Butternut Squash for a Thanksgiving side dish.

Tomorrow is shopping day. The birds are already defrosting and tomorrow I will pick up all the groceries for Thursday. If you're looking for a last minute "killer plate" and like love butternut squash, you'll love this:

INGREDIENTS

• 1 large butternut squash- peeled, seeded and cubed
• 1/2 cup mayonnaise (I used light mayo and it tasted great)
  
• 1 small yellow onion.
  
• 1 egg, beaten
• 1 teaspoon brown sugar (add more if y
  
• salt and pepper to taste
• 2 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese
• 1 tablespoon butter, melted

DIRECTIONS

1. Peel the squash. It's ok to use a potato peeler, it just takes some time.
   
2. In a large pot, bring the squash to boil. Reduce to a simmer until squash is soft.
3. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
4. In a large bowl, mash the softened squash. Mix in the mayonnaise, onion, egg, brown sugar, salt and pepper. Pour the mixture into a baking dish.
5. Cut up butter into small pieces and place all over the top.
6. Spread the grated cheese all over the top. I love cheese and how it adds to this plate, so I use a generous amount.
   
7. Bake uncovered in the preheated oven for 40 to 45 minutes, until the topping is lightly brown.

New cookbook and gloves

What can I say, I'm definitely addicted to amazon. Every now and then I'll buy a new cookbook or toy and share my reviews and thoughts with you. This week I really didn't "need" a new cookbook, but I did need new cooking gloves. I bought a pair of red Eastman's in the beginning of the summer. I'm positive that they would have made another season or two, but the dog got to them and pulled out the insides. Check them out here Outdoor Cooking Gloves


I also received a copy of The Texas Cowboy Kitchen. It's a nice mixture of BBQ and indoor cooking. I have no review yet, the write-up I read enticed me to buying it. I'll let you know my thoughts when I get to dig into it.

-Joe

Turkey on the barbecue - Indirect cooking

Well, maybe my last post was a bit presumptuous, maybe a bird a week was a bit much. I guess it's luck that I stumbled on, but man did I make a good bird the other day.

I picked up a 12-pound turkey from the local supermarket. This being my first time cooking a turkey I did not anticipate or calculate for a few days for "defrosting time". So after spending the better part of the morning defrosting the bird in large pots of water I was ready to start the grill.

I had picked up a few bags of lump charcoal and chipped enough hickory chips for at least 8 hours of sprinkling.

On a website (that I regret not being able to give credit to because I didn't bookmark the site) I read someone's post/site about mixing red wine and apple juice to the water, while soaking chips.

Once the charcoal was ready, I closed the lid and went back in to work on the bird.
Preparing the turkey

• I poured boiling hot water on all sides of the bird, including the (empty) cavity. This allows for the moisture to stay in, while the skin tightens up.
• While the bird was still hot, I rubbed on some olive oil, fresh ground pepper and garlic powder to the entire outside of the turkey.

By this point, the grill is about 250 (simmered down from about 300 degrees). Before I placed the turkey on the grill, I prepared the charcoal for indirect heat.

As mentioned earlier, I added water, red wine and apple juice to the drip pan. This added an incredible taste to the turkey and will be something that I will be experimenting with more in the future.

Once the grill lowered to about 225 degrees, I placed the Turkey on the rack, directly above the drip pan.

For about 6 hours, I maintained a temperature inside the grill of 220 degrees. Every half hour I'd add new charcoal, every hour I'd sprinkle some wood chips on top of the charcoal.
Once the internal temperature of the bird hit 170 degrees, I removed it from the grill. A beautiful pink smoke ring had formed just under the skin. The dark meat was perfect and the white meat was far from dry. Each piece of meat had a distinct taste of smoke.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I present you with some of the finest turkey I have had in my life. We fed 6 adults and 5 (small) children that night. My favorite part of the night was hearing my wife mention to someone that she didn't want to put gravy on her turkey because she didn't want to ruin the taste.

Thanksgiving Turkey on the barbecue

This will be the first of I'm sure many posts about the perfect recipe for Turkey on the bbq. It's less then 3 weeks and I'll have over 20 people over for Thanksgiving day. In prior years, we've always gone the traditional route of preparing the bird and putting it in the oven. This year, I've convinced my wife that either smoking the turkey or cooking it on the grill will be the way to go.

I have to admit, it's a bit more pressure then I'd like and of course cooking the bird in the oven would be easier, but man smoked bird sure is good.

This weekend I will be cooking a 12lbs (previously frozen) turkey on indirect coals. I'm not near my kitchen now, but when I get home in a bit, I'll post my recipe.

2 more weekends, I'm sensing lots of variations of frozen turkey soup soon :)

- Joe