T1B

But I decided to get a bit creative, on a whim. I had a vague plan, but mostly was winging it.

Started out making a canoe-looking thing out of 1.5 lbs of fatty (I think it was 22%, can't quite remember, sure as fuck ain't digging through the trash) ground beef.

Didn't take a pic (or not a decent one) before adding a thick layer of chopped mushrooms.







The added some crumbled gorganzola, chopped green onions, and some baby spinach leaves.

Took the remaining 0.5 lbs of ground beef, and covered my "canoe," and kinda mushed the cover into the beef to seal it up.

Then, I just didn't see any good reason why I shouldn't wrap it in bacon.




And of course, such a doctored-up ball of saturated fat would be insulted by sticking it in the oven.

Enter the ECB:



Poor ol' ECB is just about on it's last legs. Wait -- the legs rusted off, thus the old rim for a base. It's the U&L, and that fucker has lived outside for years... the bottom pans are about done. Fucker ain't getting chucked without one hellacious swansong feast -- me and that thing have been through a lot.



Cell phone camera isn't what it used to be, either.

While that was going on, the Wench was working on some twice-baked taters. After getting gutted, a little gorganzola, butter, and bacon grease before the filling seemed prudent.



About 3 hours later (could have gone longer. ECB was wet in the bottom, temp came up slowly until I got it settled at220-230) was looking pretty good. Wench's roommate person used the upper rack for some short ribs, so you see a couple odd drips of BBQ sauce.





That, and some leftover, rebaked green bean casserole, and dinner weren't too bad.


If I were to make this dish again, I'd do a few things differently. Instead of a hollow center, I'd just roll it out (or press it flat), put my "stuffing" on, and roll it up (done something similar to that before with other meats). The mushrooms cooked down (which I obviously expected), and much of the cheese melted through. I think I could get a lot more of the "stuffing" in if it were rolled. I'd also not chop the baby spinach leaves. Stewed in the beef fat/gorganzola/mushroom goo, the spinach (which there wasn't much of) was actually the star of the show.

But all in all, pretty good, and beyond the cooking time in the smoker (about 6 16oz) beers' worth

Dinsdale wrote:If I were to make this dish again, I'd do a few things differently. Instead of a hollow center, I'd just roll it out (or press it flat), put my "stuffing" on, and roll it up

Look at the Dinster. Tryin' to reinvent the wheel. Usually the minced meat is the stuffing, though. They call them rouladen in Germany. Paupiettes in France. Braciole in Italy. You get the picture. You take a thin piece of beef or veal, roll em up jelly roll style with some kind of stuffing, tie them and...cook them as you please. Most typically they are braised or roasted. There is an excellent French dish in which a boneless loin of veal is pounded thin and rolled up with a stuffing of spinach and diced ham then barded (ie wrapped up in bacon) and roasted. No reason you couldn't smoke it a bit...or a lot. It's your dinner.

You're thinking outside the box. That's good. A little grounding in the classics doesn't hurt, though. I would have matched you beer for beer, raised you a bowl or two and mowed that....whatever you call it down. Stuffed Beef Canoe is just not going to work unless it's a Blondiebabe reset.

Huh?

Yeah, I guess I could have added "I'd roll it up, as I've had great success doing this technique with pork tenderloin..." but didn't really think I was "reinventing" anything. But I hadn't ever stuffed a freaking meatloaf before, so it was uncharted territory for me.

And the leftovers are calling my name as I type.

Bacon will make just about anything worth eating. Sometimes even the pre-cooked kind.

At the German restaurant I worked at (a loooonnnnggg time ago) beef rouladen was one of the dishes in the specials rotation. Can't remember the exact ingredients (I'm pretty sure there was a slice of bacon involved), but mainly it was a thin slice of beef with a slather of German mustard, rolled up around some sliced onions and a quarter slice of dill pickle. Baked in some kind of gravy, and it was fucking awesome. I know that German food gets some short shrift around here but served up with some rotkohl and a pile of bratkartoffeln it made a pretty decent meal.