The bacon explosion has just met its maker. This Thanksgiving Bacon Explosion is a regular bacon and turkey bacon weave loaded with sausage, stuffing and mashed potatoes, rolled up and smoked then topped with a cranberry bourbon glaze. Create it from scratch or load it up with your favorite Thanksgiving leftovers! 
**Post written by The BBQ Brothers. For all meat prep, grill set up, temperature and humidity control, recommended tools, and techniques for The BBQ Brothers recipes, check out The BBQ Brothers Beginner's Guide To Grilling first, then get to cookin!
Well believe it or not it’s almost time for the holidays even though it’s still about 70 degrees up here in lovely Ohio. The leaves may not be changing but the Browns have already been mathematically eliminated from the playoffs so it must be at least November. With that in mind we decided to dig deep and find something different for your Thanksgiving get together.
Whether it’s a formal family dinner or a Friendsgiving out on the porch we wanted to combine all of the standard Thanksgiving dishes that we’ve all come to love over the years and put them together (along with throwing in some BBQ flair) and nothing lends itself to being totally rearranged and flipped on its head like a bacon explosion. (Plus, Caitlin says that it’s totally trending so, you know…. there’s that too) So without further ado....the Thanksgiving Bacon Explosion.
What you need:
For Bacon Explosion:
1 lb Turkey Sausage
1 lb Sausage (You can use whatever kind you like; we used Italian sausage)
1 lb Turkey Bacon (I usually hate turkey bacon but in this application it works. Plus it’s a little more structurally sounds and since we are stuffing this bad boy to the gills we’ll need that)
1 lb of regular Bacon
1 Package Stuffing (we used Stove Top Turkey flavored stuffing but any kind would work)
About 2 Potatoes worth of mashed potatoes (Do’em up however you like. Extra creamy, super lumpy it don’t matta. We added just a little cream cheese and milk to ours.)
Rub as needed: For this guy we went a little off the reservation with our rub making it more…Thanksgivingy? That’s a word, right? We went 2 tablespoon powdered sage, 2 teaspoon dried parsley, 2 teaspoon black pepper, 2 teaspoon salt. This made it a bit more familiar but you could get as crazy as you want. You could go with traditional dry rub, like our all purpose BBQ rub, you could go with some poultry seasoning, or spice it up with some with some cayenne and chili powder. It’s going to be tough to screw it up too bad.
For Cranberry Glaze:
16 oz Cranberries (Fresh or Frozen)
16 oz apple juice
8 oz Whiskey (We used Fireball because we are super fun)
2 C sugar
THANKSGIVING BACON EXPLOSION
First, make your bacon weave as usual. We alternated between the turkey bacon and regular bacon, and while it’s not necessary, I think it helped keep it all together.
After it’s all together, sprinkle on some of your rub.
Next, you’ll want to mix your two sausages together and spread it out onto your weave. There are tons of tricks for the best way to get it on the weave but after doing this a few times just slapping it on and spreading it out with your hands has worked best for us. Once it’s all spread out, sprinkle with more of your rub, and since this is kind of bland, feel free to go liberal with the rub.
Next, you’ll want to make your stuffing, nothing crazy just follow what the box says. We used Stovetop and the nice thing was that it makes sort of a paste, and while maybe that’s not the most appetizing way to have stuffing it works absolutely perfectly for spreading it out onto a layer of sausage, and when it comes down to it isn’t that what stuffing has always wanted to do with its life? Plus it’s going to create a bit of a buffer between our sausage and mashed potatoes so that we don’t get soggy potatoes.
Oh, did I say potatoes? You’re damn skippy. Same thing as the stuffing and sausage, just spread the mashed potatoes in a thin layer and season it up. We added some pepper and garlic powder at this stage. 
At this point you’re probably looking down at the monstrosity in front of you and thinking there’s no way this is going to work, I know I did. Well, it’s not time to quit now.
So now you want to roll this bad boy up, tucking it and keeping it as tight as you can (now would be a time to rope in one of those family members or friends that you’re going to be feeding)
Once you’ve got it rolled up, set it seam side down. You may have to add some additional bacon to the ends to keep it from leaking if you stuffed it too much (guilty) but that won’t affect your end result.
Stick some toothpicks in it to hold on any loose pieces of bacon while smoking. 
So now you’re on easy street. You’ll want to set your smoker to 225 and smoke your explosion on indirect heat for about 3 hours or internal temperature reaches 165. We used hickory chips for this smoke.
Now while that’s going on you can make your cranberry glaze/sauce.
