A Bacon Explosion

This is my first post, and it is actually several months late.  But my page was looking so gloomy and empty that I couldn't wait to make something new, I wanted to post something I'd already done.

So here is our Valentine's Day Bacon Explosion.

Pretty glorious, eh?  Neither of us have much interest in Valentine's Day really, but we do like an excuse for ridiculous quantities of meat.  So when we saw the recipe for the Bacon Explosion, we had to try it.

Many have blogged about it, and now I number among them.  The recipe is pretty simple, and not terribly exact.  So here goes.

2 lb. bacon
2 lb. Italian sausage
1 jar of barbecue sauce
1 jar of barbecue seasoning rub

Now, preheat your oven to 225 degrees.  And in the immortal words of Liz Cheney: let's get cookin'!

Okay, the first step is a lattice of bacon.  I like the squishy-squishy feeling between my fingers.  You should use about half the bacon.

To me, this is fantastic.  Is anyone totally grossed out?  Then don't scroll down.

Fun with close-ups!  Yaaay.  Okay, next step: sprinkle some of your barbecue rub over the lattice.  Sorry I don't have a picture of this step, I'm very new at this.  Now, once you've got it all seasoned and delicious, smoosh the sausage over the lattice.  Yes, all of it.

Less delicious looking, huh?  Don't worry, the lattice comes back.  But first, we have to fry up some bacon.  You know how to fry bacon right?  If you don't, google it or something.  Anyhow, here is a picture of that action:

Mmm, bacon.  Also, don't make fun of our crappy stove and lame-ass paper towels.  We're cooking in a dorm kitchen, we do what we can.

Now, once the bacon is all fried up and drained, you crumble it into small pieces, and sprinkle it on top of the sausage.  Then you load that up with barbecue sauce and rub.  Then, you start to roll it into a log.  It's very important to roll the sausage first, and THEN roll the bacon around it.  Like so:

MMMMMMMMmmmmmmm....

Once your log is finished, it should look like this.  My boyfriend and (vegetarian) roommate were pretty stoked.

Then you slather the outside of your meat log in barbecue rub, and stick it in the oven.  It should cook an hour for each inch of diameter.  Example: ours was about 3 and a half inches thick, so we cooked it for 3 and a half hours.

Exciting, no?

Here's the trick though: you can only eat this on Valentine's Day, because, as we all know, that is the day that calories don't exist.  Also Thanksgiving, but you have to make it with turkey bacon.

As far as serving suggestions go, it's pretty great just on its own.  But we also tried slicing it into hamburger-sized wedges and eating it on rolls with cheese and extra barbecue sauce, and that was worth doing as well.

Enjoy, my fellow fatties!