Armadillo Eggs Benedict
There’s a great dish that is really popular with many barbecuers. When someone that’s never heard of it hears the name, they almost invariably ask what it is. In its simplest form, the dish is called a “fatty”. It’s smoked, but not in the way you might remember from high school!A fatty, in very simple terms, is a sausage roll, commonly found in 1 pound packages at the grocery. To make a fatty, simply remove the plastic wrapper and smoke the sausage to 165 degrees F. Can you do more? Sure! You can apply rubs, wrap with bacon, slather with sauce, whatever tickles your fancy. All experiments are worth trying with this.
To be perfectly honest, I don’t much like country sausage in its normal forms. However, apply some smoke for a couple of hours, and it transforms into a thing of taste bud magic!
To take things up to yet another level, the simple-yet-delectable fatty can metamorphosis into an even more palette-pleasing offering, an Armadillo Egg! (do you hear the angel’s harps in the background?) What, you may ask, is an armadillo egg? Again, the answer is so much simpler than seems possible to produce something so good.
An armadillo egg is nothing more than a fatty stuffed with whatever you want to stuff in it. Some of my favorites are cheese, caramelized onions, sauteed peppers and pulled pork. If you want to try it, stuff in some sausage and give it a shot!
A way that I also like doing armadillo eggs is to start with a ball of cheddar cheese and wrap it in sausage, making it egg shaped. I roll it in panko breadcrumbs to mimic an egg shell (panko breadcrumbs keep their crunch pretty well), then I smoke them. I cut the ‘egg’ in half and place it on toast strips laid out in a nest, then top with a poached egg. You could add hollandaise if desired, but this is a pretty good combo as is. I call it “Armadillo Eggs Benedict”!
Fatties and armadillo eggs make a great breakfast, or they can served as appetizers. Your friends will look at you funny when you tell them what it is, but they’ll keep quiet once they have their first taste!
Where’s the Hollandaise? These look seiously good. Great mountain man breakfast.