Just dump all the ingredients into a pot on medium heat. You’ll want to stir to combine and coat everything in sugar. You’ll want to keep an eye on it as the cranberries burst and release their liquids and get everything nice and gooey. The sauce will be done in about 25 minutes. Definitely don’t walk away from it for like 2 hours and burn the living daylights out of it…. although I can’t imagine anyone dumb enough to do that. (guilty again)
Once your explosion is done, carefully remove it from the smoker let it rest for about 15 minutes then serve it up with a nice dollop of cranberry sauce right on top.
So there it is, all of Thanksgiving in one bite along with some extra pork and smoke flavor to boot. So be thankful that you found such an awesome recipe to make for the people you care about and I’ll be thankful that the Browns season is halfway done.Don't forget to check out our OG Bacon explosion and our Pizza version as well!
Recipe Card
Thanksgiving Bacon Explosion
- Prep Time: 1 hour
- Cook Time: 3 hours
- Total Time: 4 hours
- Category: Main Course
- Method: Smoked
- Cuisine: American
Description
The bacon explosion has just met its maker. This Thanksgiving Bacon Explosion is a regular bacon and turkey bacon weave loaded with sausage, stuffing and mashed potatoes, rolled up and smoked then topped with a cranberry bourbon glaze. Create it from scratch or load it up with your favorite Thanksgiving leftovers!
Ingredients
Meat used:
- 1 lb Turkey Bacon (I usually hate turkey bacon but in this application it works. Plus it’s a little more structurally sounds and since we are stuffing this bad boy to the gills we’ll need that)
- 1 lb of regular Bacon
- 1 lb Turkey Sausage
- 1 lb Sausage (You can use whatever kind you like; we used Italian sausage)
Other ingredients:
- 1 Package Stuffing (we used Stove Top Turkey flavored stuffing but any kind would work)
- About 2 Potatoes worth of mashed potatoes (Do’em up however you like. Extra creamy, super lumpy it don’t matta. We added just a little cream cheese and milk to ours.)
For the cranberry glaze:
- 16 oz Cranberries (Fresh or Frozen)
- 16 oz apple juice
- 8 oz Whiskey (We used Fireball because we are super fun)
- 2 cups sugar
- Seasoning: Your seasoning of choice. We used 2 tablespoon powdered sage, 2 teaspoon dried parsley, 2 teaspoon black pepper, 2 teaspoon salt (You can use The BBQ Brother's All Purpose BBQ Rub if you wanted to)
Wood Used: Hickory
Grill Temperature: ~225 F, indirect heat
Meat Temperature:165 F
Smoke time: ~3 hours
Instructions
- First, make your bacon weave as usual. We alternated between the turkey bacon and regular bacon, and while it’s not necessary, I think it helped keep it all together.
- After it’s all together, sprinkle on some of your rub.
- Next, you’ll want to mix your two sausages together and spread it out onto your weave. There are tons of tricks for the best way to get it on the weave but after doing this a few times just slapping it on and spreading it out with your hands has worked best for us. Once it’s all spread out, sprinkle with more of your rub, and since this is kind of bland, feel free to go liberal with the rub.
- Next, you’ll want to make your stuffing, nothing crazy just follow what the box says. This will create a bit of a buffer between our sausage and mashed potatoes so that we don’t get soggy potatoes.
- Same thing as the stuffing and sausage, just spread the mashed potatoes in a thin layer and season it up. We added some pepper and garlic powder at this stage.
- So now you want to roll this bad boy up, tucking it and keeping it as tight as you can (now would be a time to rope in one of those family members or friends that you’re going to be feeding).
- Once you’ve got it rolled up, set it seam side down. You may have to add some additional bacon to the ends to keep it from leaking if you stuffed it too much (guilty) but that won’t affect your end result.
- Stick some toothpicks in it to hold on any loose pieces of bacon while smoking. You’ll want to set your smoker to 225 and smoke your explosion on indirect heat for about 3 hours or internal temperature reaches 165. We used hickory chips for this smoke. Now while that’s going on you can make your cranberry glaze/sauce.
- Just dump all the glaze ingredients into a pot on medium heat. You’ll want to stir to combine and coat everything in sugar. You’ll want to keep an eye on it as the cranberries burst and release their liquids and get everything nice and gooey. The sauce will be done in about 25 minutes.
- Once your explosion is done, carefully remove it from the smoker let it rest for about 15 minutes then serve it up with a nice dollop of cranberry sauce right on top.
Notes
See post notes for step by step images of creating bacon explosion!
So let us know what you think....did this recipe smoke the competition or go up in flames? Leave a comment below! 🙂
Mike says
What do you think about preparing this the night before and refrigerating it overnight to smoke the next day.
Caitlin says
We don't think this should be a problem!