BBQ Roll-Ups

This is one of those fun recipes that once you make, people will be wondering about. Labor-wise, this might feel a little intense for some, but it comes out fairly worthwhile. I had gotten inspiration for this recipe from a friend whom I swap recipe ideas and inspiration with, as I was in the middle of re-marathoning Iron Chef and saw something that piqued my interest. They were doing some sort of roll as a play on sushi, but why not add bacon? Everything tastes better with bacon. Even bacon tastes better with bacon! That being said, anticipate on using a lot of it and learning how to weave bacon if you don’t already know. 

The idea behind this is to take a sheet of woven bacon, put a layer of seasoned ground beef on top, and then your inside flavoring layer, aka the onions and garlic or whatever else you deem fit. Then roll up tightly, kinda like a sushi roll if you’ve ever made it, and then roast in the oven. If you’ve ever made pinwheels for sandwiches or other recipes, it’s along the same line. 

Like a lot of my cooking, caramelized onions and garlic is at the heart of it. Don’t ask me why, I just genuinely love it. Besides, this would be going into the heart of the roll (see photo) to help keep it moist, and if it’s not going into the roll, then I recommend mixing it into your ground meat for flavor.

To get started, chop up the onion and place it into a hot pan with oil and begin to cook the onions down. Check out this post if you want details on how I like to cook my onions, otherwise just cook them until they’re at least translucent and then add the minced garlic and dried herbs. This mixture once cooked down, can be added to the ground meat for flavoring instead of the powders, but I typically just use the powdered goods in the meat and use this as a kind of “filling” inside the pinwheel, since the moisture from the oil and/or butter can help keep the inside moist as it cooks through.

On a large cutting board or clean surface, weave the pound of bacon slices together. I do this by placing one layer down and weaving in one slice at a time, perpendicular to the first layer. If you wanted to season the beef, which I recommend, put it into a large mixing bowl and add in a couple teaspoons of each of the dried powder ingredients, you can also add the herbs listed here as well. Add in the egg and make sure you mix this in thoroughly — this will help bind the meat together and keep it from falling apart after it cooks. Should you discover that your beef mixture is too wet, then adding in some flour or breadcrumbs might do the trick. If you’re low-carb or gluten-free like I am, then gluten-free options are available such as almond flour or ground pork rinds.

Layer the ground meat evenly across the woven bacon, careful to keep it within half an inch of the edge, but not exactly to the edge. Layer the next part of the onions and garlic combo on top of the beef, taking care to keep it within the same bounds. Take the base of the bacon and roll it tightly into itself, creating the tight pinwheel. I find rolling “hotdog” style, or the longer way, might be easier if your woven base isn’t perfectly square.

Place your monstrosity on top of a baking sheet or if you have it, a roasting or broiling pan, this way the grease can drip out and you’ll have a better crispy layer on top. Brush on your bbq sauce of choice, in this case I typically carry Sweet Baby Ray’s or Stubbs’ Sweet-n-Heat in my fridge and use that. Bake in the oven at 400F for about 40min and slice before serving.