Kill. Cook. Eat!

Don Ipock for The New York Times

The Bacon Explosion is a rolled concoction that can be baked or cooked in a smoker. More Photos >

FOR a nation seeking unity, a recipe has swept the Internet that seems to unite conservatives and liberals, gun owners and foodies, carnivores and … well, not vegetarians and health fanatics.

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Recipe: Bacon Explosion (January 28, 2009)

Don Ipock for The New York Times

Woven bacon has sausage on top, then some cooked bacon. More Photos »

Certainly not the vegetarians and health fanatics.

This recipe is the Bacon Explosion, modestly called by its inventors “the BBQ Sausage Recipe of all Recipes.” The instructions for constructing this massive torpedo-shaped amalgamation of two pounds of bacon woven through and around two pounds of sausage and slathered in barbecue sauce first appeared last month on the Web site of a team of Kansas City competition barbecuers. They say a diverse collection of well over 16,000 Web sites have linked to the recipe, celebrating, or sometimes scolding, its excessiveness. A fresh audience could be ready to discover it on Super Bowl Sunday.

Where once homegrown recipes were disseminated in Ann Landers columns or Junior League cookbooks, new media have changed — and greatly accelerated — the path to popularity. Few recipes have cruised down this path as fast or as far as the Bacon Explosion, and this turns out to be no accident. One of its inventors works as an Internet marketer, and had a sophisticated understanding of how the latest tools of promotion could be applied to a four-pound roll of pork.

The Bacon Explosion was born shortly before Christmas in Roeland Park, Kan., in Jason Day’s kitchen. He and Aaron Chronister, who anchor a barbecue team called Burnt Finger BBQ, were discussing a challenge from a bacon lover they received on their Twitter text-messaging service: What could the barbecuers do with bacon?

At the same time, Mr. Chronister wanted to get attention for their Web site, BBQAddicts.com. More traffic would bring in more advertising income, which they needed to fund a hobby that can cost thousands of dollars.

Mr. Day, a systems administrator who has been barbecuing since college, suggested doing something with a pile of sausage. “It’s a variation of what’s called a fattie in the barbecue community,” Mr. Day said. “But we took it to the extreme.”

He bought about $20 worth of bacon and Italian sausage from a local meat market. As it lay on the counter, he thought of weaving strips of raw bacon into a mat. The two spackled the bacon mat with a layer of sausage, covered that with a crunchy layer of cooked bacon, and rolled it up tight.

They then stuck the roll — containing at least 5,000 calories and 500 grams of fat — in the Good-One Open Range backyard smoker that they use for practice. (In competitions, they use a custom-built smoker designed by the third member of the team, Bryant Gish, who was not present at the creation of the Bacon Explosion.)

Mr. Day said his wife laughed the whole time. “She’s very supportive of my hobby,” he said.

The two men posted their adventure on their Web site two days before Christmas. On Christmas Day, traffic on the site spiked to more than 27,000 visitors.

Mr. Chronister explained that the Bacon Explosion “got so much traction on the Web because it seems so over the top.” But Mr. Chronister, an Internet marketer from Kansas City, Mo., did what he could to help it along. He first used Twitter to send short text messages about the recipe to his 1,200 Twitter followers, many of them fellow Internet marketers with extensive social networks. He also posted links on social networking sites. “I used a lot of my connections to get it out there and to push it,” he said.

The Bacon Explosion posting has since been viewed about 390,000 times. It first found a following among barbecue fans, but quickly spread to sites run by outdoor enthusiasts, off-roaders and hunters. (Several proposed venison-sausage versions.) It also got mentions on the Web site of Air America, the liberal radio network, and National Review, the conservative magazine. Jonah Goldberg at NationalReview.com wrote, “There must be a reason one reader after another sends me this every couple hours.” Conservatives4palin.com linked, too.

So did regular people. A man from Wooster, Ohio, wrote that friends had served it at a bon voyage party before his 10-day trip to Israel, where he expected bacon to be in short supply. “It wasn’t planned as a send-off for me to Israel, but with all of the pork involved it sure seemed like it,” he wrote.

About 30 people sent in pictures of their Explosions. One sent a video of the log catching fire on a grill.

Mr. Day said that whether it is cooked in an oven or in a smoker, the rendered fat from the bacon keeps the sausage juicy. But in the smoker, he said, the smoke heightens the flavor of the meats.

Nick Pummell, a barbecue hobbyist in Las Vegas, learned of the recipe from Mr. Chronister’s Twittering. He made his first Explosion on Christmas Day, when he and a group of friends also had a more traditional turkey. “This was kind of the dessert part,” he said. “You need to call 911 after you are done. It was awesome.”

Mr. Chronister said the main propellant behind the Bacon Explosion’s spread was a Web service called StumbleUpon, which steers Web users toward content they are likely to find interesting. Readers tell the service about their professional interests or hobbies, and it serves up sites to match them. More than 7 million people worldwide use the service in an attempt to duplicate serendipity, the company says.

Mr. Chronister intended to send the post to StumbleUpon, but one of his readers beat him to it. It appeared on the front page of StumbleUpon for three days, which further increased traffic.

Mr. Chronister also littered his site with icons for Digg, Del.icio.us and other sites in which readers vote on posts or Web pages they like, helping to spread the word. “Alright this is going on Digg,” a commenter wrote minutes after the Explosion was posted. “Already there,” someone else answered.

Some have claimed that the Bacon Explosion is derivative. A writer known as the Headless Blogger posted a similar roll of sausage and bacon in mid-December. Mr. Chronister and Mr. Day do not claim to have invented the concept.

