Mr. PoPo's Pig Spit is the mildest of the four, the one you can hand to anyone at the table, and it is the right sauce for something people eat off a stick without warning. Thirty-six meatballs, three to a skewer, twelve servings. The math is deliberate, because a party tray that portions itself is a tray that does not run out unevenly.

Soak the wooden skewers thirty minutes before they go anywhere near heat. Dry wood catches at oven temperature and you end up with charred handles and a smell that gets into the meat. Thirty minutes in water buys you the three to five minutes at the end that sets the glaze.

Meatballs bake first, get skewered second, and go back in with sauce third. Threading raw meat onto skewers means they cook unevenly against each other and lose their shape. Baked on a flat pan first, they hold round, and then the last few minutes with warm thinned sauce is what turns them glossy instead of wet.