Some of the links on this forum allow SMF, at no cost to you, to earn a small commission when you click through and make a purchase. Let me know if you have any questions about this.
if you have a small bread loaf pan try to seperate as much meat out as you can. You can pack the bottom and the sides. Fill the center with your filling and top with the rest of your meat. take a plastic bag and lay it over the top and squish it nice and solid. Place upside down on the rack in your smoker. Let that cook for a little bit and the pan will slide right off. It will be fragile so don;t mess with it yet. Let it cook a while more to stiffen up a bit. lay your bacon mat out next to the loaf and gently pry it over on it's side with 2 spatchulas. Then gently drape your bacon the rest of the way over. Don't ask me how I know how to do this. Actually this is kind of the way I do it anymore. saves the heartbreak. good luck!
When I ran into trouble rolling a fatty, the cause of the problem was too much stuffing.
I don't know if you did or not but it helps to put the base (sausage or ....) by itself into the freezer for awhile to stiffen it up some before you roll it.
I think it was a combo of things. I put the sausage flat in the fridge not the freezer. I got greedy and tried to put too much in it., and I think I put it on the wrong side of the wax paper and the sausage stuck to it.
Alright after sitting in the corner of the fridge like a bad fat kid in kindergarten, the fatty has been called to the principles office to get smoked. We will see how he is in a couple of hours.
Not too bad for a rescued fatty, the bacon was a little underdone for my taste. Next time,mine will use thinner bacon, and hopefully the sausage will not blow out on me.
In my experience, it's only the bottom of the fatty bacon that ends up undercooked. My solution, tested 4 or 5 times now to great success, is to smoke the fatty in a foil boat for the first 20-30 minutes. The bacon fat pools in the boat as it renders, and the bottom gets nice and crispy. Once the bottom is cooked, slide the fatty off the foil and onto your grates. Bonus points for drizzling the rendered bacon fat on top of the fatty.