By Greg B. So I wish I had time to get this out before the Superbowl, but all I can do is post this now and give you all ideas for next year’s Superbowl. No, I did not have a large party, but I did prepare a ton of food. And here’s how it all went down.

The menu read like something from a gaucho eatery. Bacon Explosion with cheese, oven roasted Pork Shoulder, Baked beans with (extra) bacon, corn and black bean salad, and jalapeno cornbread.

So, while the pork shoulder was in the oven, I began work on the bacon explosion. I’ve seen a few recipes floating around the Internet, so I cant take credit for this idea, but it did look great! However, I decided to add my own element and filled the middle not only with bacon, but also cheddar cheese, Cabot extra sharp. To make the bacon explosion, first crisp 1lb of bacon in a pan, then weave 1lb of bacon together on a flat surface. Take 2lb of loose Italian sausage and spread/pat this down over the woven bacon mat. Then crumple your crisped bacon in the middle, and add 2-3 cups of shredded cheddar cheese. I added a few dashes of cayenne pepper, and some BBQ rub in the middle, rolled this up, and placed it in the oven for 2 hrs (I raised the temp on the pork shoulder up to 300 the last 3 hrs).

The baked beans were nothing special, just a giant can of Bush’s baked beans. These are, of course, fantastic, so I left them alone in my crock pot for a few hours, though I did add a few more bits of the crisped bacon from the bacon explosion recipe… for good measure!

In the last hour of cooking, I turned the head of the oven up to 350F, and covered the pork shoulder in most of a bottle of Sweet Baby Ray’s BBQ sauce. I had tried to make a vinegar based sauce, but it began to smell awful and taste awful, so I abandoned the idea and just went with the usual sweet, thick BBQ style. While this was cooking, I made the corn and black bean salad and readied the ingredients for the Jalapeno cornbread.

For the salad, you will need

• 1 can of corn
• 1 can of black beans
• 1 jalapenos, diced
• 2 medium tomatoes, diced (remove middle seeds and jelly)
• 1 medium onion, diced
• dash of salt/pepper to taste
• few dashes of Tabasco sauce for extra heat.

Mix these ingredients together a few hours before serving, cover and set aside in the fridge to chill. This is a salad best served cool, which will be a nice contrast to the other hot sides, in both physical temp and in heat that I have (there’s a lot of cayenne pepper going around these recipes!).

OK, so I was about to remove the pork shoulder, but in it’s place I wanted to add the cornbread. To make this, you will need

• 1 cast iron skillet (preferably with bacon grease from the aforementioned cooked bacon still in the pan)
• 2 eggs

• 1/4 c vegetable oil
• 1 cup buttermilk (or, 1 cup milk and 1tablespoon lemon juice)
• 2 c shredded cheddar cheese
• 8oz cream corn
• 1 onion, diced
• 1 jalapeno pepper, diced
• 1 cup cornmeal
• 1/2 cup flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt

With the oven already preheated to 350F, this recipe will be easy. Mix the dry materials in one bowl, and in a separate bowl, mix the liquid and vegetable parts (I then removed the bacon explosion from the oven, to make space!). In one bowl, combine all parts, both wet and dry, and then pour into the cast iron skillet. Place this in the oven for ~ 35 minutes. Oh, and don’t forget to sprinkle some of the cheese on top just before it goes in the oven!

OK, so by now your pork shoulder will have rested about 20 minutes, and cooled down enough to handle. It was easy enough to remove all the meat from the bones, as the shoulder basically fell apart anytime you touched it! I removed any of the bones from the meat, and a few large sections of skin/fat (Don’t remove it all, of course!), and then brought out my butcher’s knife. This is a tool that I don’t get to use often, so when I do, I enjoy it! I started chopping and dicing up the meat on the cutting board, skin, fat, meat, all of it. Give it a good chop, but don’t make it completely finely minced. I then put it in a large bowl, added some more BBQ sauce (not much though), mixed thoroughly, and was done!Cross section of the Bacon Explosion!Cross section of the Bacon Explosion!

Once the cornbread was done, I removed it from the oven, and it had cooled to a nice serving temp by the time everyone was around to eat and had plates. This was definitely a hearty meal (we are still eating it too, with no end in sight!). I hope this whole meal gives you some ideas on what to prepare next year. Really these recipes are not a lot of work, a crock pot, a slow roasted animal part, a few diced veggies and a roll of pork meat which cooked for several hours, easy! What did you all do for the Superbowl?