# First Fatty



## jemm (Aug 27, 2011)

Decided to do a Fatty the other day and had a little trouble, wondering if you guys could help me through what I did wrong.

Started by flattening out the sausage.  I used hot italian sausage and a beer bottle for a rolling pin - resourceful.








Then put the inners in.  Did cheese, green peppers, onion and sprinkled some garlic powder, oregano and crushed red pepper:







Then rolled it and wrapped in saran wrap so that I could let it sit in the fridge rolled up while I went to pick up some bacon and other stuff:







Then weaved the bacon and wrapped the sausage (forgot to take pics of this).  Here's where my problem came in, when I rolled it the bacon started to basically fall apart.  Not sure why, but it didn't roll quite right.  I was afraid it would fall apart in the smoker so I put some bacon on top and pushed it under and toothpicked it to keep it together.

Any reason why that would happen?  I did the typical 5x5 weave, did I use too much inners and it was just too thick?

Also, had a buddy help me and prepare the ABT's.  And I rubbed down the bacon inside and out with a rub I've been working on perfecting and sprinkled the bacon on the ABT's and some side bacon with it.

Now some QView for ya.  Not too sure how far into the cooking this pic was but I think it was around the 45 min - 1 hour mark.







Some good smoke:







And some money shots including the nice people that helped me eat it.













Oh yea, and had a grease fire mid smoke, gonna have to use a water pan next time to catch the grease.  Only problem it really caused was that the jalapenos were done so we just scooped the cream cheese out and ate it with the bacon.  Turned out well though cause it had a real nice kick to it.

Thanks for reading guys!  If anyone has any ideas on how to make it better next time and how to not have it fall apart I'm very open to suggestions.


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## SmokinAl (Aug 27, 2011)

You may not have rolled it right, but it sure looks good.

The flavor is what counts & I think you have that.

The first pic of the fattie in the saran wrap looks like you didn't twist it enough. It needs to be really tight.

Next we use 13 pieces of bacon ( thin as possible ) 6x7 for the weave and that needs to be wrapped tight as well.

It just takes a couple of times & you will be a fattie pro.

Instead of laying a strip of bacon on the ABT's you may want to wrap bacon around them.

Or we like to chop the bacon up then fry it & mix it with the filling with no bacon wrap.

We use xtra sharp cheddar & the chopped up fried bacon & that's it.


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## jemm (Aug 27, 2011)

I had done a fatty in the oven before (before I got the smoker) and the roll was perfect, I think I need to try the 6x7 weave then.  And yea, the saran wrap was probably not as tight as it could've been... Next time I'll make sure to really get it tight together.

The flavor was definitely there, it was delicious for sure.

And I gotta try the bacon mixed into the filling... I think next time I do ABT's I'm gonna mix everything I want in it together first and not top it with anything and see how that works out for me.


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## terry colwell (Aug 28, 2011)

I found that when making fatties it helps to cut the filling  smaller then what you have, bigger "chunks" are real hard to roll up,( for me at least ). Also, like Al said, you didnt roll it tight enough. When I roll mine I do the trick of grabbing the ends of the roll close to the meat and rolling it in one direction on the counter while pinching the saran wrap. And I also do it again after I have set it in the bacon weave. Just be careful you dont go "too" tight. it will blow out the saran wrap


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## roller (Aug 28, 2011)

Looks like to have to much stuffing and I am bad about that also...I do my bacon weave right on top of the fattie and tuck the ends under itand I do all of this on top of the seran wrap then just wrap it up tight overnight. I have done then and just go straight to the smoker with them. Yours looks good and they do not really have to be pretty just taste good which I am sure yours did...I am not real big on pretty only when it comes to women...lol...


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## africanmeat (Aug 28, 2011)

I don't know it looks OK from here


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## azron (Aug 29, 2011)

Everyone else covered it, so i will say if it tastes good it it don't matter how it looks


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## cowgirl (Aug 29, 2011)

Looks great from  here too. Love your coors light tray.


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## chef jimmyj (Aug 30, 2011)

Jemm, After taking a closer look at your Sausage roll out, it appears that you took the sausage out of the Casing and Pressed/Rolled them together. Unless you really KNEAD the link sausage together there will be SEAMS where the ground meat does not KNIT together. Add heat and the shrinking meat fibers make it worse and the whole thing falls apart.  You can see the seams along the left edge of the Roll Out pic and in the Cut pic, it almost looks like individual links, lined side by side along the top edge. 

It still looks tasty to me...Good luck...JJ


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## sunman76 (Aug 30, 2011)

looks like it was good to me!


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## jemm (Aug 30, 2011)

Quote:


Chef JimmyJ said:


> Jemm, After taking a closer look at your Sausage roll out, it appears that you took the sausage out of the Casing and Pressed/Rolled them together. Unless you really KNEAD the link sausage together there will be SEAMS where the ground meat does not KNIT together. Add heat and the shrinking meat fibers make it worse and the whole thing falls apart.  You can see the seams along the left edge of the Roll Out pic and in the Cut pic, it almost looks like individual links, lined side by side along the top edge.
> 
> It still looks tasty to me...Good luck...JJ


Yea, all my grocery store had was sausage links so I cut em and punched the crap out of them in the bag, pulled the casings out, punched em some more and then rolled it flat.  Tried to get it to be one piece but I'm sure it wasn't as solid as it would have been using one big lump of sausage.  Definitely gonna have to cut out some of the inners too, think I used too much as Roller said.

It was definitely still tasty, just kind of a pita to get together.  Ended up just being a reason to use more bacon, and i have absolutely no problem with that!


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## jemm (Aug 30, 2011)

cowgirl said:


> Looks great from  here too. Love your coors light tray.




haha thanks! We have a bunch that we use to serve dinner basically every night, they're awesome.


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