Slow Cooked Meatballs in a Beer BBQ Sauce & IPA Cheese Dip

With the NFL season nearly kicking off, my Fantasy Football league held our annual draft party yesterday. I spent Saturday afternoon preparing a couple beer infused recipes that turned out well and seemed to be well received by everyone at the party. When you're cooking with beer, you have to think similarly to when you're pairing beer with food. When you're deciding on a beer to cook with, think about how the beer's intensity matches all of the ingredients in the recipe. You don't want the beer's flavour to overpower the ingredients in the dish and vice versa. Also, remember that when you cook with any liquid, it reduces, which will magnify the flavours from the beer. If you're using a bitter beer, be careful as the end result will likely be a bitter dish.

Meat Balls
2 lbs of lean ground beef
1 cup of fine chopped red onions
1 tsp of minced garlic
2 eggs
Ground salt and pepper

Mix and roll ingredients into your preferred size of meatballs. Heat up a pan with a little bit up olive oil and brown the meatballs prior to adding them to the crock pot.

Beer BBQ Sauce

Butter

½ cup chopped onions

1 table spoon of minced garlic

2 tablespoons of Worcestershire sauce

2 Cups of Ketchup

2 tablespoons of Dijon honey

1 tablespoon of molasses

1 tablespoon of dark brown sugar

Salt

Pepper

1 Cup of beer (Wellington Russian Imperial Stout)

2 ounces of bourbon (spontaneous decision)

In a pot, add butter with the garlic and onions and sauté until soft. Add the rest of the ingredients with the exception of the alcohol. Bring to a boil and then simmer for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add the beer and continue to simmer for 5 more minutes. You can tweak the recipe by switching up the style of beer you add. I chose Wellington's Russian Imperial Stout for the big malty, roasty, dark chocolate and coffee flavours that would work well with ground beef, but you could use an amber ale if you're using the BBQ sauce with a lighter meat like chicken. I also made a spontaneous decision to add 2 ounces of Wild Turkey Bourbon as I knew who my audience was for this appetizer. Bourbon will add some vanilla and caramel flavours to the sauce. Remove the sauce from the heat source and strain away the onions and garlic.

Add the BBQ sauce over the meatballs in a crock pot and cook on low for 5 hours before serving.

IPA Cheese Dip

500 grams of cream cheese

300 grams 3 year old cheddar (Balderson)

100 grams aged gouda

100 grams blue cheese

200 grams of bell red peppers

1 teaspoon of garlic

1 tablespoon of Dijon mustard

1 teaspoone of Worcestershire sauce

8 ounces IPA (Red Racer IPA)

If you had a food processer, add all the indregients and process. If you have a blender like me, mix ingredients in a bowl first, then add to the blender. This is a recipe that you can play around with all of the ingredients as well. I wanted to ensure I matched the intensities of all the flavours, so I chose to use some bigger flavoured aged and blue cheeses along with the cream cheese. Adding some stronger cheeses contrasts the bitter, piney, resiny aspects of the IPA. I love the pairing of blue cheese with an IPA, but I only used it for 1/10 of the cheese ratio as it may overpower the rest of the flavours otherwise.

Put the dip into an oven safe bowl and bake in the oven at 350F for 15 minutes, or until the top begins getting golden. Serve warm with crackers of your choice or tortillas chips.

I really enjoyed both recipes and I definitely plan on making more of the BBQ sauce again soon to use on some pork tenderloin, burgers and ribs. If you decide to make either of these recipes, I hope you enjoy them as much as I did!

Thanks for reading!