I was digging through the freezer looking for something totally different, and found that I had a roll of Jimmy Dean Italian sausage in there - and realized that I finally had an excellent excuse to finally make a fatty!
After some discussion with the wife, we determined that we should keep this one simple, especially in light of the fact that we only had one roll and wouldn't be able to make a "fat" fatty. This would be a "skinny" fatty. We rummaged though the fridge and found some mozzerella cheese, some portabello mushrooms, and some tomatoes.
Since we were going to stuff it, step one was to flatten it out:
I thought flattening it would be easier with wax paper on top with a rolling pin, but as it turns out, just doing it by hand was much easier with less to clean up.
Next step was to add the mozzerella:
Then the tomatoes, which we cubed and patted dry with a paper towel:
Then the portabellas which we also cubed:
Rolling it up was an interesting process. The key here definitely is to keep it cool. Mine was getting a bit on the warm side, but the parchment paper that it was sitting on made it easy to get wrapped up. It was a close fit - I *maybe* had a half inch of overlap and really had to press the roll together to get it formed into a roll:
Took the "skinny" fatty roll out to the smoker where it sat for about 4 hours at 250. It cooked faster than I thought - internal temp was at 160 after two hours, so I backed the heat down to the 200-215 range for the last two hours. Spent the afternoon washing cars and sitting in the bottom of the pool with the kids and a scuba tank. This pic was taken right at the 2 hour mark I think:
Time to focus on wrapping up the rest of the dinner... Here's a shot of it right out of the smoker. We wrapped it up in tin foil and let it sit while we took care of the sauce and penne pasta:
All finished! We cut it up into 1/2" slices and put it on top of some penne pasta with Jen's burgundy marinara sauce:
Turned out great and the kids loved it too. Told them it was "Daddy's Super Smoked Meatballs and Spaghetti". My wife got into it too and is already planning out the next 3 or 4 fatty excercises.
Whoever came up with the fatty idea is a genius, BTW.
After some discussion with the wife, we determined that we should keep this one simple, especially in light of the fact that we only had one roll and wouldn't be able to make a "fat" fatty. This would be a "skinny" fatty. We rummaged though the fridge and found some mozzerella cheese, some portabello mushrooms, and some tomatoes.
Since we were going to stuff it, step one was to flatten it out:
I thought flattening it would be easier with wax paper on top with a rolling pin, but as it turns out, just doing it by hand was much easier with less to clean up.
Next step was to add the mozzerella:
Then the tomatoes, which we cubed and patted dry with a paper towel:
Then the portabellas which we also cubed:
Rolling it up was an interesting process. The key here definitely is to keep it cool. Mine was getting a bit on the warm side, but the parchment paper that it was sitting on made it easy to get wrapped up. It was a close fit - I *maybe* had a half inch of overlap and really had to press the roll together to get it formed into a roll:
Took the "skinny" fatty roll out to the smoker where it sat for about 4 hours at 250. It cooked faster than I thought - internal temp was at 160 after two hours, so I backed the heat down to the 200-215 range for the last two hours. Spent the afternoon washing cars and sitting in the bottom of the pool with the kids and a scuba tank. This pic was taken right at the 2 hour mark I think:
Time to focus on wrapping up the rest of the dinner... Here's a shot of it right out of the smoker. We wrapped it up in tin foil and let it sit while we took care of the sauce and penne pasta:
All finished! We cut it up into 1/2" slices and put it on top of some penne pasta with Jen's burgundy marinara sauce:
Turned out great and the kids loved it too. Told them it was "Daddy's Super Smoked Meatballs and Spaghetti". My wife got into it too and is already planning out the next 3 or 4 fatty excercises.
Whoever came up with the fatty idea is a genius, BTW.