ZOMG Bacon!
So here's how it started. Browsing the internets one fine Thursday morning, a tweet caught my eye. Something magical involving bacon. How are you supposed to ignore that?! Seems the NY Times published an article about a awesomely modified fatty, on the front page no less. Immediately after reading I knew I must make THE BACON EXPLOSION. It's for honor, glory, and the love of pork fat. It's pure redneck, 2 cups of grease drippings, hit your gut with a bomb kind of fun. The folks at BBQ Addicts didn't invent it, but they made it very public. Hell it's even on WebMD!
And so you are here to witness me take an EXPLOSION for the team... :) While I'm on a brutal diet, I'll make this sacrifice for you, my friends. At roughly 1k calories, and 77 grams of fat per inch, it's a diet killer.
A normal fatty that we make once or month or so is a 1 lb "tube" package of Jimmy Dean's Maple Sausage. Take it out of the package, pat it firm, drop on the smoker for 4 hours and it's a delicious meal. Couldn't be easier. The boy could eat one all by himself if I'd let him. For me it's got to be the maple flavor variety, it gives a sweetness the other varieties just don't have.
Ingredients for the EXPLOSION are 2 lbs of Bacon (peppered because that's how I roll), 2 lbs of Jimmy Dean's Maple Sausage, a cup or so of your favorite dry rub, and a bottle of your favorite BBQ sauce. Pretty simple eh?
There's a Vegan version I found, but I totally don't recommend it, note the skull and cross bones warning you of what's ahead! Seriously. If you are going to do it, do it with real pork fat.
Here's how I made it, step by gloriously gut busting step....
First, take note of the conditions today, 2/1/09 (Superbowl Sunday!). Snow, a little more snow, and some kiddie boobie traps. Step on them and they scream at the top of their lungs! It's fun for the whole neighborhood.
Cook 1 lb of the bacon to your texture liking, remove from pan, pat dry and set aside. That loner piece off to the side? O, yeah, that's chef's choice. It didn't make the BE party, but it was tasty all the same! Don't throw away that bacon fat, that's pure gold. It can be used in exchange of butter in recipes like rissoto, anything needing a roux like bisque, or on naked pasta... /twitch.
Take the other lb of bacon and make a "weave" using standard bacon slice dimensions for guidance. I had issues with the body heat from my hands starting to melt the bacon fat. I had a stroke of genius. I procured another sheet pan, filled it full of ice, and set the bacon sheet pan on top. This got the bacon sheet pan nice and cold allowing for easy, slime-free, bacon assembly.
It's pure love... Mostly the bacon. I kid, that lady is still numero uno.
Sprinkle the weave with a little rub.
Spread the sausage evenly over the weave. I used about 1.75 lbs of the sausage.
Crumble the cooked bacon and sprinkle over the sausage. Sprinkle on some rub and drizzle some BBQ sauce over the crumbled bacon. We're using Sweet Baby Ray's, Honey Chipotle. It's awesome, and they make beef jerky too, heaven in a bag. While making the BE I was flipping through Chef Kathleen's book "Cooking Thin" as I have been making a couple things from it lately. I couldn't find her version though, probably an oversight. I picked up some white BBQ sauce down in Alabama last year, but I've been to chicken to try it on anything. I absolutely won't try it here, it looks too much like bacon spooge...
Carefully roll up the bacon fatty back into a "tube", and sprinkle with rub. Look at that beautiful tight weave....
Get this bad boy on the smoker! I'm also smoking some salmon on this smoke. It costs about $5 worth of charcoal to do a smoke, so you want to fill up the smoker with additional meat for meals during the week to make it cost efficient. A typical summer time smoke will be a chicken, 2 fatty's, some salmon, and hot dogs. That's enough for the whole week.
Smoke @ 225°F until internal temp reads 165. You can take it off the smoker a couple degrees early, wrap it in foil, and residual hit will finish it.
Took roughly 3.5 hours to get up to temp. With 30 min left or so, I glazed lightly with BBQ sauce to give it the shine. Take out of the smoker, and let it rest for 5 minutes in it's baconlicious glory before slicing. Looks beautiful.
Enough resting! It's time to eat!
Slice 1/2 pieces, show off the pinwheels and the PROPER smoke ring (you don't get that in the oven folks). Serve immediately before your hungry customers revolt!
Kids approve, Mom shakes head, Dad grunts.
It wasn't exactly green, but it was pretty yummy. It was loads of fun, all for the love of pork fat.
N.
This site is hosted green.