Have Some Balls – A Not-Ready-For-Pinterest Recipe

If you wandered here from Pinterest looking for a serious recipe from a food blogger, you are soooooo in the wrong place. Turn around now and go back to Pinterest. If you are looking for a solid recipe as told by a 47 year old woman with the mind of a 13 year old boy, then you are in the right place. 

My buddy, Allen, over at The Midnight Goose Blog has a feature every Friday called “Yum-Yum Friday”. This last week, he featured a danish cookie recipe and it looks delish. You should check it out!

As bloggers, we sometimes outright steal borrow each other’s ideas and adapt them for our own writing style and audience.

Hopefully, Allen won’t be too upset that I’m stealing borrowing his idea and featuring a recipe today. I’m not going to make this a weekly feature, but I may post more of these in the future so I feel like I need a name for it.

Of course, I can’t call it Yum-Yum Friday because it’s not Friday. Oh…and because that would be stealing.

I tried to think of something that would go with “Tuesday” but all I could come up with was “Ta-Ta-Tasty Tuesdays”. This would be fine, except that “ta-ta” sort of has a different connotation and I’m pretty sure not at all sure how my Angry Italian Husband Dude would feel about me publishing a post on my blog with any reference to “Ta-Tas”. 

So we’ll have to work on the name, but needless to say, this tutorial falls firmly in the category of one of my “Not-ready-for-Pinterest” offerings.

I got the idea for this particular post when I was hurriedly going through my recipes, trying to find dinner ideas that would be quick and easy. The holidays are crazy and busy enough without having to worry about feeding yourself and the other human beings that live in your house.

I mean, seriously, it’s all I can do to feed Mr. Luna, Kova, The Feral Family, Polly the Opossum, Randy the Raccoon, and the random birds, squirrels and rabbits that meander through the yard. Don’t even get me started on Whiskey, our friend’s gruff tom cat with the notched ears who likes to eat at our buffet and get belly rubs.

I’m supposed to keep the people alive too? 

Anyway, this recipe came up and it’s a great busy weeknight meal that can be cooked in your slow cooker. It’s the perfect “fix it and forget it” recipe. I originally found it on Pinterest posted by an actual food blogger. I’m not posting a link to her site because I don’t want her to get a trackback to this post. She might not appreciate the way I’ve tainted embellished her recipe.

Back to the recipe, though. This wouldn’t be possible without Betty Crockpot. Yes, I named my slow cooker. I also have named my car (Lola), two sets of washers and dryers (Lucy and Ethel and Laverne and Shirley), and several other random inanimate objects in my life.

Now time for you to meet my balls.

Meatballs.

What did you think I meant? Never mind. I know you all know me and we all know I could mean just about anything.

Slow Cooker Meatballs and Gravy

Ingredients

• One package frozen meatballs. You may not be a fan of frozen balls. Maybe you like your balls fresh. This recipe is intended to be a quick hitter and easy to make on a weekday, so we’re using frozen balls. If you just HAVE to have fresh, prepare your balls ahead of time. I personally don’t have time for balls that aren’t already prepared. It’s a well-known fact that Italian balls are my favorite, but you can make do with regular balls for this recipe.
• One large onion, sliced. Yes, you may cry when you’re fixing your balls. If you don’t like to cry when you’re getting your balls ready, you might want to skip this step or have someone else do it for you, but I personally get a lot of satisfaction out of getting my own balls ready. Besides, I don’t trust anyone else with my balls.
• One 8 oz package sliced mushrooms. Again, I like the ones that are already sliced. Yes, I know they cost more, but this is a recipe of convenience. If you slice your own, make sure you have approximately 8 ounces. On a side note, if you want to learn how to grow your own mushrooms, you’ll find plenty of resources on Google. Just make sure you don’t shorten your key word to “shrooms” or you’ll end up growing a little more than a common fungi for eating. You don’t want to end up tripping on your balls.
• 4 cups beef broth. The original recipe calls for 2 cups but we like our balls to be saucy at our house, so I’ve doubled the broth. I make my broth using bullion cubes but you can buy it in a can at the store. Just make sure you buy beef broth and not chicken broth. You want beefy balls, not chicken balls.
• Two 1 oz packages of brown gravy mix. Again, the original recipe calls for one package but we’ve already established that this family likes to present their balls with as much gravy as possible.
• 2 Tablespoons Worcestershire Sauce. I’ve used this ingredient more times than I can count and I have no fucking clue how to pronounce it. If you don’t like putting something you can’t pronounce on your balls, you might want to skip this one. 
• 2 Tablespoons ketchup. Or is it catsup? And what exactly are the cats up to? The Worcestershire and the ketchup are going to make your balls tangy. Who doesn’t love tangy balls?
• 1 Teaspoon each garlic powder, onion powder, salt and pepper. A lot of the other ingredients already have sodium in them, so you may want to watch the salt. You don’t want your balls to give somebody a heart attack.
• 4 Tablespoons Cold Water. Don’t throw cold water on your balls. Trust me on this. Save it for later.
• 4 Tablespoons corn starch. Spoiler alert: starching your balls will not make them more firm. That’s not how this works. That’s not how any of this works. Again, save this for later.

Instructions

1. This is the part where I put my balls in Betty Crockpot. I don’t worry about thawing them out first. She warms them up just fine. I throw the onions and shrooms, I mean mushrooms, on top of my balls.
2. In a medium to large bowl whisk together the beef broth, gravy mix, the sauce nobody can pronounce, ketchup, and seasonings. Make sure you stir it well. Nobody wants their balls to be tangy in one bite and bland in the next one. Pour the sauce all over your balls. Go ahead. You know you want to. Now it’s time to turn on Betty Crockpot. Go ahead. Turn her on. The amount of time needed to heat up your balls depends on if you turn Betty on high or low. Heat up those balls for 3-4 hours on high, or 6-8 hours on low. I prefer low because I like my balls to heat up nice and slow, but sometimes you’re in a hurry and you just need to get onto the next chore. Being flexible is important.
3. Once your balls are nice and hot, take them out of Betty Crockpot and set them aside. Mix your cold water and cornstarch together in a small bowl and then whisk it into the broth for 1-2 minutes until you have a nice, thick gravy. 
4. Time for your balls to go back into Betty Crockpot. Coat your balls with the gravy you just made, but don’t play with your balls too much, especially if you made yours from scratch. If you play with your balls too much, they’ll fall apart. Nobody wants that. 
5. Your balls will go well with mashed potatoes, but today I decided to pair my balls with egg noodles. Just follow the directions on the package to fix your noodles the way you like them. I prefer a firm noodle to a limp noodle, so I’ll make mine al dente. Serve your hot balls right on top of your firm noodles. Here’s the finished product:

And this, my friends, is why I don’t write a food blog.

Stay weird, my friends. Normal is boring.

Send your hate mail to kat@angelwhoswears.com

The best ones will be reprinted here on the Angel Who Swears Blog.