Smokin some Fatties, again, not those kind of fatties, and some grilled beans

This is not the first post I have done about smoking fatties on the grill. You can see the write-up of previously smoked fatties here. And I will say again that they are not that kind of fatty. A fatty is simply smoked bulk sausage. Often it is breakfast sausage. Sometimes they are stuffed and sometimes they aren't. Sometimes they are sweet and sometimes spicy. The number of different ways to cook fatties is limitless.

I smoked two fatties in this cookout. One is the recipe that I get the most raves about; sage sausage stuffed with cheese, and a new recipe that I created on the fly; regular sausage stuffed with yellow pepper, white corn and cheddar. I also grilled some beans.

In the spirit of trying to be more quantitative I actually did some measuring and wrote down amounts for the recipe. Click below to find those measurements...

Here are the basic ingredients I used for the two fatties:

In the picture above are two different kinds of sausage. The sage sausage was used with the garlic, asiago, havarti and garlic. The regular sausage was used with the garlic, asiago, yellow pepper and sweet white corn. What I omitted from this picture was granulated garlic that I used as a rub on both fatties.

Let's start with the sage fatty first. The ingredients are as follows:

1 LB of sage breakfast sausage (other types of sausage can be used)
1/3 LB of havarti cheese (I have uses white cheddar in the past)
2 heaping tbsp of minced garlic
1/2 cup of loosely packed asiago cheese
10 turns of a pepper grinder
Enough granulated garlic to dust the outside

Combine the sausage, garlic, asiago and black pepper in a mixing bowl. Sausage and garlic:

Now the asiago and black pepper:

Using your hands mix the ingredients together well. Really get in there and squish it all up. Then spread the meat on a piece of wax paper and spread out evenly:

Chunk up the havarti and place in the middle of the sausage leaving plenty of room around the edge to seal the cheese in. Here I chunked up an entire half pound of havarti. I know I said only a 1/3 pound above. I had too much:

When I tried to roll it over to seal the cheese inside the sausage I realized I had either too much cheese or not enough sausage:

So I pulled some of the cheese out:

That's more like it:

I simply rolled the sausage up and patted it really well to get rid of any cracks or crevices. Then I dusted the outside with granulated garlic:

I placed the fatty in a gallon plastic bag and put it in the freezer to firm up a bit and on to my second fatty; yellow pepper, sweet white corn and cheddar stuffed fatty:

1 LB of regular breakfast sausage (again, use what you like, it's your fatty!!)
1/2 yellow pepper chunked
1 small ear of white corn with the kernels sliced off (you can used canned or yellow corn, but fresher is better)
1/4 pound cheddar cheese
2 heaping tbsp of minced garlic
1/2 cup of loosely packed asiago cheese
10 turns of a pepper grinder
Enough granulated garlic to dust the outside

Here we have the yellow pepper chunked into half inch chunks and the kernels from a small ear of white corn.

These ingredients are not going to cook enough while insulated inside the sausage so I precooked them a bit. First the yellow pepper in a skillet in a little olive oil over medium heat for 5 minutes:

Then add the corn for another three minutes:

While the corn and pepper are sautéing, mix the sausage, garlic, asiago and black pepper up in a bowl very well and place on a piece of wax paper as before. Then place the cheddar along the middle of the meat:

Spoon the peppers and corn over the cheese:

Roll up the sausage and pat it well anywhere there seems to be a crack or a crevice and dust with granulated garlic.

I put this fatty in gallon plastic bag and into the freezer as well to firm up. I left both in the freezer between 20 and 30 minutes. Then I got to work on my beans. Here is a shot of the ingredients:

2 - 1 LB cans of just original baked beans (you can use other varieties but you will be adding tons of flavor on your own that you don't need any other varieties but it is up to you)
2 heaping tbsp minced garlic
4 heaping tbsp of brown sugar
1/2 cup of maple syrup
1/4 cup of honey mustard
1/4 cup of honey
2 tsp of hoisin sauce (optional and not in the picture)
10 turns of a pepper grinder
2 sliced of maple bacon (other bacon can be used and you will need enough to cover the top with one inch square pieces so this number may vary)

Dump all ingredients except the bacon into an oven safe pot and mix together well as this will be the last time you stir them until they are ready to be served:

Slice the bacon up into one inch squares and cover the top leaving gaps between each piece. If you don't leave a gap the pieces will insulate each other and take much longer to cook:

Now out to my smoker. I made a few modifications to my offset in order to keep the temp up and more constant and this was my first chance to try them out. You can see the modifications here.

For this session I will be using apricot wood. Very similar to apple:

There are a bunch of different woods you can use for this. For a pretty extensive write up about different smoke woods click here.

After spending some time modding my grill to keep the temp up a windy day wiped that effort away in seconds. After 30 minutes I was getting a boatload of smoke but the temp was struggling to get to 150:

I needed 300 for these for 2 hours. If I left it at 150 it would take closer to 8 hours so it was time to improvise. I took the grill grate off that was on the opposite side of my firebox in the main chamber and added a pile of hot coals:

Within minutes the temp started to climb:

After an hour of heavy smoke at 150f (took me another 30 minutes to get a half chimney of coals hot) I was cooking at close to 300 at which point my cheese started to ooze out of my sage fatty which is why both are sitting on foil to save that cheese:

My pepper and corn stuffed fatty is doing just fine:

While carrying my chilled cheese stuffed fatty outside I bumped it and split it open a bit. Trying to pat it back together when that cold didn't work all that well so I had the foil under it from the beginning.

