Grilled Bologna? Not slices, an entire chub of bologna

This isn’t all that complicated. Take an entire chub of bologna, slice off the bottom so it stands upright. Score the sides. Smoke/indirect for a few hours. To me, it hearkened back to college and fried bologna sammiches. This takes the fried bologna sando to a whole other level and is so easy to do.

***Editor’s Note ~ This post is quite old. Like 2009 old. We have vastly improved upon smoked bologna. Such as smoked bologna burnt ends. Or of you have your heart set on a sandwich, check out this Southern Grilled Bologna Sandwich. 

Here we have the entire sealed chub of bologna:

Simply slice off the bottom to allow for it to stand upright:

Remove the plastic “skin” and score about every inch vertically:

Then repeat the process horizontally:

That’s it. We didn’t do a rub. Not salt (the sodium in this chub was off the chart), nothing. Just stood it up on the grill:

Here is where we ran into a few problems. After 45 minutes of indirect heat we were getting nowhere in terms of this thing cooking:

So I cut it in half to speed up the cooking process and scored the top of the newly sliced in half section at the top of this picture:

After another 90 minutes it was looking better but not the same as what I saw on the forum so I moved them closer to the coals on the left side:

At this time we had 20 ravenous people that had been smelling the ribs inside and ready to tear into some good Q. I didn’t think these were done yet and left them on the grill. I had planned on just abandoning them for the evening, eating, and settling in for a poker game. But periodically I found myself outside throughout the night and rotated them a couple of times so they would cook evenly. The fire slowly died so they were not getting cooked quickly. About 7 hours after we put the bologna on, someone asked about it. So I went outside and pulled it in:

I got a couple of pictures and then in about 10 minutes half of that thing was gone:

People were making sandwiches, eating it in chunks, putting it on crackers. Either way, it was a big hit. We will do this again. And probably about the same way. I don’t know how much of it would’ve been eaten with the main course with ribs, deer tenderloin, beans, and sides all available, but it made an excellent dessert!!

Things I would do differently next time:

• I would do a rub on this. Nothing fancy. But I think a rub could enhance the flavor even more. And I think I would apply the rub more than once. As the crevices form as the fat renders out I would add more rub. More surface area, more flavor.

So I have gone back and revisited the Grilled Bologna.  I did the bologna in small chunks and did a rub. Cooking in smaller chunks greatly reduced cooking time to something like an hour and increased the rub to meat ratio which really increased the flavor.  It also allowed more smoke flavor per chunk because there was more surface area per bite than the chub had.  Check that link for a funky appetizer that will astonish your friends at how simple and delicious this appetizer is.

As usual, if you have any questions about this recipe, please email me or simply leave a comment below.

If you are interested in other side dishes or appetizers click here.

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Scott Thomas

Scott Thomas, the Original Grillin’ Fool, was sent off to college with a suitcase and a grill where he overcooked, undercooked and burned every piece of meat he could find. After thousands of failures, and quite a few successes, nearly two decades later he started a website to show step by step, picture by picture, foolproof instructions on how to make great things out of doors so that others don’t have to repeat the mistakes he’s made on the grill.

Scott Thomas

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