Bacon Explosion 2014

So the Bacon Explosion has become a Super Bowl staple in our house, and each year we've updated it a bit (seen here and here). This year, I think we really outdid ourselves. Jamie got me a sausage maker, so we actually made our own sausage for it (totally unnecessary, you can use regular sausage, but it was great). We also smoked it for a few minutes which gave a great smoky flavor. Yum! For our sausage, we used a mix of pork shoulder, green apple, leek, garlic, chipotle, jarlsburg cheese, and a little maple syrup. It's a real crowd pleaser.

Ingredients:

2 packages regular bacon

1 package thick cut bacon

3 lb sausage

1/4 cup spice rub (I use a mix of brown sugar, chipotle, oregano, cumin, thyme, salt, and pepper, usually)

1/4 cup diced Jarlsburg or other melty cheese

big handful of grape tomatoes, cut up

big handful arugula

1/2 onion, diced, and 2 clove garlic, minced, sauted (saute the onion until soft then add the garlic for 1 minute)

BBQ sauce

toothpicks

If you're smoking it, 2 tbsp hickory chips soaked in water for a few minutes

Directions:

Create a square bacon weave, about 6 pieces by 6 pieces, on a large piece of tinfoil on a baking sheet.

NY Times Braised Short Rib Nachos

Super Bowl involved a lot of food. Wings, Bacon Explosion, and this newcomer - the amazing nachos you may have recently seen in the Times. Yum! They were so rich but the salsa verde cut through the richness, and the leftover short ribs made incredible tacos. (It makes a LOT of short ribs, but it's worth it because they're great for leftovers.) I actually (oops) forgot the beer but they worked out great. 

Ingredients:

4 pounds bone-in beef short ribs, patted dry

5 teaspoons coarse kosher salt, more to taste

1 1/2 teaspoons black pepper

5 garlic cloves, smashed and peeled

2 jalapeño or serrano peppers, halved lengthwise, seeded if desired

1 onion, peeled and quartered lengthwise

1 (28-ounce) can chopped tomatoes

Superbowl nachos

Rob made the tastiest nachos. Roasted chicken, spicy sausage, lots of cheddar cheese, cilantro and secret ingredient BBQ sauce. The BBQ sauce give the chips a great sweetness. The mountain of nachos was devoured immediately. Thanks Rob!

Superbowl wings

I found an amazing wing recipe in Food & Wine last year and have been making them all year for games for Jamie and our friends. After trying several flavors, we decided the maple-chipotle and Jamaican jerk were the best options. For maple-chipotle, you toss 2lb of wings w 2 tablespoons flour, 1 tsp salt and 1 tsp drie sage. Spray w oil and roast for 45 minutes at 500. Melt 2 tbsp melted butter w 2 1/2 tbsp frank's red hot, 2 minced canned chipotle peppers w a little adobo sauce and 2 tbsp maple syrup. Toss the crispy wings and serve. For Jamaican jerk, toss the wings w 2 tbsp flour, 1/2 tsp powdered onion, 1/2 tsp powdered garlic, 1/2 tsp dries thyme, and 1 tsp salt. Roast for 45 at 500. Mix 2 1/2 tbsp franks red hot, 2 tbsp butter, and 1 tsp jerk paste and toss wings and serve. So tasty and way better than bar wings.




We just crushed 4 pounds of wings in 3 minutes. They're so crispy and the flavors are so intense and just totally irresistable.








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Bacon explosion round two

We made a bacon explosion last year but Jamie is really experimenting this year (I like to think it's my influence) and he's added a bunch of ingredients. In addition to the 2+ pounds of sausage (half sweet fennel and half parsley cheese from faicco's) and bacon,






he's added sauteed onions, chopped garlic, and fresh mozzarella. He made a basket weave of the bacon, cooked about 10 strips until crispy, mixed and flattened the sausage on a sheet of wax paper and topping it w the onions, garlic, cheese, and crispy bacon.






He then rolled it up and wrapped it in the bacon weave.
We secured it with some toothpicks and covered it in a spice rub of brown sugar, chipotle pepper powder, onion powder, garlic powder, dried thyme, a little dried sage, chili powder, kosher salt, pepper, cumin, and a little turmeric.






(we have all these things - I you don't, brown sugar, cumin, and some sort of hot pepper powder is fine). Popped it in the oven at 265 and will slice and savor in a few hours during the super bowl!






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Clog those arteries

Last year in the food section of the Times they had a recipe for this bacon explosion. I looked at it and turned up my nose a little, thinking it was a heart attack on a plate. (Not that I don't love a greasy bacon cheese burger with a mountain of fries every once in a while, which is probably worse for me.) The basket weave of bacon looked pretty and interesting, but it was stuffed with sausage and more bacon. I'm still thinking of some other combination of stuffings for this beautiful lining.
At my boyfriend Jamie's super bowl party, he made this giant log of bacon and sausage--and it was delicious. It was sliced into inch-wide pieces, so it was really like a hamburger or large breakfast sausage helping with a little bacon. You slather it with barbecue sauce before you serve it--he used Stubbs. It was great. This just goes to show, don't judge a recipe by how fattening it is--just don't eat it daily.

Here's how you make it if you have some big hungry men to impress:

Pan fry some bacon until it's crispy and put it on paper towels to drain out some grease.

The make a basket weave of bacon. On top of the bacon, put loose sausage (out of its casing). Jamie used a combo of parsley cheese sausage and spicy Italian sausage (both from Faicco's). Then sprinkle a little spice rub over the sausage, pat it down, and crunch the cooked bacon in little bite sized pieces on top. Then drizzle a little BBQ sauce over it and roll it tightly.

Put it on a tin-foil lined baking sheet and cook it at 225 for an hour per every inch of thickness of your "pork log" as Jamie lovingly calls it. When you take it out, spread some bbq sauce on top and slice it as thick or as thin as you want.