Bacon wrapped sausage fatty

Post date: Sep 9, 2012 8:36:48 PM

Until two weeks ago I'd never heard of a sausage fatty. However, after my Cookshack smoker finally arrived from Oklahoma a couple of weeks ago I picked up Jeff Phillips' book Smoking Meat from the library and the recipe for a sausage fatty looked intriguing, mostly because of the elaborate instructions. The first step is to create a braided bacon mat by weaving thirteen pieces of bacon. I used applewood smoked bacon from Oyama Sausage on Granville Island.

You then take a pound of sausages (I used four Italian basil sausages from Oyama Sausage), remove the meat from the casings, place the meat in a large ziploc bag and roll it out into a large thin square.

On top of the sausage meat you layer some spinach and cheese (I used Bergeron, a mild cheese from Quebec).

You then roll up the sausage meat, using the wax paper to help you. Once you get a nice tight roll, you place it on the bacon mat and roll that up. Then you place the whole roll in the smoker.

I set the smoker to 225 F and smoked it for about three-and-a-half hours. I used hickory chunks to generate the smoke.

Once it's done you wrap it in foil to keep it warm and to let it rest (at least for 15 minutes) and then slice it into half-inch slices.

The result was fantastic. It exceeded my expectations. I was expecting the bacon to be somewhat soft, perhaps the result of too many crappy bacon-wrapped scallops at cocktail parties. However, it was well-cooked and the combination of flavours was wonderful. I'm already planning out my next sausage fatty. Oyama sells all kinds of fresh sausages, so I'll be experimenting with different kinds of sausage meat and different kinds of cheese.

Cooking this way is not exactly quick, and takes a lot of planning, but the results are well worth it!