So I got a new MES 30 the other day, and decided that the safest thing to give it its first day out with would be a nice bacon explosion. There's nothing I'm doing here that others haven't done before, and with far more skill, so just look at this as a newbie post and be gentle :).
No bacon in Japan unless I make it myself, and I'm out, so I used okonomiyaki buta bara slice, which is basically bacon that's not had any sort of curing or processing done to it. In this case, that's not a problem. A nice woven mat:
Didn't remember to take a picture, but I used some Kilauea Fire BBQ sauce that I got at my local import food store a while ago, put a layer of that on the bacon, as well as some Stake Spice (sic) from The Meat Guy Japan.
Then I used a half-gallon ziploc bag and a bottle of Kahlua to roll out a nice square of quick 'n dirty Italian sausage:
Cut the bag away from the meat and laid it onto the bacon. Oops, you're supposed to roll it first. Next time.
Again, neglected to take pictures, but I fried and crumbled some bacon and laid it across the sausage meat, along with a drizzle of BBQ sauce and some more Stake Spice, then rolled it and put it into the smoker (no water in the water pan) at 225F for... dunno, a couple hours or so? Maverick said the temp of the smoker was running about 15-20 degrees F higher than the smoker thought it was, but that's fine by me. I had trouble, however, with getting the chips to start up. They worked okay the first time, but when I reloaded the chip pan, I discovered that they hadn't burned up, but simply gone out after a while. This is something that will need further attention, but I got a nice amount of smoke on the food, so no major problems.
One minor issue is that the BBQ sauce on the outside of the roll was still very "wet". I'm thinking that next time, when the internal temp gets up to 155 or so, I may crank the heat all the way up on the smoker to dry it out a little. Thoughts?
Anyway, not perfect, but I'm pretty happy with this for a first test run, and having a digital thermostat beats the heck out of staring at the screen on the Maverick for hours trying to decide if the ECB is just spiking or roaring away too hot, or if it's out of charcoal or needs more air or a fire dance or something.
Thanks for looking!
No bacon in Japan unless I make it myself, and I'm out, so I used okonomiyaki buta bara slice, which is basically bacon that's not had any sort of curing or processing done to it. In this case, that's not a problem. A nice woven mat:
Didn't remember to take a picture, but I used some Kilauea Fire BBQ sauce that I got at my local import food store a while ago, put a layer of that on the bacon, as well as some Stake Spice (sic) from The Meat Guy Japan.
Then I used a half-gallon ziploc bag and a bottle of Kahlua to roll out a nice square of quick 'n dirty Italian sausage:
Cut the bag away from the meat and laid it onto the bacon. Oops, you're supposed to roll it first. Next time.
Again, neglected to take pictures, but I fried and crumbled some bacon and laid it across the sausage meat, along with a drizzle of BBQ sauce and some more Stake Spice, then rolled it and put it into the smoker (no water in the water pan) at 225F for... dunno, a couple hours or so? Maverick said the temp of the smoker was running about 15-20 degrees F higher than the smoker thought it was, but that's fine by me. I had trouble, however, with getting the chips to start up. They worked okay the first time, but when I reloaded the chip pan, I discovered that they hadn't burned up, but simply gone out after a while. This is something that will need further attention, but I got a nice amount of smoke on the food, so no major problems.
One minor issue is that the BBQ sauce on the outside of the roll was still very "wet". I'm thinking that next time, when the internal temp gets up to 155 or so, I may crank the heat all the way up on the smoker to dry it out a little. Thoughts?
Anyway, not perfect, but I'm pretty happy with this for a first test run, and having a digital thermostat beats the heck out of staring at the screen on the Maverick for hours trying to decide if the ECB is just spiking or roaring away too hot, or if it's out of charcoal or needs more air or a fire dance or something.
Thanks for looking!
