BBQ Brethren "The Almighty Meatball" Throwdown!

[tish]

That's kinda different. Haven't seen that here before. Very nice!!

[caseydog]

Wow, this throwdown is getting ridiculous. Crazy good entries.

CD

[N8man]

Balls to the Wall, People!!!!

[colonel00]

Hot Pockets - YouTube

Today, for the Almighty Meatball Throwdown, I decided to make a Hot Pocket. There have already been some fantastic entries into the Throwdown and I wanted to do something different. Originally I was going to make a meatball pizza. I have been wanting to make more pizzas on my pizza cooker and this seemed to work. Then the idea of a calzone popped into my head and I decided to go with that as I have not tried a calzone yet.

So, I decided to grind up my own beef and started with this ~3lb chuck roast that I picked up yesterday at Sam's.



As I was feeding the grinder, I got to this section of the roast and it almost broke my heart to grind up these pieces.



Once the chuck was ground I ended up with about 3lbs of ground meat so I made two 1lb portions and vacusucked them and threw them into the freezer. The remaining meat was mixed up with an egg, bread crumbs, oregano, rosemary and basil.




Once the mixture was mixed, I formed my mighty meatballs. Ok, they aren't all that mighty as I decided to make them small.




Not only was this a first as far as the calzone but it was the first time I have had the opportunity to cook on my Stok CI grate in the Weber kettle I have mounted in my cooker cart. The Stok grate is nice and I decided to use the wok insert I picked up to brown up the meatballs. I was also cooking some turkey patties for lunch. This worked great. Once the meatballs were done, I put the regular grate insert back in to finish the turkey.





For those that haven't seen it, here is my cooker cart in its grilling configuration.



After lunch it was time to work on the pocket. I started off with dough from Trader Joe's (because I am lazy and it only costs $1.0. I have learned that I only need to use half of the dough that comes in a bag so I took half of the dough and formed my ball. The other half was sealed up and into the freezer. I have been getting better at working with dough but I have to admit that I still had to use the rolling pin crutch to get it to its final thinness.




Once the dough was rolled, I started with a layer of fresh mozzerella. Then came the meatballs and another layer of mozzerella. Finally, I added some sauce because, as we all know, you need something in a Hot Pocket to achieve thermo-nuclear temperatures so it burns your mouth when you take a bite.





Here she is all sealed up and ready for the cooker. One thing I learned yesterday during a test run was that I needed to start it upside down. My pizza cooker does a good job of cooking toppings on a pizza but it doesn't quite have the heat to cook the dough before the bottom is over cooked.




Here is the cart in its pizza cooker configuration.



After a while I pulled the pocket and flipped it over. I then cut some vent slits (another lesson learned yesterday) and brushed on a mixture of butter, garlic, salt and oregano. Since I usually have to rotate pizzas to get an even cook I did the same with the pocket and brushed on the butter mixture at every rotation.



And here she is fresh from the cooker.



And now for the gratuitous, melty cheesy pr0n.






Yeah, it was good. It was fanfarkingtastic. The fresh mozzarella melted wonderfully and, as I had hoped, having the two layers of cheese allowed it to flow when I flipped the pocket mid cook. I will definitely be trying this again.

[Oldyote]

Wow man that looks absolutely amazing.

[N8man]

OMG!!!! Stellar!!!!

[colonel00]

Wow, I missed this entry.



That looks delicious.

[colonel00]

Just saw this on Woot. I think the L and the R are the best part



http://deals.woot.com/deals/details/...lls-pack-of-12

[ecode]

Gee, I haven't made meatballs in a long time. Gore's side of the family used to keep us supplied but we haven't been to visit as often, so we've been doing without. I used to make these Pasta Pie's that were sort of popular back in the day, and this got me to thinking....The first step is making some meatballs. I used a pork-beef combination and added breadcrumbs, Parmesan, parsley, garlic powder, etc.



Also mixed some finely chopped onion and nuked them with a bit of chicken base and water to add to the mixture. A tip from Gore's Italian Gramma.



Normally, I would brown the meatballs before roasting them, but I need these to have a tender exterior, so they just went on a cookie sheet and into my Primo. Here they're about halfway done.



While these cooked, I made some spaghetti, then mixed together ricotta, a couple eggs, parsley, garlic powder, mozzarella and more cheese



I stirred this into the spaghetti and added a fair amount of cream to make it moist enough not to mention heart-friendly and meatballs:



I mixed this all up and put it into a springform pan, covered with mozzarella and into the Oval for about an hour



Removing it,



I served this with sauce and Parmesan, and some extra meatballs:



Thanks for looking.

[N8man]

OK...The Throwdown is now officially off the Chain.....OutStanding Indeed!!



Gore, you Sir, are a Blessed Man.

[caseydog]

I'm going to have to get my SuperPac fired up, because the Colonel has an endorsement from the Lovemaster...

The Lovemaster - YouTube

CD

[caseydog]

Wow, ecode. What an incredibly creative dish. No way that has aver been done before. And it looks fantastic. The richness and density. Has anyone eaten more than one slice? I think I would need a nap after a half a slice.

Killer entry.

CD

[bigabyte]

I had no idea this Throwdown would get this amazing!

[chihuachsund]

Originally Posted by Redhot

My wife and I achieved simultaneous mouthgasms looking at these!

[Gore]

I had some great meatball recipes from both of my grammas. I was even thinking about stuffing them with cheese or making a meatball sandwich, but then we were attacked by a Zombie. I think there's a bit of that going around here. Luckily Ninja and I managed to fight him off and decapitate him. Now my grammas lived during the depression and they always taught me to make do with what you have. I couldn't let that meat go to waste, so I went through their recipe cards and lookie what I found!



I decided to give it a try. It was a bit gruesome and all, so I'm not going to show the pictures. I followed the recipe as best I could and smoked it on the Oval. It took a bit over an hour at 325*. Despite what you might be thinking, there's some good eatin' on Zombie. I've heard it's the other red meat. I paired this with a red wine. And here's how it looked:





To our surprise, as we were taking pictures, the head started showing signs of life. Luckily Ninja was there to save the day. He gave a quick chop:



and then finished him off with a fatal jab:



Chris, I have no idea if any of these are appropriate.