You don’t want turkey or even turducken – a turkey stuffed with a duck and a chicken – for Thanksgiving but you want a spectacular meal. How about a pork loin roast?
Thanksgiving Recipes for Two, Part 2: Duck Breasts, Stuffing, and Veggies
Thanksgiving is fast approaching but you’re not a big fan of turkey so you need an alternative to the traditional cholesterol laden feast. Forget the turkey, the gravy, lumpy mashed potatoes and green bean casserole with cream of mushroom soup. Instead enjoy pan-seared duck breasts with a Cajun mustard sauce. Serve with apple-cornbread “stuffing,” and sautéed green beans and peppers.
Thanksgiving for Two Part 1: Turkey with Chipotle Gravy
Downsize the Thanksgiving feast. You don’t need a 24-pound bird for two people. A stuffed turkey breast works just fine. Especially when served with sautéed sugar snap peas, roasted potatoes, chipotle gravy and cranberry-horseradish relish. This is the first in my recipe trilogy for a great scaled-down turkey day. Check back on Burn! Blog for the next two installments.
Welcome to Smoked Pumpkin Season
“It’s the mooost wonderful tiiime of the yeeeear…” That’s what plays in my head when the first sugar pumpkins land in stores each Fall. Not because retailers drop the Christmas hammer too early. No, my mood turns to thoughts of those pumpkins heating low and slow inside my smoker.
Masker’s Yule Hog Part 2: Pork Belly Christmas Sausage
For the second part of my pork bribe to Santa, I ground up Christmas breakfast sausage. Not just any sausage, though. I used the pork belly trimmings left over from the slabs of bacon I cut up for curing last week.
Masker’s Yule Hog, Part 1: Home-Cured Christmas Bacon
Apparently, two dozen gingerbread strippers and a bottle of cheap scotch wasn’t enough to buy Santa’s forgiveness last year. He did not provide the Big Green Egg I’d requested despite my generous bribe. I found plenty of fuel for an Egg in my stocking, though. This year I’m upping the ante. No jolly old elf can resist three different types of Christmas pork waiting on a plate. While I’m at it, I’ll share the recipes as I go along. If it works, maybe you can buy your naughty self into his good graces too. Christmas bacon seems like a good lead-in. Here’s how I’m going about it.
Smoked Turducken for Thanksgiving
Most of you probably know what it is, but for those who don’t, it’s a chicken, stuffed into a duck, stuffed into a turkey. The chicken usually has Cajun stuffing in it and other types of stuffing are often used as mortar between the building blocks, as well. If you want to build one, you have to de-bone all three birds first, making sure not to cut the skin on the turkey while doing so. Once that’s done, you stuff them together, then use cooking twine to hold it all together as a cohesive unit, coat it with seasoning, and you’re ready to cook. Or you can do what I did.
