YoDadio
New member
In honor of some fool (McGregor/Mayweather) hopefully getting knocked out this weekend I thought I would put together something different than my usual ABT. Found pig shots online, they sounded simple enough: bacon wrapped sausage slices making "shot glasses" that are filled with a mixture of cream cheese and the BBQ rub of your choice that is then smoked to perfection.
The kicker is that assembling them is a ginormous PIA... Some recipes called for piping in the cream cheese but that did not fit my lazy-Q/man style of food prep. I tried to "force" the cheese with a butter knife but that got old fast. After much much thought (and more beer) I came up with a pretty simple concept that made assembly and portioning a snap!
I am by no means a chef, but my crew can eat some serious que. The instructions below are may not make the best ever pig shots, but they should help make their assembly easy enough to put pigs on the endangered species list!
Mix the BBQ rub of your choice in with the softened/warmed cream cheese
Put cream cheese mix back in fridge until it has hardened
Cut a sausage to half the thickness of your bacon strips
Press the tops and bottoms of slices into a pile of rub
Cut the bacon strips so that they can make one full circle around your sausage with enough excess to tooth pick it all together (for Farmer John's Kielbasa I cut the bacon into thirds and gently stretched it, I prefer crisp bacon which is challenging in the smoker...)
Scoop small amounts of cream cheese mixture and roll into a ball in the palms of your hand (recommend wearing latex gloves). The balls should be half the width of the bacon
Lay a bacon slice flat
Place a sausage slice, water chestnut slice, and cheese ball off center or the bacon (the slices should be on their edges, see the attached picture)
Wrap the bacon around the "filling" and push a toothpick through the bacon and sausage to hold it together
I smoked mine for two (2) hours at 250* with hickory
Even the most cooking challenged of us can assemble these little gems with decidedly equal/sufficient portioning by pairing up the sausage slices and cheese balls prior to final assembly. It is easiest when both the bacon and the cream cheese are cold, consider keeping half batches in the fridge until you are really ready to assemble. The cheese balls may seem small, but remember that the bacon will shrink as it cooks, squeezing the cheese out if you overfill them.
If you really want to be fancy, put an olive slice and/or a small dollop of BBQ sauce/sriracha on top of the cream cheese! The real magic of all this is that the water chestnut adds a needed crunch/texture without changing the flavor profile and assembly is pretty quick and easy: mix, cut, stack, roll, smoke, & serve. No fuss.
Happy smoking to one and all!
The kicker is that assembling them is a ginormous PIA... Some recipes called for piping in the cream cheese but that did not fit my lazy-Q/man style of food prep. I tried to "force" the cheese with a butter knife but that got old fast. After much much thought (and more beer) I came up with a pretty simple concept that made assembly and portioning a snap!
I am by no means a chef, but my crew can eat some serious que. The instructions below are may not make the best ever pig shots, but they should help make their assembly easy enough to put pigs on the endangered species list!
Mix the BBQ rub of your choice in with the softened/warmed cream cheese
Put cream cheese mix back in fridge until it has hardened
Cut a sausage to half the thickness of your bacon strips
Press the tops and bottoms of slices into a pile of rub
Cut the bacon strips so that they can make one full circle around your sausage with enough excess to tooth pick it all together (for Farmer John's Kielbasa I cut the bacon into thirds and gently stretched it, I prefer crisp bacon which is challenging in the smoker...)
Scoop small amounts of cream cheese mixture and roll into a ball in the palms of your hand (recommend wearing latex gloves). The balls should be half the width of the bacon
Lay a bacon slice flat
Place a sausage slice, water chestnut slice, and cheese ball off center or the bacon (the slices should be on their edges, see the attached picture)
Wrap the bacon around the "filling" and push a toothpick through the bacon and sausage to hold it together
I smoked mine for two (2) hours at 250* with hickory
Even the most cooking challenged of us can assemble these little gems with decidedly equal/sufficient portioning by pairing up the sausage slices and cheese balls prior to final assembly. It is easiest when both the bacon and the cream cheese are cold, consider keeping half batches in the fridge until you are really ready to assemble. The cheese balls may seem small, but remember that the bacon will shrink as it cooks, squeezing the cheese out if you overfill them.
If you really want to be fancy, put an olive slice and/or a small dollop of BBQ sauce/sriracha on top of the cream cheese! The real magic of all this is that the water chestnut adds a needed crunch/texture without changing the flavor profile and assembly is pretty quick and easy: mix, cut, stack, roll, smoke, & serve. No fuss.
Happy smoking to one and all!
