Ring Bologna “Burnt Ends” with Beef and Cheese Kielbasa

Super Bowl Sunday combined with the 1/2 cow meat I split called for a little smoke

First of all LET’S GO BIRDS!!!!!! In the words of a great man “Another One”.
Second of all shout out to the Garagemahal for letting me use my friends as smoked meat testers the last month. Ok let’s get to the meats

A byproduct of the beer we make is wet grain and farm animals LOVE eating it. We partner with a local farmer who feeds it to his cow. Recently me and my brewers decided to split 1/2 a cow 3 ways with all different cuts of meat that I am really excited to smoke. I didn’t get home until 2am with my new top load freezer and 110lbs of meat and went for something that would be a good appetizer and defrost quick for the new morning. Two of the cuts we got were beef and cheese kielbasa (the cheese was a surprise) and ring bologna. I was never a big bologna guy but one brewer said fresh was really good so I decided to give it a try. Originally I was just going to do slices of it but because I am an iPad kid as it was smoking I watched videos on Bologna burnt ends and haven’t made any before so I thought fu*k it why not let’s do it. I combined tips from a few videos for this smoke, pretty much went off memory for the burnt ends part, and kind of said eh let’s just figure out the kielbasa:
Matt from Meat Church making smoked sliced bologna
I wish I was better at documenting things (kind of the whole point of this I know) but I watched a bunch of shorts on YouTube as well of people smoking bologna

Let’s go over how easy this was:
-Set my Traeger Pro up with apple pellets (aka they were already in there) and set it to 225 around 2pm
-I scored the bologna, spread some mayo over everything (I was out of mustard) as a binder and used some Meat Church Holy Gospel (surprising I know) on the bologna and added the Traeger Blackened Saskatchewan rub in combination with Gospel to the kielbasa (which at this point I realized had cheese in it. dope.) and let them sit for about 15minutes to set

-I let them roll for about an hour and spritzed them with some apple cider vinegar and brown sugar as I noticed the change in color to the meats as well as some cheese starting to poke through

-About another hour went by and things looked good so I flipped the kielbasa and moved them closer to the smoke while putting the bologna further away

-I took the kielbasa off around 5pm when internal temp hit 160ish (some were a little higher)
-Brought the bologna inside around the same time to cut up into small pieces, threw it in a aluminum tray with some “Rib Rack Bourbon Sauce”, butter, and brown sugar and set back on the smoke for about an hour

-I tried the kielbasa off the smoker and noticed it was a bit salty (I think because of the added rub and the fact I don’t know what I’m doing and wing everything) so I let them rest with the plan of brushing on some brown sugar with my hot-n-honey glaze I made (left from the ribs and I STILL forget where I got the recipe)
-Around 6pm I brushed the kielbasa and let it sit on the smoker for 15 minutes to tack the glaze

-Everything came back in around 615, I mixed and covered the “burnt ends” and chopped the kielbasa into some smaller pieces since the game called for a lot of appetizers

This smoke was SUPER easy and the results really surprised me. I figured farm fresh beef and cheese kielbasa would turn out good on the smoker since it’s simple but the real star was bologna. Apparently it’s not just for shitty lunch sandwiches and took on a lot of flavor. I could have probably made this a little quicker of a smoke but 4 hours and barely any work later I had some pretty damn fine meats. The kielbasa bites are like meat crack and I am currently snacking on them as we speak since I made sure to bring home what little was left of both things last night.

In my opinion this could either make for a great appetizer or just smoked kielbasa with a side for a full meal. I would for sure smoke both these things again, with the change being to pay more attention the the rub combinations I am using so I don’t over-do flavors. Then again I’m not a professional and just some dude who likes to smoke meat and now write about it so who knows.