Bigly Cocktail Meatballs

Cocktail meatballs. COCKTAIL MEATBALLS. The greatest cocktail meatballs in the history of cocktail meatballs, and there has been a lot of cocktail meatballs — the Swedes were doing it, the Italians were doing it, and the lady at your church potluck in 1987 was doing it with a Crock-Pot and a jar of grape jelly, and you know what? She was onto something. She was. I'm saying it. My grandmother made these every Christmas Eve — tough woman, hands like baseball mitts, would not let you near the kitchen until you washed your hands twice — and she swore by the grape jelly. Grape jelly meatballs are a tremendous American invention and the food snobs don't want to admit it, they're EMBARRASSED by it, but they secretly eat them at 11 p.m. when nobody's looking. I know. I've seen it. People tell me things.

Now, we are going to elevate this. We are going to take the grape jelly meatball and we are going to make it BIGLY. We're using grape jelly — yes, grape jelly, don't make that face, I see you making that face, stop it — and we're using chili sauce, and a little bit of mustard and a little bit of Worcestershire and a tiny splash of bourbon because bourbon makes everything 17 percent more tremendous, easy math, you can look it up. And we are using REAL meatballs. Not the frozen rocks from the freezer aisle. Real meatballs. Hand-rolled. With love. Or at least with mild affection.

Here's what nobody tells you about the cocktail meatball — most of the so-called chefs out there phone it in. They dump the bag, they pour the jar, they call it a day, and they hand you something with the texture of a chewed eraser. A disgrace. A disgrace to meatballs, a disgrace to cocktails, a disgrace to the entire concept of finger food. We do not phone it in. We grate the onion so it melts into the meat. We soak the panko in milk like a civilized person. We pat the meat together GENTLY, like we're tucking it in for a nap. Other chefs are afraid to do this. They think it's too much trouble. It's not too much trouble. It's the trouble that MAKES it tremendous.

Slide these into a slow cooker on warm and they will outlast the party. They will outlast the conversation. They will outlast your uncle's story about the lawnmower. People will keep coming back. They'll say, 'just one more,' and then they'll have six more, and they will love you for it. They will RESPECT you. The cocktail meatball is the secret weapon of the great host — it always has been, hands down, no contest. Save me a piece.