If you've followed any of our BBQ escapades, you'll be all to familiar with our obsession with the "Fatty". I spend probably more time than I should thinking about what kind of stuffings I can wrap around what kind of meats. One of my latest ideas is a pasta & sauce filled Italian Sausage fatty. If it's successful, I think I'll name it "The Italian Stallion Fatty", but I digress.
Today's Fatty was born from my darling wife's love of corned beef. We gave it some careful consideration (maybe 10 minutes before I said "HECK YEAH, LETS DO IT!") and beat feet to the market for supplies.
I am not a man of details, I'm sad to say. So you'll forgive me when I tell you things like we used a "normal" corned beef. What are those? Two to three pounds? I don't know. I just grab it and go. Maybe that's why my wife doesn't let me shop by myself?
Anyway, back to the Reuben Fatty. We took a 2-3 lb corned beef from the supermarket and we ran it through the meat grinder, using a course grind die.
Step two was to lay out a bacon weave to wrap the fatty up. Be sure to make your weave on parchment or butcher paper. It will be much easier to roll, trust me. Once your weave is complete, simply pile your ground corned beef onto the weave and begin to press it out into a big rectangular patty.
Note- This Fatty was created a while ago, when my Bacon Weave game was -shall we say- non-existent. I have since conceded my lack of weaving skills to my wife. She has become the master of weaving the bacon in our house.
You'll notice the "bacon wings" on the left and right. That's my idea to have bacon to cover the sides. If you do a proper bacon weave and leave an inch or so of bacon showing on all sides, you don't need to add the "wings".
Once you've got your meat formed on the bacon, add about 8-10 slices of Swiss cheese and then a pile of Sauerkraut right down the middle of the corned beef. I can't tell you why the picture below doesn't have cheese on it. I'm not sure what I was thinking when I took the photo. Anyway, imagine a layer of Swiss Cheese slices in the photo below.
Now that you have your cheese & Sauerkraut laid out, it's time to wrap. The parchment paper will be a huge help in holding everything together. If you're familiar with making sushi, think bamboo mat. Parchment paper is the bamboo mat of Fatty making.
As I said in the beginning, I cannot weave bacon, so don't judge my mess. Just relish in the fact that it's covered in BACON!
Once you've got the fatty wrapped up tight it's time to cook. Be sure to adjust the bacon so that the entire Fatty is covered and there is no (or very little) corned beef showing. We cooked ours at about 275F for about 1-2 hours (until the bacon is cooked to your liking). We used just oak on this one, as I wanted a lighter smoke taste (and I didn't feel like running to Lowes for a bag of Hickory chunks).
Once it's cooked to your liking, pull it from the heat and let it rest for 10 minutes or so.
We sliced ours into 1 inch slices and served them on grilled Pumpernickel/Rye Swirl bread w/ a stone ground mustard. They were fantastic!
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