First fatty on a Holland Grill

Hi all

I more or less followed the suggestions found in this forum for making a fatty. I used Bob Evans Italian, chopped sweet peppers, chopped onions, Italian 5-cheese shredded cheese, and thick sliced bacon. Here are some observations:

1. I didn't have any large freezer bags to roller out the sausage in so I just used a plastic bag that groceries had come in which worked pretty good other than I had to work a little at making the finished product square.

2. I should of started with my sausage a little colder. It became hard to roll up because of its' temperature.

3. The peppers are way more flavorful than I thought they would be.

4. My house guests saw it before it went on the grill and started referring to it as "the fat ball" however when we got ready to serve it my brother-in-law asked it I had any gravy for it. lol

5. It's way bigger before it goes on the grill than it is after it comes off. I had rendered out a whole bunch of the fat.

6. I had never weaved bacon before. Easy.

7. My Holland has been modified for more heat output (see http://www.bbq-brethren.com/forum/showthread.php?t=196432) and got a little hotter than I had intended for it to get during this roast (I was distracted) plus my timing was off on the homemade bread I had in the oven so my fatty got a littler darker than it should have. After I caught it at 475, I turned it down and kept it under 400 for the rest of the time.

8. It was delicious and between the four of us we pretty much decimated it.

Happy labor day everyone.

I really don't know but I'm guessing 1.5 hours. It looked pretty even top and bottom but I flipped it anyway at some point in the process.

I have set the shutter on more Holland Grills than I can count at a previous job I had. I would be suspect of any shutter that was set to produce something other than small yellow tips on a mostly blue flame. If you have an orange flame from the outset of lighting your grill, let me know and I will give you some ideas on that.

The only time I ever saw one that hot is when someone accidentally put an orifice for a black grill in a stainless one. I would change it not just to reduce the fuel usage but also to reduce the carbon build-up. I have seen them build up to a half inch of soot on the bottom of the deflector plate from running them that way. Sometimes wiping your finger on the underside of the lid and looking at it will tell how bad the soot problem is. It's easy to tell if your finger is black with grease or with carbon.