Here are both fatties with some smoke rising up:

About 90 minutes into the process the bacon on the beans is browning up as are the fatties:

Now I am building up quite a bit of grease in the foil:

This is easy solved with the probe from my remote thermometer. I just poked a hole in the foil of each fatty to let the fat drain out:

Here we have 2 hours in:

At 2.5 hours everything is ready to come off the grill. Remember, they only need 2 hours at 275-300 but I got off to a slow start:

Here are the fatties resting. Despite the cheese oozing out of the one already, I let them rest for about 10 minutes. If I were to slice into them earlier the hot cheese would run right out:

Here are the beans. That bacon has rendered its fat into the beans during the cooking process to add that extra flavor punch that only bacon fat seems to provide:

Here are my fatties ready to be sliced. The cheese has cooled enough on the outside that it actually stuck to the meat rather than the foil:

Here we have the sage cheese stuffed fatty:

Here is a close up so you can see the nice smoke ring:

And here is the yellow pepper/white corn/cheddar stuffed fatty:


These are so much fun to do and so simple. You really should try one. Follow one of my recipes or try your own. The possibilities are endless!!

As for what I would do differently, well, I may be at my wits end with the offset smoker. I may be in the market for a vertical smoker in the near future so check back to see what I can create in one of those…



Click here for the rest of the process

Anyone want to smoke a fatty?

For some of you that means something very different than what I will discuss in this entry. This is not a something related to sparking up a blunt. This is simply sausage smoked on a grill. There are a million ways to make fatties. Fatties can be sweet, stuffed, spicy and all things in between.

To make a fatty, one must purchase some sort of loose or bulk sausage. I've made them with one pound breakfast sausage as well as bulk sausage from the meat counter at the grocery store. Here is a cheese stuffed Fatty:

Click below if you want know more...


The first fatty I ever made was the same day I did the spiral sliced and stuffed pork loin. For that fatty I took a one pound tube of maple breakfast sausage and put it in a mixing bowl. I minced up some of the following: garlic, vidalia onion and about half a honey crisp apple and added that to the mixing bowl. A little cracked black pepper and some brown sugar completed the ingredients. I mixed all of that together and then reshaped the sausage into the form it was in when it was in the plastic tube. Then I applied a sweet rub of paprika, brown sugar, granulated garlic, chili powder and black pepper. The fatty is on the left:
No salt at all on this. There is plenty of salt in the pork.

There is nothing to cooking these things. Throw them on the grill for about 3 hours between 225-250. When it firms up it is done. You don't really have to flip them over or turn them. You can put bacon on them to baste the meat, but it is not required. Having a second level rack in my offset smoker is a great place for fatties to cook. I like to put them over something else I am cooking so the fat drips over the other meat or dish. I've put these over baked beans and in this case I put it over the pork loin:
When I close the grill lid that rack moves forward a few inches and the fatty is right over the loin. I've also put them over ribs:

After a couple of hours the fatty and the loin are coming along nicely:
Here are the loin and the fatty resting:
And here we have the loin and fatty plated:
I have also done stuffed fatties. Fatties can be stuffed with anything, cheese, potatoes (someone just mentioned to me Tater Tots which sounds divine), peppers, proscuitto, fruit, veggies, pretty much anything that floats your boat.

For these two fatties I did one identical as above but I forgot the rub. But the other I decided to stuff and use bulk sausage rather than breakfast sausage. I bought a pound of bulk sausage and put it in a mixing bowl. I added minced garlic and onion as well as some black pepper and grated asiago cheese. Then I spread it out on a piece of wax paper and added a couple slices of prosciutto:
Then I added some chunks of blue cheese:
Then I rolled it back up and put it on the platter with the sweet fatty. The stuffed fatty is on the right:
I didn't think there was much difference between bulk sausage and breakfast sausage but the difference it pretty startling. Here are the two fatties resting (along with some baked beans):
The stuffed fatty is on the right again. Uncooked the breakfast fatty was much larger. When cooked it is much smaller and also much darker. The stuffed fatty looks like it is still raw compared to the other but it cooked through. Here are a couple shots of the stuffed fatty sliced:
When stuffing fatties with cheese you really have to pat the hell out of them as if you are pounding out hamburgers. You can't have the meat be loose and have cracks form as the meat firms up as the fat renders out. So, I'm telling you that spanking your sausage is required when stuffing fatties with cheese. I mean really give it a good beating. If not you may have some premature cheese leakage.

Here are two stuffed fatties I made for a buddy's bachelor party (along with ribs and beans). One I spanked harder than the other. Can you see which is which in the upper right?
Here is a close up of those fatties:
When the fatty on the left started oozing I threw a piece of foil under both of them to save the cheese.

Some recommend putting the fatty in the fridge for a while before cooking so that it is easier to manipulate on the grill. I really have not had a problem putting a warm fatty on the grill. As long as it is not touched for the first hour it will firm up enough to be moved without risk of it falling apart.

While I am not a proponent of drug use I am a big fan of smoking fatties so by all means everyone, go smoke some fatties!?!?!

Click here for the rest of the process