No bacon panties. And I'm going to call attempt 1 a fail. Physical execution was great, taste was not.
Screw up number one:
I don't make sausage and usually don't eat it, so I didn't have any on hand. I "winged" it with what I had on hand.. And for the large pile of spices I had on that pound of beef, it turned out very bland. I suppose I should have looked up a recipe or something.
Screw up number 2:
Being a fat roll of ground meat, I decided to slow cook it so as to cook it all the way through. It smoked for a couple of hours, then I tossed it on the grill on low heat for a good while. This just dried it out. It was probably cooked all the way through an hour into the smoking process.. And I made it with super-lean custom cut beef.. (All I have on hand) and I don't think it was greasy enough to activate all the spices and remain moist inside.
So, in the end.. Use store bought sausage unless you are experienced in making home made stuff.. and it doesn't take nearly as long to cook as you would think.. Less cook time for sure.
On to the bacon porn: In the pics, the bacon is quite dark, almost burned looking but it is not, that is just the smoke.
Looks good though.. and I ate 3/4 of the thing with BBQ/honey dipping sauce.. Would have been awesome with way less cook time and better sausage.
But I have a stomach of Iron. Last week I had a snack of feta cheese stuffed olives (whole damn jar before I realized it) and tinned oysters (with Tabasco and horseradish on saltines, of course).. After munching down I realized what I had done and calculated the ingested sodium count to be over 10,000mgs.
I will be attempting this again with my new found knowledge. Also, I have a new culinary skill that I had never thought of before.. The art of bacon weaving.. The possibilities are endless!