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Several days before the Superbowl I was reading the New York Times online and came across an interesting article about something called the bacon explosion. I wasn’t too excited about either of the teams in the Superbowl this year but I still wanted an excuse to hang out with friends and have some fun so I forwarded the recipe on to Dan Dunn, my partner in grilling crimes.

Dan has been making noises about getting a smoker for a few years now, but as of yet does not have one. So step one was to do some research about how to use a gas grill as a smoker. The simplest method seemed to be making an aluminum foil pouch to hold your soaked grilling chips and placing it directly on the grilling surface. Sounds good! Time to soak the mesquite wood chips!

I placed two handfuls of soaked beer chips in aluminum foil, folded it into a pouch, and stabbed the top with a fork so the smoke could escape. Then I put the pouch on the hot grill surface and waited. Sure enough, several minutes later the packet was smoking nicely. The thermometer indicated the surface of the grill at the lowest gas setting was 275 degrees. Since the pig loaf was only supposed to cook at 225 degrees we put the entire thing on an overturned aluminum pie plate to provide some more distance and an air gap between the flames and the meat. Miraculously, with the lid closed so the smoke would flavor the meat, the temperature of this arrangement was 225 degrees.

In the second picture note the marvelous ice flows and glaciation action in the backyard. We grilled in the garage since there was still 1.5 feet of snow on the ground.

Two and a half hours later the thermometer had the internal temperature at 165 which is good because I had just run out of propane in the main tank. All that was left was to cut, serve, and eat.

The best description I can come up with is that it’s like eating the toppings from the best meatza you’ve ever had, except it’s compressed and has more BBQ sauce. It’s definitely not for the weak of heart or of arteries. In addition to the food success itself I also learned how to make a gas grill an effective smoker.

As for the game and party, we also had Nate, Heather, and the dogs over which is always a lot of fun. The game itself was pretty lame except for the fourth quarter but much fun (and food) was had by all.