Shotgun Shells

Lately, I feel like I've seen quite a few posts / videos about Smoked Shotgun Shells, and it is something I'd never made before.

Every post seems to do them slightly differently, but basically, shotgun shells are typically made by stuffing pasta tubes with flavorful fillings, wrapping them in bacon, and then cooking them to crispy perfection.

At least one of my sources suggested cooking the noodles (manicotti) for 4 or 5 minutes before hand.

Most others I saw suggested not doing that.

For my first attempt, I decided to pretty much follow Hey Grill Hey's recipe, and she did suggest pre-cooking the noodles.

So .... I mixed together ground beef, ground Italian sausage, chopped onions, and mozzarella cheese in a bowl along with various spices.

I cooked manicotti noodles for 4ish minutes.

Then, I stuffed the noodles. This honestly would have been easier with uncooked noodles (IMO), so I think next time I make them I probably will not pre-cook the noodles at all.

I wrapped noodles in bacon. There were more noodles than I had bacon for, so next time I make these, I'm either going to make less noodles or (more likely) make sure I have more than 1 pack of bacon.

I applied from Salt / Pepper / Garlic to them.

Then, I placed them on the indirect heat side of the kettle. I let them smoke with hickory chunks starting around 225 degrees, letting the temperature rise over the course of the cook.

I checked on them from time to time. As the time went on I could certain see the smoke / heat darken the shells.

After cooking for about 1 hour and 15 minutes, the grill temperature was around 290, and I checked the meat temperature of a few to make sure they had cooked into food-safe territory for ground meat.

I let them rest for a few minutes and then we ate them for dinner.

Most seem to consider these as appetizers, but they work fine for a meal ... at least when you make as many as I did for 3 people.

They turned out good. The bacon wrapped ones were certainly better than the ones that didn't get bacon.

As I mentioned, next time I make these I am going to make sure I have more bacon and I'm not going to pre-cook the noodles. I might have to cook a little longer if the noodles are not pre-cooked, but I don't think all that long.

If you stay tuned on Sheppy's Blog: Shotgun Shells, you'll see how my next attempt turns out.

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