Super fattie contest

[yachties23]

First attempt at fattie..... I give it an "eh"

Pics will follow at some point, my camera is currently at my girlfriends.

Used Italian sausage, stuffed with polenta (creamy italian cornmeal mixture) sautéed red and green pepper and yellow onion. Lined with cheddar cheese, and rolled up. Bacon Weave came out pretty good.


Issues I noticed:

I left the sausage too thick. It most definitely needed to be flattened out more.
The combo of Italian sausage and bacon seemed too salty, must find a way around this. All and all the Polenta with the sausage and peppers reminded me of something my grandma used to make, and I think with a few tweaks it could be really awesome.

[T.G]

A pizza inspired fatty for the herf at Grant (groogs) house with DBall on the last day of 2010.



Most of the ingredients...olive oil, tomato paste, Pomi marinara, pickled banana peppers (homegrown / homemade),"exotic" mushrooms (changed my mind - didn't end up using these...), oil marinated artichoke hearts, kalamata olives, bread crumbs, Thai basil (homegrown), 3-cheese blend, provlone, sausage, green onions, pepperoni, sulfurless sun dried tomatoes.
Not shown: one MORE lb of sausage, dried marjoram, dried thyme, oregano, kosher salt, fresh ground black pepper, red pepper flakes, my salt-free spicy BBQ rub.


Mix marinara sauce with tomato paste plus a teaspoon or so of salt-free spicy rub and a teaspoon of red pepper flakes. Since marinara sauces vary in thickness you just kind of eyeball the amount of tomato paste until you achieve the desired consistancy, you are looking for...


...a thick sauce. Drag the spoon through it and it takes a bit longer than a few moments to fall back in. This sauce should be made first, as to allow the flavors to blend and settle.


Mince a few cloves of garlic - this is about four or five cloves, I only ended up using about half of it. Toss this minced garlic, red pepper flakes (didn't measure, photo should give idea how much I used), fresh ground black pepper, kosher salt and a splash of olive oil into a frying pan to sauté. Garlic should be fried until golden brown.


Set some water up to boil. As the water is heating, cut up the sun dried tomatoes into slivers. Toss all of these slivers into a heat proof bowl and pour boiling water over them to cover. Wait 30 seconds, then dump/strain off all water.

[T.G]

(sorry, no photo - gloves too greasy)
Now, mix the sausage with the breadcrumbs (preferably homemade that way there is no additional salt being introduced). Fold breadcrumbs in gradually as you knead/fold the sausage. The breadcrumbs were a new addition to the procedure, my thought being that I wanted to make the sausage more workable, improve the binding and reduce how it sticks to the hands. I ended up using about a cup or so breadcrumbs for three lbs sausage, which was actually a lot more than I had expected, and less than I needed. After cooking, I was really pleased with the end results so I think the bread crumbs will stay on as a normal ingredient in my fatty recipes.

Also, toss in a few dashes of thyme, rosemary, oregano, marjoram and basil.


Divide the sausage mix in half, press out first half of sausage, coat with the tomato sauce mixture.


Slice cheese into strips to facilitate rolling, add to fatty.


Add quartered artichoke hearts, if using oil cured, blot out excess oil before adding to fatty. Add sliced mushrooms (note - these are not the same mushrooms as pictured initially - I changed my mind on the the taste combo and went with "plain" mushrooms).


Add sliced kalamata olives and sliced green onions.


Cut pepperoni into strips, add to fatty. Dice some mild pickled bannna peppers add them and the sautéed garlic. Add spices - thyme, rosemary, oregano, marjoram and basil.

[T.G]

Roll up like you would if making sushi, california rolls in particular. Press as much air out of the roll as possible, seal ends and tie off saran wrap. Place on tray in refrigerator overnight or in freezer for a few hours if cooking the same day.


Into the smoker they go - don't forget to spray/wipe some cooking oil on the tray or they will stick.
As much as I like hickory, it didn't seem very pizza like, so I used two chunks of oak and one chunk of cherry wood for smoke.


After about two hours at 220F-ish. Time to pull them and wrap in a few layers of foil for oven finishing later.


Uh-oh...


UH-OH...

[T.G]

UH-OH... Cheese hemorrhage... I must have pressed out the sausage too thin in one spot or I over did it when I was pressing the air out and had a piece of cheese poke through the sausage.

Wrap the fatties up in a few layers of HD aluminum foil and seal the ends well.


These were taken to Grant's house, then finished by placing the unopened foil packs on a 1/4 sheet pan (cookie sheet) and placing in a 275F oven for one hour. In retrospect I think 45mins at 250F would have been sufficient.


With one of Grant's awesome burgers (the benefit of having your own cow is an almost unmatched meat quality) and April's macaroni salad.


Close-up.


Darrell's (Skywalker) epic fatty burger. (photo by Darrell)

Sorry about the long chain of posts, hopefully that answers some of the questions from the herf of "How did you make that?" and "What's in there?" and inspires someone to try something new in their smoker, as a similar photo series did for me at one time.

[Steve]

[justonemorestick]

Looks Good May Have to try it.

[Mr B]

Looks real good guys. Thanks for sharing.