage you from doing so. But if you’ve got these simple ingredients handy and want to try making something different, you’ll be just fine.

Final Count

1 lb of ground beef, ½ pound ground turkey, 1 egg, two tablespoons BBQ sauce, one tablespoon hot sauce, 1 can of beer, ¾ cup brown sugar, and sprinkles of whatever you’d like to use to season your beef, will yield about 25 Beer Balls.

Final Review

I’ll definitely be adding this CD to my rotation. A lot of CD’s dictate the mood you’re going to be in for the next hour; this one seems different. Do you feel like cranking up your stereo really loud during a party? Play this CD. Do you feel like crocheting a knit-cap for the upcoming winter? Play this CD. Do you feel like following your cats around the house on a rainy Sunday taking pictures of their antics, Erienne? Play this CD.   

Posted by JS