A BBQ Fatty is an American classic. A fatty is a minced meat sausage with some kind of filling that you smoke on your grill. The meat is usually ground beef or pork sausage. The filling is often cream cheese, grilled fresh chili pepper, grated cheddar cheese and other stuff. There are as many fillings as there are pit masters. Here we make one from ground (fallow) deer, since that was what I had in my freezer.
Servings 4
Ingredients
- 2.2 lbs ground (fallow) deer
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 tsp cilantro powder
- 1 tsp ground cumin
- 1 tsp smoked paprika powder
Filling
- 7 oz grated cheese
- 4 oz sliced ham
- 2 banana shallots (or twice as many regular)
Topping
- 1 tbsp Hank’s Bonafide Beef Rub
- 0.5 tbsp brown sugar (used later)
Instructions
- Add the spices to the ground deer and mix well. Use a large piece of saran wrap and place the meat in the middle. Flatten it to a large rectangle, about 3/8 – 1/2 inch thick. You can flatten it with your hands by kneading it outwards, or you can place another piece of saran wrap on top and use the back of a frying pan to flatten it.
- Distribute cheese, shallots and ham evenly on the meat, all the way out to the edges.
- Now grab the saran wrap underneath the meat (along the longest side) and start rolling it up.
- Once that is done, you sprinkle the fatty all over with the rub.
- Get your grill started, prepare it for indirect grilling. We want to smoke the fatty at 110-130° C / 225-250° F. A fatty this size usually takes around 2.5 hours. Once the grill is good ‘n ready, place the fatty on the grate, and add a few chunks of your favorite smoking wood. I use 3 chunks of cherry wood. Go easy here, as minced meat absorbs smoker better than a whole roast, you don’t want to overdo the smoke flavor.
- Start grilling, and when the internal temperature of the fatty is around 50° C / 120° F you sprinkle the brown sugar on top of it. Continue cooking until the internal temperature is 70° / C160° F, then take it of and let it rest for 10 minutes, before slicing.
