An explosion of flavor: Bacon lovers will jump, as will their arteries, on this recipe

Daily Press (Newport News, Va.) (MCT) - I have a reputation among my friends and co-workers as something of a bacon enthusiast _ OK, fine, a bacon freak.

And it's true. I love bacon.

My fiancee, Melissa, and I even have a bacon pennant hanging on our kitchen wall. It's like a sports pennant, but for bacon.

So a couple of weeks ago when a friend and former coworker sent me _ and a bunch of other folks here in the Daily Press Features department _ a link to a New York Times story about the Bacon Explosion, I was immediately smitten. The pictures looked too good to be true _ bacon wrapped in sausage wrapped in bacon, smoked to perfection.

Yeah, I'll have some of that.

Turns out this brilliant, national-headline-grabbing concoction isn't even that old. It debuted two days before Christmas on a Web site called BBQAddicts.com. By the end of January, the Bacon Explosion posting had been viewed about 390,000 times.

In the original, brilliant-as-is recipe, the Explosion's inventors, Jason Day and Aaron Chronister, called for lots of barbecue sauce, a barbecue rub and Italian sausage.

Here in the Daily Press Features department, we all agreed that it might be fun to tweak the recipe to make the Explosion a little more breakfasty and Southern. It didn't take much nudging from my editor to convince me to make a homework assignment out of this porky, artery-popping little monster.

A quick warning: This isn't the cheapest breakfast. Be prepared to spend about $20 on meat.

BACON EXPLOSION (BREAKFAST REMIX)

2 lbs. thick-cut bacon (I bought one of the giant packs of Smithfield Thick Sliced)

2 lbs. breakfast sausage (I mixed a tube of regular and a tube of sage sausage)

First, weave a bacon mat. The original recipe calls for 10 strips, but the bacon I had wasn't very wide so I had to use 14. Use your own discretion, obviously.

Anyway, I placed 7 slices side by side on a sheet of aluminum foil, parallel to each other, sides touching. This is the foundation for your mat. Explaining the rest is hard, weave the remaining strips perpendicularly, alternating over and under. You should be able to figure it out, especially if you've ever made a homemade pie crust.

Fry the rest of the bacon until it's crispy, crumble and set aside.

Spread the sausage out over the bacon mat. Get it as close to the edges as possible.

Sprinkle the crumbled bacon on the sausage. I kind of piled mine up in the middle, hoping it would end up making a nice, neat bacon center _ not so much. It was fine, but I'd recommend just spreading it out like they do in the original recipe. You'll get more of a pinwheel effect if you roll it right.

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Carefully pull the front edge of the sausage away from the bacon mat and begin rolling it away from you. The bacon mat should stay flat. Squeeze any air pockets out of the sausage roll and pinch together the ends and the seam.

Now, roll the whole thing back toward you _ bacon mat, too _ until it's completely wrapped. Make sure the seam side is facing down.

It goes without saying that you should already have a fire going in your smoker. If not, what are you waiting for?

Cook until the Explosion reaches an internal temperature of 165 degrees. In ideal conditions this should take about 3 hours. I smoked mine on a really cold day, though, and spent four hours fighting to keep the temperature up on the smoker. I finally transferred the Explosion to a 225-degree oven, where it took about 45 minutes to finish.

If you don't have a smoker, you can cook the Explosion in the oven, but you'll miss out on all the smoky goodness. The New York Times recipe suggests going with a low and slow 225 degrees. The BBQ Addicts Web site suggests one hour at 375 degrees.

Or you could just borrow a friend's smoker.

Serving Suggestion: Cut yourself a slice of the Explosion and serve it on a toasted English muffin with a fried egg and a slice of American cheese. You could pick a more high falutin' cheese, I guess, but that just doesn't seem right to me.

The nutritional information on this thing is just plain scary: The original recipe comes in at nearly 5,000 calories and 500 grams of fat. Minus the barbecue sauce, we're probably knocking off a couple hundred calories, but it's still a whopper. According to a blog post on WebMD, each ˝-inch-slice serving of the original Bacon Explosion contains 506 calories, 43.5 g fat, 82 mg cholesterol and 1263 mg of sodium.

So yeah, brace your circulatory system. And maybe just make this a once-in-a-lifetime treat.

Adapted from the recipe by Jason Day and Aaron Chronister

NUTRITIONAL INFO

Jason Day and Aaron Chronister's original Bacon Explosion contains approximately 5,000 calories and 500 grams of fat. Minus the barbecue sauce, our Breakfast Remix probably loses a couple hundred calories, but it's still a whopper. According to a blog post on WebMD _ blogs.webmd.com/healthy- recipe-doctor/2009/01/ bacon-explosion-recipe- heart-attack.html _ each ˝-inch-slice serving of the original Bacon Explosion probably contains about 506 calories, 43.5 g fat, 82 mg cholesterol and 1263 mg of sodium.

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THE ORIGINAL RECIPE

For the original Bacon Explosion recipe, visit www.bbqaddicts.com/bacon-explosion.html

For a slightly healthier alternative, visit blogs.webmd.com/healthy- recipe-doctor/2009/01/bacon-explosion-recipe-heart-attack.html

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© 2009, Daily Press (Newport News, Va.).