The Best BBQ Meatballs

Folks. BBQ meatballs. The BEST BBQ meatballs. Sticky, glossy, lacquered in sauce, the kind of meatballs that show up to a party and the party stops — the music stops, conversation stops, somebody drops a beer in slow motion. That is the ENERGY of these meatballs. I have made these for crowds, big crowds, and grown adults have formed lines. LINES. For meatballs. A beautiful thing to see.

Now most chefs ruin this one before they start, and I'll tell you how — they reach for frozen meatballs in a bag and dump them in a slow cooker with grape jelly. GRAPE JELLY. We are smarter than this. Civilization has progressed. We have refrigeration. We have ovens. We have access to ACTUAL ingredients. The grape jelly meatball was a mistake, and it's time to put it down gently and walk away. Look. We can do better. We will do better.

What we're doing is a tremendous beef-and-pork meatball — the pork is non-negotiable, that's where the juice lives — seasoned with smoked paprika and brown sugar, seared hard in a hot pan for the CRUST, the crust matters, big strong men have wept over a proper crust, hand on heart — then simmered in a homemade BBQ sauce that takes ten minutes and embarrasses every bottle on the grocery store shelf. The bottled sauce industry HATES this recipe. They've called. They've asked me to stop. They sent a sad little man in a blazer. I sent him home with a meatball. He has not been heard from since.

That's the play. Twenty-four meatballs, half an hour, and you're feeding a crowd or freezing a stash that will save you on a Tuesday night when nobody wants to cook. Pop them on toothpicks for a party — the toothpicks make people feel fancy, it's a trick, very cheap, very effective — or pile them over rice and call it dinner. Either way, your house smells incredible. The neighbors come knocking. You do not have to share. You absolutely do not. Now go eat.