- Nov 15, 2012
- 1,025
- 105
Hi,
Yesterday was my birthday, and instead of going out for a nice dinner in fancy clothes, I made the command decision to stay home and smoke my first fatty. My husband had been pushing for the nice dinner out, but once I explained that a fatty was meat wrapped with bacon, he became more enthusiastic about staying in.
Here is my bacon weave. I just used Trader Joe's Apple Smoked Uncured Bacon because my own bacon is thick cut and I wasn't sure how well that would work. I haven't bought store bacon in a while.....it looks anemic and watery. Ick.
Here is 1-1/2 lbs of ground beef all rolled out and placed on a plastic wrap-lined sushi mat. I used the gallon ziplock bag trick for getting a nice even rectangle. Thank you to SMF members who posted on that trick. It worked beautifully.
As it was my birthday and I wanted to be all fancy and sophisticated, I used sauteed mushrooms, shallots, and spinach as a filling along with crumbled gorgonzola cheese. The filling was tasty, but I really should have used some cheese that would melt all nice and gooey. To heck with being fancy....some things just cry out for gooey cheese, and apparently a fatty is one of them.
Here it is all nicely rolled up. The sushi mat really helped with getting the inside edge tucked in.
Now with the bacon weave....
Into the smoker! It isn't showing in this picture, but I used the AMNPS with apple pellets.
For some reason I wasn't able to get the ST to get hotter than 220 deg. I don't know if the foil pain I had placed in there was blocking the heat? I'm going to have to run the ST dry today to see if there is a temperature problem. I ended up smoking the fatty for 2 1/2 hours and the IT was only 120 deg. So I pulled it and finished it in the oven to IT of 165 deg and used the broiler to crisp up the bacon.
Just out of the oven. Looks like I burned some of the bacon ends, but they tasted fine. I picked them off and ate them before showing the fatty to my husband. As far as he knows it was cooked perfectly.
Here we are, all sliced and plated. Now imagine how much better this would have looked if there was melted cheese oozing out. That's what we thought too.
Look at all the vegetables on this plate! This is the picture I'm showing to my coworkers (doctors and nurses) who are shaking their collective heads in dismay when I describe my smoking [mis]-adventures.
So I have now successfully smoked cheese, almonds, 2 pork butts, 1 rack of pork spare ribs, and 1 ground beef fatty. Am I a real smoker yet?
Thank you for looking!
Clarissa
Yesterday was my birthday, and instead of going out for a nice dinner in fancy clothes, I made the command decision to stay home and smoke my first fatty. My husband had been pushing for the nice dinner out, but once I explained that a fatty was meat wrapped with bacon, he became more enthusiastic about staying in.
Here is my bacon weave. I just used Trader Joe's Apple Smoked Uncured Bacon because my own bacon is thick cut and I wasn't sure how well that would work. I haven't bought store bacon in a while.....it looks anemic and watery. Ick.
Here is 1-1/2 lbs of ground beef all rolled out and placed on a plastic wrap-lined sushi mat. I used the gallon ziplock bag trick for getting a nice even rectangle. Thank you to SMF members who posted on that trick. It worked beautifully.
As it was my birthday and I wanted to be all fancy and sophisticated, I used sauteed mushrooms, shallots, and spinach as a filling along with crumbled gorgonzola cheese. The filling was tasty, but I really should have used some cheese that would melt all nice and gooey. To heck with being fancy....some things just cry out for gooey cheese, and apparently a fatty is one of them.
Here it is all nicely rolled up. The sushi mat really helped with getting the inside edge tucked in.
Now with the bacon weave....
Into the smoker! It isn't showing in this picture, but I used the AMNPS with apple pellets.
For some reason I wasn't able to get the ST to get hotter than 220 deg. I don't know if the foil pain I had placed in there was blocking the heat? I'm going to have to run the ST dry today to see if there is a temperature problem. I ended up smoking the fatty for 2 1/2 hours and the IT was only 120 deg. So I pulled it and finished it in the oven to IT of 165 deg and used the broiler to crisp up the bacon.
Just out of the oven. Looks like I burned some of the bacon ends, but they tasted fine. I picked them off and ate them before showing the fatty to my husband. As far as he knows it was cooked perfectly.
Here we are, all sliced and plated. Now imagine how much better this would have looked if there was melted cheese oozing out. That's what we thought too.
Look at all the vegetables on this plate! This is the picture I'm showing to my coworkers (doctors and nurses) who are shaking their collective heads in dismay when I describe my smoking [mis]-adventures.
So I have now successfully smoked cheese, almonds, 2 pork butts, 1 rack of pork spare ribs, and 1 ground beef fatty. Am I a real smoker yet?
Thank you for looking!
Clarissa
