Bacon Explosion

Well this is one I can tick off my bucket list! A bacon explosion. After all, last week was bacon week so I felt I owed it to myself and to bacon to do something special.

I can't take credit for this concoction of brilliance as it makes an appearance on few BBQ websites and forums but as far as I can tell most credit goes to BBQ Addicts as the originators.

In short it is a bacon weave stuffed with sausage meat stuffed with crispy bacon and smoked with a BBQ sauce glaze for good measure. I know, what dreams are made of.

Surprisingly it was actually really easy to make and a lot of fun. There's plenty of recipes out there and videos on youtube showing exactly how to make this but if you want my step by step guide, read on.

Start with some streaky bacon and sausage meat. Ideally you want to grind and season meat from scratch but if you are pressed for time or simply can't be bothered, just buy some Italian sausages from a good butcher and cut them open for the meat. I only ended up using the 1 packet of bacon and about 1.5kg of sausages. This turned out rather large but nothing I do is just average.

So once you have your sausage meat ready and mixed up a bit then you can start the bacon weave. This is the fun part and is much easier than it looks.

Start by laying pieces of bacon vertically side by side and fold back every second one.

Then lay a piece of bacon horizontally across them and fold those pieces back over the top. Then take the alternate pieces of bacon, fold those back and lay another piece horizontally. Fold those over and repeat until you have something like this. Look for a video on youtube, its much easier seeing this done than explaining it in words.

At this point excitement got the better of me and couldn't help but do an extension to my bacon weave by splicing in some more bacon.

Now as if bacon wasn't delicious enough on its own, we added a little seasoning to it. I had to laugh at this point as I never thought I would season bacon.
We just used a little all purpose BBQ seasoning mixed with some brown sugar to cut through the extra salt. Add a bit of brown sugar at a time to the seasoning and taste it as you go. You want to be able to taste a little more sweet than salt.

Now you are ready to lay out your sausage meat. Just an even thickness spread out over the bacon weave.

Fry up some of the bacon left over from the packet (you haven't eaten that already have you?) until it's nice and crispy and sprinkle that over the meat. We probably cut the pieces a bit too small so I would recommend bigger pieces than pictured.

Also add some drops of BBQ sauce evenly over the crispy bacon. Get yourself some proper BBQ sauce, not just your average supermarket stuff. We used Sweet Baby Rays which has a nice smoke flavour in it as well.

Now comes the tricky part of rolling this up. Just take it slow, start from one edge and roll it as tightly as possible.

You should end up with something resembling a giant sausage.

Then using the foil to lift up the edge of the bacon weave, proceed to wrap that giant sausage with the bacon weave.

It looks amazing even before its cooked.

Now its ready to go on the smoker to cook it low and slow. Aim for about 110 - 120 degrees for about 3 hours but always be guided by the internal temperature to determine when its ready. I aimed for about 74 degrees.

If you don't have a smoker you can also use a normal hooded BBQ or even an oven. The smoker will get some more flavour into it but this is already packing a flavour punch. Importantly, whatever method you're cooking with, make sure its low and slow.

Before its ready though (say about 70 degrees) coat it with BBQ sauce to get that nice glaze across it like the picture at the beginning of this blog.

Here it is on the smoker just after it had been glazed. Excuse the chickens in the way, I had to put some guards in front of it.

And finally the finished product:

And the verdict was even better than it looked.

Don't be afraid to give this show stopper a go, its much easier than you think and it will really impress your guests.

I won't be doing this again anytime soon though, not because it wasn't delicious, but I'm trying to avoid contributing to the obesity crisis in the country.

Food should get you excited even before its ready to cook and the bacon explosion certainly did that.


Not Your Average Joe