Pig Shots

When it comes to barbecue, nothing is more satisfying than a little smoked pig on pig action. Add some cheesy, creamy stuffing and the taste buds on your tongue begin to explode with porky satisfaction. Today's recipe puts all these great flavors together in a small, bite-sized package known as Pig Shots! What is this heavenly pork recipe you ask? Well, to put it simply.....smoked sausage rounds wrapped in bacon, filled with cheddar cream cheese deliciousness, and finished with some barbecue sauce making them so tasty your arteries will clog and kill you well before you ever grow tired of them! Sit back, kick your feet up, and give the old ticker a rest as I explain and show you the process of making such a wonderful pork treat. Let's get cooking!

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While Pig Shots can be made in the oven, smoking them is definitely the preferred method as it adds so much more depth and flavor. That being said, you can up that flavor a step further by using smoked cream cheese in the filling. Smoked cream cheese has been around a few years now and has been all the rage, but feel free to use a pre-flavored cream cheese from the market or spice up your own mixture as you wish if you don't have a smoker or don't have an extra couple hours of time to get these Pig Shots on the table and into the mouths of the hungry people!

For smoked cream cheese, place a few cuts in a cross hatch pattern across the top of the cream cheese. Drizzle some olive oil over the cream cheese block then lay down a good layer of a barbecue dry rub. Put the cream cheese on a small tray or make an aluminum foil "pan" and smoke it at 180 degrees Fahrenheit for 2 hours. As long as you don't exceed this temperature, the cream cheese should remain relatively solid and take on some good smoky flavor along with your dry rub seasoning. It will soften somewhat and be easy to combine with shredded cheese later on for the filling.

Otherwise, pull some regular cream cheese from the refrigerator and let it start to warm up and soften as we begin making the sausage "cups." If you non-smoked cream cheese folks want to boost your flavor, try using some garlic and chive cream cheese or maybe even mix in a teaspoon of liquid smoke once it softens to cheat the system. Whatever you do is up to you so I'll keep your little secret and not tell the Smoke Gods.....this one time!

Anyway, we need to make some "cups" using pork sausage and bacon. Begin by slicing the pork sausage into 1/4 to 1/2 inch rounds. Any smoked pork sausage link will do the trick. I found some Cajun Andouille Sausage at the local store that ended up tasting amazing in this recipe so use whatever you have or experiment with something new from the store! These rounds will end up being the bottom base of our "cups" so slice them thin enough that the bacon will wrap and leave plenty of room to fill with cheese filling later on.

Now take your thick cut bacon and cut it in half to 1/3rd pieces. It should be long enough to easily wrap once around the sausage round, but not too long and overlap a metric mile. I mean bacon is tasty so if you want that extra double-wide trailer park bacon cup by all means leave it whole and do your own thing, you bad, bad thing you! Anyway, spread the slices out and give them a good dusting with some dry rub. It never hurts to keep imparting extra flavor on each and every ingredient and step!

Now comes the somewhat time consuming and tedious step of wrapping the bacon around the pork sausage slices and creating little pork cups of glory. Use a toothpick to go through the bacon and sausage round and hold everything together somewhat. It takes a few to get the hang of it, but you will eventually get the feel and rhythm down and knock out a couple dozen before you know it. Dont worry too much if they look a bit sloppy at this point. The filling will eventually help hold the "cup" shape and make you feel better about your life choices.

Your cream cheese should be plenty softened by this point, or warm and fresh out of the smoker if you joined the overachiever club and went all out. Dump it into a bowl with some shredded cheddar cheese and mix to combine everything. It is your filling so add some fresh herbs or hot sauce or anything else you want at this point. I kept it simple and just did the cheese thing. Now the actual filling step is kind of messy so either put your filling in a ziplock bag and cut the corner off to create a ghetto piping bag or use a spoon and be sloppy, but either way get the filling into the bacon and sausage cups one way or another!

That wasn't too bad, was it? Yeah, I'll admit it kind of sucked, but at least the labor and work is behind us now, eh? Pop these little guys into your oven or smoker at 250 degrees Fahrenheit for about 45 minutes to an hour. The sausage is likely already smoked and cooked so we don't need to worry much about it, so when the bacon is starting to look like it is reaching your preferred crispness, drizzle on some barbecue sauce, perhaps this delicious and simple Bourbon Barbecue Sauce, and finish baking/smoking the Pig Shots for another 20-30 minutes.

Pull them out of the oven/smoker when you feel satisfied you have successfully pleased the Pork Gods and drizzle a bit more sauce over everything for that finishing touch. It will also help cool them a bit faster so you can start shoveling these things into your mouth like fat kid eats cake!

And just like that you have created your family's new favorite barbecue appetizer! These are far from healthy, but top the tasty scale so try and limit yourself to one or two as a serving unless you have your cardiologist on speed dial, then by all means go HAM on the damn things! Plenty of room in this recipe to make these Pig Shots your own unique version so try tweaking the cheese filling or experiment with different sauces. The possibilities are just a great excuse to make them again and again! Besides, whoever you share them with will surely be begging for more once you give them a little taste. These things are basically the METH of BBQ! Give them a try and let me know what you think....just keep cooking!

PIG SHOTS