BonnieGibbons.com

From Wikimedia Commons

I was sent this NYTimes article on TheMadhat, Social Media and the Bacon Explosion (isn't that just fun to say?) by Dan Perry (who's just posted a piece on Twitter analytics with some nice eye candy today). The Bacon Explosion is an unashamedly hard core, harden-your-arteries labor of BBQ love, involving bacon bits wrapped in Italian sausage wrapped in bacon.

Using bacon as a sausage casing is a good start, I decided. But to truly become the new, worse-for-you competitor to turducken, a third ingredient -- a core ingredient to mix with the bacon bits -- is necessary. But what to use? To maintain the spirit of the dish, the ingredient must be flavorful and unhealthy, and different enough in flavor to be noticeable, and compatible in flavor enough to harmonize with the sausage and bacon. Here are a few options:

Multiple Sausages

Hot and Sweet Italian Sausage - The simplest version would be to buy both hot and sweet versions of Italian sausage and separate them into two layers. I would use the hot sausage as the middle layer (directly inside the bacon casing) and the sweet sausage for the core ball, mixed with bacon bits. The sweet sausage will contrast with the bacon, while the hot sausage would dominate it.

Lithuanian and Polish Sausage - Lithuanian sausage is available in several Chicago delis that cater to the Eastern European community. It's of similar density to Polish sausage, but its predominant seasoning is onion, rather than the familiar garlicky bite of Polish sausage. Using logic similar to the sweet vs. hot Italian sausage recipe, I would try a central core of ground Lithuanian sausage mixed with bacon bits, with a middle core of ground Polish sausage.

Frenchify It!

Another delicious, horrifically unhealthy candidate for the middle core would be Duck Confit (confit de canard) -- a gourmet product made from duck leg meat, preserved in its own fat. It would offer a completely different flavor and texture from the surrounding sausage layer. Use sweet Italian sausage and you'll end up with something akin to cassoulet, the classic French bean casserole -- albeit without all those distracting beans.

Unhealthy food trivia

The scariest recipes I'd heard of to date were:

• Dunkin Donut Bread Pudding. With Krispy Kremes substituted.
• Luciano Pavarotti's favorite pasta sauce -- involving butter and blue cheese, gratinated under a broiler

The unhealthiest food I've consumed myself is undoubtedly the fast-food version of haggis my husband bought on Edinburgh's Royal Mile. This horrifying street food consisted of a haggis burger, rolled in mashed potato, and deep-fried. Haggis is no more disgusting than any sausage -- but it's rather heavy on rich organ meats to begin with, before we even talk about surrounding it with basically a mashed french fry. My trip to Scotland could have been worse -- I never did get around to trying a deep-fried Snickers bar.

Haggis is pronounced with a soft "a" -- the first syllable rhymes with "stag." Like most Americans, we were quickly set right on this, as well as the correct pronunciation of "Gaelic." It rhymes with "Alec" as in Alec Baldwin's first name.