But they do vigorously defend their method. When one commenter dared to suggest that the two hours in the smoker could be slashed to a mere 30 minutes if the roll was first cooked in a microwave oven, Mr. Chronister snapped back. “Microwave??? Seriously? First, the proteins in the meats will bind around 140 degrees, so putting it on the smoker after that is pointless as it won’t absorb any smoke flavor,” he responded on his site. “This requires patience and some attention. It’s not McDonald’s.”

Scotland has the haggis, Turkey has the donor kebab, England has the Yorkshire pudding and from the land down under I give you… the overdone sausage.

Australian summers provide ideal weather for barbecuing

I am being a tad unfair perhaps since multi-cultural Australia boasts some of the most mouth-watering food in the world. But that just makes it all the more intriguing why one of Australia’s great national dishes comes partly incinerated.

The great Australian barbecue, of course, occupies a singular place in the national psyche.

Come the southern summer, Australians do not have water cooler conversations, they have barbecue conversations – the forum at which the most pressing national issues of the day are given a beer-fuelled airing. This year, it has been the state of Australian cricket, normally so dominant, but now so imperilled.

National pride

It is also the place where Australians can speak freely in their national tongue.

The country’s fondness for barbecuing has been used to promote tourism

The barbecue, or barbie, gives people the chance to chew upon a sausage (a “snag”), drink a few beers (”blow the froth off a couple of cold ones”) which usually come in ice-cold bottles (”stubbies”), which are stored in a refrigerated ice-box (an “esky”).

People normally arrive wearing their flip-flops (their “thongs”), while a beachside barbie might even see a few pairs of swimming trunks (”budgie-smugglers”).

Australia’s most successful ever tourism campaign lured international visitors by promising to throw another shrimp on the barbie.

And in recent weeks, Australians have been bombarded by another series of government-sponsored advertisements designed to promote Australia Day.

Even in this most egalitarian of societies there is a distinct sense of hierarchy when it comes to the barbecue

Their star is an officious young bureaucrat who arrives on the door-step of a suburban bungalow to lambast its bewildered occupant for spending last year’s national day on the couch.

“Not a fan of barbecues?” he asks, disapprovingly.

A search of the back garden uncovers a rusting barbie prompting even more official censure.

Then there is the newspaper version of the campaign, where the bureaucrat carries the official Australia Day checklist.

Its calls upon true patriots to celebrate their national day by making a disparaging remark about English cricket and overcooking a variety of meats on semi-hygienic barbecues.

Licensed to barbie

Having recently married an Australian, I now have to take my barbecuing with the utmost seriousness.

In fact, one of my first gifts from my wife was a set of cooking utensils, knives, tongs, kebab spikes and the like, which came in the kind of the gleaming silver attache case James Bond might use to carry his Beretta.

I am now licensed to barbie.

But even in this most egalitarian of societies there is a distinct sense of hierarchy when it comes to the barbecue.

You can tell a lot about an Australian man, for instance, by the size of his barbecue

In my wife’s family, there is a rigid pecking order in which I have been relegated to the role of hapless spectator, while more senior brother-in-laws stand proudly at the grill.

Topping the barbecue league is my oldest brother-in-law who can boast an expansive repertoire of barbie dishes, from a whole snapper doused in lime juice and wrapped in an envelope of aluminium foil, to barbequed bananas oozing with melted milk chocolate.

So masterful are his barbecuing skills he does not even burn the sausages.

Gender divide

The barbecue brings to the fore Australians’ generosity of spirit.

Making sure your ’snags’ are cooked can take a great degree of skill

I regularly serve up scorched snags that resemble one of Australia’s most lucrative exports, a lump of coal. But judging by the response, you would have thought I had just produced a plate of Beluga caviar. “What a beauty,” they might say.

There are other national traits which we can mine from the veneration of the barbie.

The love of the outdoors. The fondness for humour, often lubricated with one of the aforementioned stubbies, or anything else that has alcoholic content and arrives chilled.

I have only ever spotted one woman slaving over a hot-barbecue, and she turned out to be French

Humour quickly evolves into the kind of slap-the-back bonhomie that the Australians call mateship.

Then there is the love of competition. You can tell a lot about an Australian man, for instance, by the size of his barbecue, and some are so very capacious that they resemble small mobile homes.

It is also worth pointing out that at an Australian barbecue the segregation of the sexes is complete.

The men burn the meat, while the women tend to the salads. Rarely is this unwritten doctrine ever breached.

I have only ever spotted one woman slaving over a hot barbecue, and she turned out to be French.

I spotted her at the local beach last weekend, happily barbecuing alongside a Swiss man at a neighbouring grill and a group of Indians from Punjab at another.

If you want to successfully assimilate into the mainstream of Australian life then hurl a crustacean in the direction of a flaming grill. Here, the barbecue takes the place of the multi-cultural melting pot.

If you have not partaken of this antipodean ritual, then I would thoroughly recommend that you do. Tell me when you are coming, and they will have an overcooked shrimp awaiting your arrival.

From Our Own Correspondent was broadcast on Saturday, 24 January, 2009 at 1130 GMT on BBC Radio 4. Please check the programme schedules for World Service transmission times.

Been to Australia?  Can’t say I have.

But I live in the States and the food ain’t half bad-

Here, the wifes and some hubbies spend too much time watching TV

Cooking shows, perfect kitchens, and no mess to be cleaned.

Totally unreal – as it’s Hollywood crap

Backstage dish cleaners – who work for the scraps

The “chefs” dressed all garnished – even more than their foods

Look “tough” in their aprons but without pockets for tools.

Appeasing the wife, I will watch cooking shows

But all I can think of is how must blow

To not fire up my own Bar-B, in my Utility Shirt

For the tools of the trade – and not some wussie skirt.

A simple poem – this is true

And yes, the meat is important

So just buy the Utility Shirt

And prep time is shortened

MillsGrills.com     Kill.Cook.Eat.