Get Your Grill On

A little while ago, I did a post on slavinks, which are basically sausage mince wrapped around with streaky bacon. Unfortunately at the time, there were no photos, but that’s no impasse to posting around these parts. Recently a jar of barbeque rub, Rod’s Rub, Sweet Mesquite, came my way to try out. After messing around with it for a while and using it as it is supposed to be, with terrific results, I thought “Hey, maybe this stuff can be turned inside out” which, of course, I did. So instead of just being a rub, it also has a place as an ingredient. It also gave me the chance to do a couple of overdue photos as well.

What struck me about about Rod’s Rub was the haunting, smoky notes of mesquite combined with just the right touch of honey sweetness. I’ll tell you more about using it as a rub in another post because I having a sneaking suspicion the Rod would be wanting me to do just that. But Rod, if you’re reading this, you’re going to like me, I promise! After the experimentation with grilling using this rub, there was something about the flavours that struck me - if it could taste so good rubbed on the outside, how would it work on the inside?

We all know that grilling alters the flavours of spices, but if the rub was used as a key ingredient, the pure flavours of spice could come through; it was then I thought about using it in slavinks. You can pretty much use any of your favourite sausage mince as the base, but my little jar of rub was whispering chicken mince to me.

CHICKEN SLAVINKS
(makes 6)

• 1 large onion, finely diced
• 5 cloves garlic, finely diced
• 100ml olive oil
• 750g chicken mince
• 1 tablespoon Rod’s Rub, Sweet Mesquite*
• 2 tablespoons breadcrumbs
• salt & fresh ground pepper
• 12 rashers streaky bacon

In a frying pan, add the onion, garlic and olive oil and sweat until the onion is soft and translucent, leave to cool. Place the chicken mince in a bowl and add the cooled onion and garlic, Rod’s Rub, Sweet Mesquite, breadcrumbs and season with salt and pepper. To help the chicken mince stay together and not crumble, work the mixture with your hands for about five minutes, this develops the collagen which sticks it together. Divide the chicken mince into six portions, then lay 2 pieces of bacon crosswise, put a patty of chicken mince in the middle and lay the bacon over to enclose the filling. Repeat with the rest of the ingredients. Grill or fry on a low heat, until the bacon is nicely browned and the chicken cooked through.

*If you don’t have Rod’s Rub, well what’s stopping you? Okay, maybe a snowstorm. You could substitute smoked paprika instead or a few drops of liquid smoke and regular paprika.

Streaky bacon crosswise, ready for filling

Finished slavink with the bacon ends tucked under

The picture that could get me excommunicated from Get Your Grill On, slavinks in the frying pan.

On the plate and very tasty they were.