Bacon Explosion

The famous bacon explosion was the big event this weekend. We did a pretty good job, I think.

Since we don't have a smoker, we just cooked it in the oven at 350 F, for about an hour and a half, until the internal temperature read 165 F on the meat thermometer. I won't repost the entire recipe, as the link above gives pretty detailed instructions. However, here are a couple of tips...

-It's important to make the bacon weave as tight as possible, and it's really a 2 person job to make it right. Lay the horizontal pieces down on the pan very thickly, so that they overlap slightly. Then crosshatch the bacon by having one person lift up the horizontal strips, while the other person lays down the vertical strips, as closely to the previous vertical strip as humanly/baconly possibly. You want absolutely, positively no gaps in the bacon weave. At all.

-We added some chopped serrano peppers to the chopped, cooked bacon that we put in the middle of the roll. And there was a mutual feeling that if we ever do this again (ha, "if"), we'll add some more peppers, and more other veggies, like onions, sweet peppers, etc. Ooo, maybe even some chopped apple....

-The sausage to bacon ratio was a little bit high, in our estimation. In future, I think we'll use 1 or 1.5 lbs of sausage rather than 2, and make the relative bacon content really worthy of the name "Bacon Explosion."

-Finally, of course, we didn't use a commercial BBQ sauce, we used Son of Grok's recipe.

It was every bit as bacony and delicious as you'd imagine. It's not the kind of thing I'd want to make every weekend, lest the magic fade. But maybe we'll start a Birthday Bacon Explosion tradition instead of birthday cake...?

--Losterman