# First Fatty (Bacon Explosion) in my new MES.



## lav25 (Nov 3, 2017)

So I got a new MES 30 the other day, and decided that the safest thing to give it its first day out with would be a nice bacon explosion. There's nothing I'm doing here that others haven't done before, and with far more skill, so just look at this as a newbie post and be gentle :).

No bacon in Japan unless I make it myself, and I'm out, so I used _okonomiyaki buta bara _slice, which is basically bacon that's not had any sort of curing or processing done to it. In this case, that's not a problem. A nice woven mat:








Didn't remember to take a picture, but I used some Kilauea Fire BBQ sauce that I got at my local import food store a while ago, put a layer of that on the bacon, as well as some Stake Spice (sic) from The Meat Guy Japan. 






Then I used a half-gallon ziploc bag and a bottle of Kahlua to roll out a nice square of quick 'n dirty Italian sausage:







Cut the bag away from the meat and laid it onto the bacon. Oops, you're supposed to roll it first. Next time. 







Again, neglected to take pictures, but I fried and crumbled some bacon and laid it across the sausage meat, along with a drizzle of BBQ sauce and some more Stake Spice, then rolled it and put it into the smoker (no water in the water pan) at 225F for... dunno, a couple hours or so? Maverick said the temp of the smoker was running about 15-20 degrees F higher than the smoker thought it was, but that's fine by me. I had trouble, however, with getting the chips to start up. They worked okay the first time, but when I reloaded the chip pan, I discovered that they hadn't burned up, but simply gone out after a while. This is something that will need further attention, but I got a nice amount of smoke on the food, so no major problems. 













One minor issue is that the BBQ sauce on the outside of the roll was still very "wet". I'm thinking that next time, when the internal temp gets up to 155 or so, I may crank the heat all the way up on the smoker to dry it out a little. Thoughts? 

Anyway, not perfect, but I'm pretty happy with this for a first test run, and having a digital thermostat beats the heck out of staring at the screen on the Maverick for hours trying to decide if the ECB is just spiking or roaring away too hot, or if it's out of charcoal or needs more air or a fire dance or something. 

Thanks for looking!


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## SmokinAl (Nov 3, 2017)

Great job on your first fattie!
It looks delicious!
Al


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## crazymoon (Nov 3, 2017)

L25, nice looking fatty and a good start for your new smoker ! You can always dry/crisp up things by finishing your fatty on a gas grill if you have one.


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## Rings Я Us (Nov 3, 2017)

I would say it would be cool to have used Japanese ingredients in the fatty .  lol
Stuff we never get to see.. That BBQ sauce looks cool.. haha
Nice job.


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## sauced (Nov 3, 2017)

Great looking fatty.....nice job!!


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## troutman (Nov 3, 2017)

Nice looking fatty !!  I normally do not put sauce on bacon, I want the bacon flavor not ketchup.  I think you had the right idea, at the end of the cook crank your smoker up all the way, say 350-400* range and crisp up that bacon.  Much better than soggy.  Good first attempt !!


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## lovethemeats (Nov 3, 2017)

Good looking fatty. Doesn't matter where you are. You can always find things to make a fatty. And that one looks great.


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