Try something new this grilling season, Bacon Explosion

Spring is in the air. The sounds of birds chirping and stomachs growling for barbeque echoes throughout the valley.

A typical day in the Flathead is on par with a round in the Thunderdome and puts the ancient Vikings to shame, so it’s important to fuel up with the ultimate form of sustenance: bacon.

I’m not talking about microwaving a few clean strips of low-cal bacon, I’m talking about the widow-maker of a meal, Bacon Explosion.

First, get two pounds of thick cut bacon. Leave that thinly sliced garbage on the shelves for the wimps who can’t handle a stomach full of pig fat and would rather have a BLT. An explosion of bacon requires the thickest cut imaginable, so if the store doesn’t carry bacon thick enough to meet your standards, then fly out to Africa and butcher a full grown warthog with nothing more than a Swiss Army knife and your disdain for all foods approved by the American Heart Association.

Next, get two pounds of spicy Italian sausage. If the real deal is unavailable, then go do some favors for the mob and they will surely hook you up with some primo sausage and a gold-plated iPhone if they dig your ruthless style.

While you’re out doing favors for the mob in exchange for robustly spicy sausage, make a pit stop in Wisconsin and get yourself a pound of your favorite cheese and shred it up nice. Don’t bother using a cheese grater, your abs of steel are chiseled enough to show that dairy product who’s boss.

Lastly, you will need a jar of your favorite BBQ sauce, some brown sugar, seasonings and a military-grade flamethrower.

Brown sugar can be purchased just about anywhere, and your favorite BBQ sauce and spices must be kept a heavily guarded mystery, so we won’t get into that. However, if anyone tries to steal your BBQ sauce or spice recipe, you are morally obligated to dragon kick them over the border into Canada.

The flamethrower may be a little tricky to come by, so if you lack the engineering skills necessary to make a pocket-sized weapon capable of wiping out Glacier Park, then a propane torch is a smart option that can be found at just about any hardware store.

Now that you’ve gathered all your materials, it’s time to call up the feds and inform them there is about to be an explosion of bacon the likes of which this world has never seen before.

First, cover a baking pan with a layer of foil, because things are about to get messy.

Next, make a 5x5 raw bacon strip lattice-style weave, and make sure it’s tight, otherwise your bacon explosion will literally explode and all of your hard work will be for nothing.

It will also forever label you as a BBQ pansy unworthy of even dish duty.

Smother that bacon layer in your favorite spices. It doesn’t matter what kind, shoot, you could use pixie stick sugar dust for all I care because the bacon will overpower any flavor, just like it’s about to overpower your lower intestines.

Next, take your sausage and mold it into a square layer on top to match the bacon underneath. Now, you may have noticed that you didn’t need all two pounds of bacon to make your bottom layer…don’t act like you don’t know what to do, go fry those treats up and sample them as you go.

Before you eat all of that extra bacon, crumble it up into quarter size pieces or larger and throw them on top of your sausage layer. Smells good, doesn’t it? Yeah, you know the neighbors smell it too and they are jealous.

At this point, act quick, before some punk tries to steal it, and shoot some BBQ sauce on top and try to keep it in the middle. After that, shove that pound of shredded cheese on top of it all, but spread it out evenly so everyone gets a fair share of vitamin D and vitamin Awesome.

Now roll up the sausage with the bacon chunks and sauce in the middle, but leave the bacon layer on its own for the time being. Make sure the sausage is rolled around the cooked bacon bits, sauce and cheese as tightly as possible; then pinch the ends closed to seal in the bacony goodness.

Wrap the whole log up with your raw bacon weave, and shove a few toothpicks in to hold it in place if necessary. Roll your log of bacon around in the brown sugar so the whole thing gets coated until it looks like candy.

Now, whip out your flamethrower and shoot a fireball into the sky as you let out a mighty and bloodcurdling roar! You need to intimidate all potential thieves in the area so they know not to touch your bacon explosion.

You want to torch it until the outer shell gets crystallized and syrupy…but don’t cook it that way.

Put the log of meat in a smoker at 225 degrees in a constant cloud of hickory smoke for one hour for every inch of thickness. The end result should be about 2.5 inches thick, unless you manned up and added more. Normally, it will take roughly two hours and thirty minutes to cook.

Make sure the internal temperature is at least 165 degrees before removing it from the smoker, and when it finally reaches the safe zone for eating you can smother it in even more BBQ sauce.

Of course, any meal this epic is deserving of a victory lap around the neighborhood.

Bust out the Viking helmets and beer steins as you parade your bacon explosion around town. Then, eat it all in one sitting; after all, you are going to need your energy for raiding and pillaging because we ride at dawn.