"Valentines Day Dinner...."

I made a special dinner for Don on Valentines Day. He'd seen this recipe online, in the New York Times, and forwarded it to me. It truly is a pork lovers delight........ ;)

It is a "Bacon Wrapped Sausage Roll". That doesn't tell the half of it though, as you will soon see. :)

First step is to take a pound of bacon and weave it into a mat. Sprinkle it with BBQ spices (I used a Cajun Spice Mix that I had).


The mat is the covered evenly with 2 pounds of sausage. I used breakfast sausage although the recipe called for mild or hot Italian sausage.


Another pound of bacon is fried and crumbled to layer on top of the sausage.


BBQ sauce is drizzled over that and more Cajun Spice Mix sprinkled on, too.


The sausage is then rolled into a log, being careful to keep all the layered ingredients inside the log.


Then the bacon mat is rolled around the sausage log.


The finished Bacon Wrapped Sausage Roll ready to be baked. The original recipe called for it to be smoked, but since we do not have a smoker, the oven is what I chose to use. It could also be baked on the grill for the smokey flavor, too.


After the roll's inside temperature reaches 160 degrees, it is done and removed from the oven. The roll is then brushed with more BBQ sauce and put back into the warm oven while the rest of the meal preparation was completed.


The sliced roll which shows the pinwheel effect of the inner layers. I have to admit, it was delicious. We had it for 2 nights in a row and have yet another meal left over.


Are you salivating? LOL Didn't Don do a fantastic job of documenting the roll "construction"? His little sounds of pleasure while eating it made it all worthwhile, too. ;)