I had sent P. a link to the NYT article with instructions for making a cholesterol nightmare called the “Bacon Explosion”. Two pounds of bacon, woven around and put inside two pounds of Italian sausage, seasoned with barbecue sauce. He’s 100% carnivore and thinks that fat and meat are two of the four official food groups (the other two are, of course, caffeine and salt). Fat actually is a food group, but it’s the one waaaaay up at the top of the pyramid with the instructions “use sparingly”. Not if you’re my husband; he’d place that firmly second from the bottom, right above meat (where he’d put meat, at least). Anyway, since we’d gone to the course early today (to beat a coming storm, and I must say that I’m pretty goddamned quick, considering that I was still asleep when D. called P. and said, “Meet you there in 40 minutes!”), and since we started DST last night, so it didn’t get dark so quickly, we actually felt inclined to do something useful. Normally, we’d just order a pizza or get Taco Hell or something for Sunday night, but I told P. that I’d make the Bacon Explosion if he’d be my “assistant”. He went off to the store to buy bacon and sausage, and when he returned, we got to work.

In an effort to find “thick sliced” bacon as instructed by the recipe (he’d read it), he’d got centre-cut, and the strips were a bit shorter than usual, so my basket weave ended up with eight slices instead of ten. No big deal–hard to go wrong with anything that involves bacon! Since the slices were shorter, I decided to make two rolls instead of just one; one pound of bacon and one of sausage for each roll. You can use Italian sausage links and just sort of squeeze the meat out of the casings, but the grocery store in the strip mall not far from our house had the plastic tubes of sausage that I wanted, so I didn’t need to do that.

At first, I’d thought I’d try this with ground beef, but after having completed the rolls, I see why they used Italian sausage; it has that weird, almost “gluey” texture until it’s cooked, so it’s easier to form into a nice, neat rectangle (though mine’s more a square), and easier to handle for rolling it than ground beef. I think the beef would still work, but I’m glad I went with sausage for my first try. Oh, and I’d forgot about the “barbecue rub” (whatever the hell that is–some kind of powdered spice mix, I guess) that was supposed to be sprinkled over the bacon before the sausage went on, so I just opened up the cupboard above the sink, grabbed a bunch of stuff and started sprinkling. I forget what I used…salt, black pepper, paprika, a wee bit of sugar, a tiny bit of cayenne, and I think…uh…it was brown…nutmeg? I dunno, but the combination was quite snifferific by the time I’d finished, and it all gets cooked and topped with barbecue sauce anyway, so I probably could’ve skipped spice altogether, but I suspect it did help a bit to keep the sausage from sticking to the bacon (for easier rolling).

We’re ready to roll! 🙂 My lovely and talented assistant cooked to crispy the “rejected” bacon slices that weren’t suitable for making the woven bit, then crumbled them into bite-sized pieces. I spread them out a bit, but mostly kept them in the middle because, being pre-cooked crispy, they’d all fall there when I rolled it anyway. The instructions said to use 1/2 c. (125mL) of barbecue sauce, but I couldn’t be arsed to get a measuring cup and Baby Ray’s is pretty thick anyway, so I just dumped a bunch on until it looked right. It squished out to the edges when I rolled it up. The sauce made it a bit slippery to roll, too, so I was grateful for the gluey texture of the sausage. To roll these things up, you have to carefully lift the edge of the sausage layer away from the bacon layer and start rolling away from you. When you get to the end, you roll it back toward you; this time bringing the bacon layer along, and roll it until the seam is on the bottom. Sounds more complicated than it actually was, but I did kind of make a mess with the barbecue sauce, and I was glad I’d put a layer of Glad Press’n Seal wrap (heavier than Saran Wrap, sticks to stuff besides itself, so it didn’t slip) under the whole thing because I think it probably would’ve stuck to a countertop or cutting board and may have been a bit of a bitch to roll neatly. Also made it easier to carry back to the stove. I used Sweet Baby Ray’s hickory and brown sugar barbecue sauce because that’s what we happened to have in the fridge, but it really is very good; a distinctive sweet and spicy flavour. I think it’s manufactured in Chicago, and as I understand it, those who like it, really like it. 😛

All set to go in the oven, and neither took a long time to do nor made a great lot of mess to prepare (my kind of food). I’d thought P. would bemoan the fact that we don’t have a smoker (he’s wanted one for years), but surprisingly, he didn’t complain at all that I intended to just bake this in the oven. Much to my joy, the broiler was actually…clean! P. has a terrible habit of “forgetting” to wash greasy things like metal baking sheets/pans and the broiler, and he’ll just stuff them in the oven (and then forget about them for three days, unless I find them first), but this time, he hadn’t. Yay! Actually, my rolls came out fairly neat, in spite of a few barbecue-y fingerprints on the outside. The baking temperature seemed rather low to me–only 225F–but although my usual attitude toward cooking is “the recipe is only a suggestion”, (I never did read the recipe for this; I just skimmed it and looked at the pictures, but don’t tell P. that), I almost always follow instruction when it comes to cooking temperatures. They’re supposed to bake for 3h at that temperature, but I wasn’t sure how long mine would actually take, since I’d done two smaller rolls. I also dropped the middle oven rack down one notch, just to make sure the bacon wouldn’t brown too quickly and start to burn.

Sneaking a peek after 1.5h in the oven. So far, so good, and they’re starting to smell very, very good by now! 🙂

Bad photo because it was pretty hot with the oven door open (didn’t want to bother getting the Canon, neither did I want to fry my iPhone in the heat from the oven), but I eventually decided to go the full 3h, and although P. said the recipe instructed to do it after cooking, about 15 minutes before the time was up, I slathered a nice layer of barbecue sauce on them. I like barbecue stuff done that way rather than just dumping the sauce on afterwards because it takes some of the water out of the sauce.

Maybe half an hour before the bacon stuff was to be taken out of the oven, we made a collective effort to cook some hash browns. Not the little “french fry ends” ones; the shredded ones. I lightly browned a small amount of minced onion in a little bit of fat left from frying the bacon, then tossed the shredded potatoes in. P. supervised their cooking during commercial breaks as he watched The Sopranos (he loves that show, but I’ve never watched more than a couple of minutes of it).

Finally, all done and ready to eat–yay!

My final verdict on the Bacon Explosion? Goddamned good! If I’d been really hungry instead of only kind of, I’m sure I would’ve used the words, “OM NOM NOM!” but even so, I did go back for “just one more little bite” after I’d finished, which is unusual for me (especially for meat dishes, since I’m not much of a carnivore). Granted, this did take longer than calling for pizza delivery, and it was more work than driving over to Taco Bell, but it was well worth the time and effort. You know how cooking blogs often put stuff like nutrition information and calorie counts at the end of the post? Well….yeah…this isn’t a cooking blog, and in any case, you wouldn’t want to know the fat grams or the total calories. I sure don’t…but even if I did, I’d have eaten it anyway! 😀