We had a party last night. Six couples who shared the results of my last hog hunt at Gato's place were invited. The reason for the party was to let them taste what my wife does with wild hog loin.

A few months earlier one of those friends had shared with me an appetizer recipe for Bacon-wrapped kielbasa, glazed with brown sugar and beer. He got the recipe from jeff@smoking-meat.com You can go that route if you want the original recipe. It had great photos of the process like Tas uses to clarify his cooking methods. I'll just describe my version of events.

While the original recipe called for kielbasa, bacon, Jeff's original rub, dark brown sugar, a dark ale, and red pepper flakes; I used Colombian Chorizo, jalapeno flavored bacon, a sweet rib rub, dark brown sugar, Coors Light, and skipped the red pepper flakes.

The results were outstanding. Without saying anything, the compliments started rolling in. The jalapeno bacon gave it all the "kick" it needed. Red pepper flakes I think would have resulted in "spice overload".

Prep time was 20 to 30 minutes.

Take a pound of Hormel Black Label premium Jalapeno bacon https://blacklabelbacon.com/ba...emium-jalapeno-bacon and cross-cut into thirds. That results in about 40 short pieces of bacon.

Take five pieces of link chorizo. Split each link length-wise, then holding the two halves together, cut the split link into 1" chunks. You should end-up with about 40 pieces of chorizo.

I used two foil pans, and covered the bottom of the pans with the strips of bacon. I then laid a piece of chorizo onto the end of each piece of bacon.

At that point I lightly dusted the bacon and chorizo with the sweet rib rub.

The next step was to roll-up each piece of chorizo into its own piece of bacon. No toothpicks were required to hold them together. (I was able to pack those little morsels closely together in one of the two foil pans; single layered.) I then dusted again with the dry rub.

The original recipe called for a 1 1/2 hour smoke at 240 degrees using cherry wood. I used pecan and oak, held the temperature between 225 and 250 and smoked the little roll-ups for an hour.

During that time my wife made the glaze. She put 1 cup of dark brown sugar into a small sauce pan, added 1/4 cup of Coors Light, and stirred constantly over medium-low heat to get the brown sugar to melt. In a little less than 15 minutes, she was done.

At the one-hour mark of the smoking process I opened the lid on my smoker, and using a brush, I dipped and basted the glaze onto each piece of chorizo, closed the lid and continued smoking. I repeated the process at ten minute intervals until I hit the 1 1/2 hour smoking goal. By repeating the basting every ten minutes, I was able to keep my eye on the bacon and at one point turned the foil pan 180 degrees as I thought the bacon on one side of the pan was looking darker than the other. The repeated basting allowed the glaze to set better, I suppose.

When I took the foil pan out of the smoker, the bottom of the pan was about 3/8" deep in bacon grease. I transferred each bacon-wrapped morsel to a serving tray and laid some toothpicks nearby. They made great little appetizers. I don't believe they lasted fifteen minutes after the guests arrived.

I'm going to be using this recipe often. They were that good. I have some Argentine sausage in the freezer along with some Kuby's Chipotle / Monterrey Jack wild hog sausage that is going to get the same treatment.

One thing for sure, you don't have to worry about leftovers. There won't be any.

Sounds great. I just have two questions:

1) Has your cardiologist reviewed this recipe?

2) Did you wife significantly increase your life insurance before assisting?

Christ Gato, and here I was thinking my glass was half full again.

Hmmmm, now that I think of it, my wife did seem awful cheerful.

Nice

Glad you can eat the hogs at Gato’s place. in Florida they are barely edible.

Mike

quote:

Originally posted by Beretta682E:
Nice

Glad you can eat the hogs at Gato’s place. in Florida they are barely edible.

Mike

Why? What makes them inedible?

I'm as interested as Gato. His hogs taste fine; boar or sow.

The other thing that surprised me about Gato's wild hogs is the relative lack of ticks. I was in a deer camp in South Texas once and one of the hunters killed a hog. They skinned it at camp with a No. 3 washtub under the carcass. As they were skinning, it sounded like rain drops on a tin roof. We shined a flashlight into the tub and it was crawling with ticks.

A friend told me he was with a group of retired guys a few weeks ago, and they were talking wild hog hunting. One "expert" was telling everyone how the only wild hogs that could be eaten had to be under 50 pounds and could not be a boar. Obviously, the "expert" didn't have a clue what he was talking about.

Maybe in Florida the hogs eat something that ruins the flavor of the meat. I can't imagine what would make it inedible.

I think it is all the swampy crap they eat and live in. The big ones are pretty inedible.

My deer prossessor occasionally gets young ones. But he is located basically in Southern Georgia (North Florida)

I thought I would shoot a lot of hogs in Florida but the lack of demand for their meat makes it varmit shooting and I am not really into that.

The guys I know who hunt a lot in Florida like hunting/killing the big boars and no one ever eats those. I think it’s all the diet - swampy crap equals crappy meat.

Side note - I think Larry Shores has probably shot 1000 plus Florida hogs.

Mike

quote:

I think it is all the swampy crap they eat and live in.

I think this might be it - up here, trout that are delicious in the spring taste terrible about mid-August, due to the environmental changes that occur where they live.

The Florida hogs I have eaten have all been young, small hogs taken in early winter. They have been eating lots of acorns. They were excellent tablefare. I can imagine that big, mature boars would be strogner tasting. I have never shot one.

A buddy of mine grew up in north Florida and talks about a large old boar his older brother shot once. They tried to cook it and you could smell through the whole neighborhood.

Tom