Tire Shaped Meatballs

[toweringpine]

I am getting geared up for another great racing season!

We usually kick off the season with a party for the Daytona 500. Everyone brings something ( some folks only bring beer ) to contribute. I was given a Tony Stewart Crock Pot as a gift last year and want to fill it with meatballs.

I started thinking about what I can do to make them a little racier and came up with tire shaped meatballs. If I go with 'donut' shaped meatballs I am afraid they will tend to break if I don't find a way to make them stronger. I also thought of shoving an olive or something else to look like a rim inside the tire.

I have month to perfect my recipe ( 32 days and one hour at the time of this posting ). Any ideas on how to make these work would be appreciated.

Feel free to add any other racing inspired food ideas that you have as well!

[monavano]

I am getting geared up for another great racing season!

We usually kick off the season with a party for the Daytona 500. Everyone brings something ( some folks only bring beer ) to contribute. I was given a Tony Stewart Crock Pot as a gift last year and want to fill it with meatballs.

I started thinking about what I can do to make them a little racier and came up with tire shaped meatballs. If I go with 'donut' shaped meatballs I am afraid they will tend to break if I don't find a way to make them stronger. I also thought of shoving an olive or something else to look like a rim inside the tire.

I have month to perfect my recipe ( 32 days and one hour at the time of this posting    ). Any ideas on how to make these work would be appreciated.

Feel free to add any other racing inspired food ideas that you have as well!

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How about making little tire meatloafs instead? I don't think donut shaped meatballs would hold up, but if you did small round meatloafs with an olive for the rim, it would work.

[BeJam]

What about adding a little more binder and treading the meatloaf tires with bacon?

You could also sear them in a frying pan before hand to keep them together.

[Chris Hennes]

I think you could make tire-shaped meatballs work, without a rim, if you had a way to get them shaped such that the meat was relatively compact (dense). Then, instead of frying them in a frying pan, deep-fry them at a pretty high temp to give them a good crust - it doesn't matter if the inside gets cooked or not, since you will be giving them a good re-heating later. I do this to good effect with regular meatballs because my wife likes them crispy on the outside. The crust holds them together pretty well, but they stay moist on the inside.

[K8memphis]

I love stuff like this. Meatball tires and wheels are a great idea. So the following is just pure brainstorming--cafeteria style take it or leave it--just put in an idea and a quarter and all this pops out...

Sometimes when I do stuff like this I just do a nice logo that would sit on top of a pasta salad or something. Like at work I did the company logo out of a tomato I think and I know I've used peppers to carve logos. So what I'm thinking here is to umm, find a nice eggplant and carve a tire shape out of the end of it--it's so nice & dark and is kind of tire-ish as is. You could take a knife and score it around to mimic tire treads. You could use pretzels for the spokes or umm a sculpted fried potato for the rim or You could use the ends of cucumbers instead of an eggplant too.

Checkered flag would be cool. Again I'd go with the leftover eggplant and maybe the inside of the cukes to do the flag.

Y'know, any two things cubed and one of them being white would mimic a checkered flag. I think in pastry and I keep wanting to say licorice but you are talking savory. So I'm trying to keep the language barrier in mind and stay savory. But you gotta know how utterly beautiful doughnuts would be on this.

Or or or bagels! Take a half a bagel and lightly score it like you'd score a ham in both directions even just toast it ever so carefully and you'd have some great tires. I mean some stuff could be eaten and some stuff is just for decor.

I think I would call the meatballs the spectators (no offense I mean the food). I was trying to think of what is dotted at a car race--I was thinking about the lines on the tracks but no, all the little spectator heads are like so many meatballs floating in the crock pot. You could do a bang up job with eyeballs and hats and...I mean I'm just purely brainstorming. Meatball tires is a great idea. But does celery float? If you could cut long strips of celery and have that be the bleachers and line up the meatballs in the crock pot in between the celery strips...like just for presentation...

No no no I got it!!! Pate choux!!! Pate choux is the bombshabomb for stuff like this. Umm, just pipe tires and bake 'em. You can use them for making spectator (meatball) sandwiches!!! It's all savory. Just don't put sugar in the pate choux. I wonder if you could get the tire treads to bake in.

For meat tires, I'd do flat skinny hamburgers with a hole .

While you may now be sorry you asked, there it is.

[abooja]

A man after my own heart.

I suggest you bake a cake in one of these, and decorate it like a race track. I've been wanting to do that for a while now, but couldn't justify another $30+ baking item or the space it would occupy in my kitchen. But I could live vicariously through you.

Go, Junior!

[toweringpine]

Thanks for the suggestions. I love the stadium pan. I like the checkered flags too. I think I'll print some checkers on stickers and make flag toothpicks for serving. It would be fun to go all out with the checkered flag eggplant but I think it would be lost on the crowd.

Thin patties with olive centers and spaghetti whitewalls are going to be my first attempt.

Saddly as I am a huge race fan but happier yet because I am even more excited... my first child is due to be born very close to race day and I probably won't be going to the party. But I will still have fun with the tires!

[Louis de Carteret]

Why not make mixed beef and pork "tyre burgers".

Make a doughnut of seasoned ground beef and fill the hole with seasoned ground pork. When cooked you'd still be able to see the difference in colour and get the wheel/hub effect. They should hold together pretty well if handled gently.

You could even mix up a few food colours to get a blackish tint to add to the ground beef.

Good luck!

[Blamo]

http://www.activatg.com/

USE MEAT GLUE!

[FistFullaRoux]

Lots of NASCAR themes that could be used. I'm a fan myself, living only 20 minutes from Talladega.

Dunno if meatball tires will work, and still taste good, but in honor (stretching the word) of Tony Stewart, how about the ever popular Lil Smokies? (Smoke, get it? nevermind.)

Or you car recreate that great commercial from a last year where the infamous '79 Daytona fight between Cale and Donnie was made out of cakes and such. THAT would be awesome. A marzipan Richard Petty standing on top of a baby blue Oldmobile cake. I'd make that my Christmas card.

edited to fix the Pontiac/Oldmobile issue.

Edited January 19, 2008 by FistFullaRoux (log)

[Cleo]

You've probably seen this stuff already, but if you haven't, you might like it. I particularly like the checkered flag toothpicks.

[Doodad]

Don't do em in the crockpot. Form then with the olive on a baking sheet with a rack and bake them. They will hold together and a spatula can gently serve them up.