I did this for last night's dinner and it was a Huge success!
Alright, here we go. First time for everything, eh?
I went for a variation of the home-made lasagna filling my mom perfected and my wife imitates so well. :bounce:
I started with 2 lbs of sweet italian sausage, flattened out in the bag per the "sticky" tutorials:
Then for the filling. I'm using layered ricotta/cream cheese, spaghetti sauce, and seasoned mozzarella. Here's how to make the white stuff:
Put the cream cheese, ricotta, egg, and some parsley in a mixing bowl and mix/blend well. It helps if the cream cheese is softened first...
Now back to the italian sausage wrap. Lay down some sauce:
Then some of the white stuff, and a layer of seasoned shredded mozzarella:
Now, let's Double Up the fillings and kick it up a notch! On top of the cheese there, take 1/2 lb of Maple breakfeast sausage, flatten it out, and lay it on the cheese like a semi-firm divider to lay more of the goo on.
Complete the layup with the sauce and shredded cheese:
Then roll it up! Tricky, particularly with how "wet" my filling is. Took some pushing and poking but here it is wrapped up before going to the freezer for a few:
Then I made a weave using about 1.5 lbs of Bacon:
Then the fatty was unwrapped, rolled in the bacon, and re-wrapped. When I tightened the wrap with the bacon, I didn't let the fatty sit on the counter and manually twist the ends. I gathered up the plastic wrap, and held them like handles and started rolling the fatty on the counter. Same motion as if I was holding the handles of a rolling pin and the fatty itself was the rolling pin and the plastic wrap was the handles. This worked *MUCH* better and faster. Here it is all wrapped up:
Then it was back to the freezer to firm up some more while the MES warmed up.
Took 2 hrs 15 min smoking with Cherry at 250F to get to 165F internal, pulled to the counter to rest. Picture worthy!
Sliced and DEVOURED:
.
Check that out - got a bit of a moke ring in the MES!
It was plated with basil pesto bowtie pasta, garlic bread, and some additional spaghetti sauce because it looked more cheesy than saucy (which obviously didn't really happen because I was too busy eating to take a picture
)
Man oh man.... The layer of maple sausage in the middle was a great little change of pace. Smokey, meltey, cheesy, WOW.
250F was a great choice for cooking temp. I had pretty thick bacon, and while I wouldn't characterize the texture of the finished stuff as "crispy", I wouldn't call it chewy or anything close to it either. It was more like "a little crispy on the outside and a melted texture otherwise" - *Really* good.
I was a little intimidated about fabricating/preparing one but the tutorials and pics already posted by everyone else were great. The only thing that I would add to them that I don't remember reading previously is the specific method I used to get a good, tight plastic wrap on it after I applied the bacon weave (I'll call it the "rolling pin wrap method" described above.)
I'll be making more of these!
Alright, here we go. First time for everything, eh?
I went for a variation of the home-made lasagna filling my mom perfected and my wife imitates so well. :bounce:
I started with 2 lbs of sweet italian sausage, flattened out in the bag per the "sticky" tutorials:
Then for the filling. I'm using layered ricotta/cream cheese, spaghetti sauce, and seasoned mozzarella. Here's how to make the white stuff:
Put the cream cheese, ricotta, egg, and some parsley in a mixing bowl and mix/blend well. It helps if the cream cheese is softened first...
Now back to the italian sausage wrap. Lay down some sauce:
Then some of the white stuff, and a layer of seasoned shredded mozzarella:
Now, let's Double Up the fillings and kick it up a notch! On top of the cheese there, take 1/2 lb of Maple breakfeast sausage, flatten it out, and lay it on the cheese like a semi-firm divider to lay more of the goo on.
Complete the layup with the sauce and shredded cheese:
Then roll it up! Tricky, particularly with how "wet" my filling is. Took some pushing and poking but here it is wrapped up before going to the freezer for a few:
Then I made a weave using about 1.5 lbs of Bacon:
Then the fatty was unwrapped, rolled in the bacon, and re-wrapped. When I tightened the wrap with the bacon, I didn't let the fatty sit on the counter and manually twist the ends. I gathered up the plastic wrap, and held them like handles and started rolling the fatty on the counter. Same motion as if I was holding the handles of a rolling pin and the fatty itself was the rolling pin and the plastic wrap was the handles. This worked *MUCH* better and faster. Here it is all wrapped up:
Then it was back to the freezer to firm up some more while the MES warmed up.
Took 2 hrs 15 min smoking with Cherry at 250F to get to 165F internal, pulled to the counter to rest. Picture worthy!
Sliced and DEVOURED:
.
Check that out - got a bit of a moke ring in the MES!
It was plated with basil pesto bowtie pasta, garlic bread, and some additional spaghetti sauce because it looked more cheesy than saucy (which obviously didn't really happen because I was too busy eating to take a picture
Man oh man.... The layer of maple sausage in the middle was a great little change of pace. Smokey, meltey, cheesy, WOW.
250F was a great choice for cooking temp. I had pretty thick bacon, and while I wouldn't characterize the texture of the finished stuff as "crispy", I wouldn't call it chewy or anything close to it either. It was more like "a little crispy on the outside and a melted texture otherwise" - *Really* good.
I was a little intimidated about fabricating/preparing one but the tutorials and pics already posted by everyone else were great. The only thing that I would add to them that I don't remember reading previously is the specific method I used to get a good, tight plastic wrap on it after I applied the bacon weave (I'll call it the "rolling pin wrap method" described above.)
I'll be making more of these!
