Bacon Explosion – Westcoast style

February 1, 2009 at 10:27 pm | Posted in BBQ, comfort food, smoking, spice, spicy | 3 Comments
Tags: bacon explosion, BBQ, sausages, smoking

I came across this post this past week. The food blogosphere was abuzz with a recipe overloaded with pork, as in bacon and sausage. Dubbed the “Bacon Explosion“, it consisted of a mat of bacon stuffed with sausage meat and more bacon, and smoked. It just sounded too good not to try. Superbowl Sunday was right around the corner, a great time to do this while watching the game. I sent a copy of the recipe to my partner in grillin’ and smokin’. Over dinner that night I suggested we try it on Sunday. He looked at me and said: “You’re kidding, right?….” When I just smiled, he smiled and laughed. “Did you see how many calories there are in this thing?!…” “Yeah…. But we’ll just make a mini one. We’ve got to get our smoking muscles back in shape…” Besides, I thought, this gives me an excuse to shop at Oyama’s, my favorite charcuterie.

Prep was simple enough. We used double-smoked bacon and Okanagan wine and herbs sausages. The rub (hot and spicy) came from the Char-Broil website. I used half paprika and half smoke paprika to give it an extra kick. We started the cold smoking (hickory chips) at 3:30, in the rain. By the time the game was finished (go Steelers!), we still hadn’t reached the right internal temperature, so we finished it in the oven. Being stuffed from the rest of the Superbowl spread, it was tough to force one more morsel of food down, but we did.  The taste was surprisingly not as greasy as I thought it would be. Might be interesting to see how slices of these will be, fried once more and served with eggs for breakfast… Stay tuned…