Bacon Sausage Bites, Sweet and Spicy

Right now there is a recipe making the rounds on the bbq/smoking message boards that people are calling “pork shots” or “pork candy.” It basically consists of taking a slice of sausage, like kielbasa, and wrapping a strip of thick bacon around it to form a little pork cup and then filling it with some kind of spice mixture. It’s a pretty awesome idea. I am going to be experimenting with this idea trying different spice/filling ideas. Here is the basic sweet and spicy version that has been pretty popular so far. (Thanks to a thread on smokingmeatforums from poster solaryellow for the spice formula)

Bacon-Sausage Bites, Sweet and Spicy

• Kielbasa
• Thick cut bacon
• 1 1/2 cups brown sugar
• 2 tsp homemade chipotle powder
• 2 tsp paprika
• 1 1/2 tsp granulated garlic
• 1 1/2 tsp onion powder
• toothpicks

1. Slice sausage into rounds about 1/2 thick or about half the width of your bacon
2. Cut bacon strips to size to wrap around sausage round with a little overlap
3. Wrap bacon around sausage round and stick toothpick at overlap going through sausage to hold bacon to it
4. In a bowl combine and mix spices thoroughly
5. Fill each pork cup with 1 to 1/2 spice mixture
6. a)If you have a smoker, toss on at 230 degrees and smoke until bacon is crisp
   b)If you have a grill, cook over indirect heat by leaving burner under pork cups unlit, on low to medium heat until bacon is crisp

Tips

• the best bacon to use slab bacon that you slice thick yourself
• If using store sliced bacon, buy the thickest possible
• You may need to paper towel the bacon a bit if it is overly slippery
• these are spicy, you can cut down on the chipolte and paprika if needed
• The key is to cook them low and slow so as not to burn the brown sugar but to caramelize it while crisping the bacon.
• An oven at 250 can be used as well
• The smoker using some wood chunks would be the best option if possible