How to Brine a Turkey

The fine folks over at Cookshack, bless their hearts, released a video on how to brine a turkey just in time for thanksgiving. The video starts a little slow as they show images of the corporate logo and then then the recipe card for the brine. Don't adjust your monitor, there really is no sound for about the first 30 seconds of the video.



This reminds me of school. Dry, dull and a little crazed, but the information is right on. The crotch shot is a hoot. Guys, hire a professional videographer next time!

You Ready?

So boys and girls, the holiday where we all pig out is about to hit. Are you ready? I'm thinking about what I'm planing to cook this Thanksgiving and how I can save money this year. It's an interesting conundrum as the holidays are the few days of the year where I don't take food costs into account. Well, I don't abandon those thoughts totally. I still need to keep it within reason but the reason gets a little flexible!

I've been missing the smoke lately, so I'm thumbing through my barbecue, grilling and smoking cookbooks looking for inspiration. I'm toying with the idea of preparing my entire Thanksgiving feast on the smokers, but that would probably be overkill. Some things lend themselves to the flavors of the flames and frankly some things don't. Ever have smoke Lasagna? Yuck.

Here's what I'm thinking for our feast this year. Nothing is set in stone yet, but I try to keep the day a mix of our traditional dishes and a few surprises.

For an appetizer, I'm thinking about Confetti Filled Ham Spirals based on the recipe from Sublime Smoke by Cheryl Alters Jamison and Bill Jamison. I haven't made these in years but they're always a big hit. I'll put up the recipe in a separate post, cause this one is going to be long enough.

Other appetizers include grilled shrimp or oyster cocktail, filberts, dried figs, assorted cheeses, chips and a good Texas manufactured peach salsa. Why filberts you may ask? I don't know, but my mother always put a tray off filberts and figs out at Thanksgiving and Christmas. It may be a throwback to our English heritage as The Nut Factory includes them in their English Mix and it's not a holiday to me without them.

I'm thinking about making a seafood soup this year, but two of our guests don't like seafood and one is still in his vegetarian mode. I may make a cheddar potato soup from New Recipes from the Moosewood Restaurant, but that can be a meal in itself. Who knows, we usually don't do soup, but I love soup and would love to include it as part of our meal. Maybe a simple Cream of Mushroom Soup would be best; it's so much lighter.

I will be making a turkey, but I haven't decided how yet. I may brine it, I may not. Maybe I should just order a Turduken. Oh, I don't know.

One thing that usually decides it for me, is that I prefer my turkey stuffed and a brined or smoked turkey doesn't lend itself to stuffing easily.

For side dishes, I'm looking at recipes for Spaghetti Squash, (which is the only squash I really like), Lemon Leeks, to replace our traditional Pearl Onions in Cream Sauce (which only my mother eats) and Saffron and Ginger Sweet Potatoes. (Both the recipes for Lemon Leeks and Saffron and Ginger Sweet Potatoes can be found in Sublime Smoke.) Other sides will include mashed potatoes, roasted root vegetables, a green salad of some sort, green beans, sweet corn and some sort of mushrooms if I don't make the mushroom soup. (I think we've got all our colors covered!) There will be home made biscuits and other breads as well. I hope I can get through the day without any grilled TOFU.

Of course I'll be making my famous Clove and Cinnamon scented Cranberry Sauce. The recipe is one I created from a basic recipe found in the Fanny Farmer Cookbook, which I have modified and adjusted greatly over the years, so much so that it no longer holds much in common with the original. If you've never made cranberry sauce from scratch; you're doing yourself a disservice. It's easy and so much better than anything canned.

On a side note, I wonder what the technical differences are between "scented" and "flavored." I don't really know, but scented sounds so much more refined and seems to be the popular adjective for menus these days.

And finally, we'll be having desserts. I've asked my mother to make her apple pie using a lard crust that is just out of this world. (No, that link isn't to her recipe. Her recipe is much older.) She tells me that she's been using the same recipe since the 1940's, but I know that's not exactly true. She did abandon the lard for another shortening for a least a decade and it made a huge difference in the flavor and flakiness in the crust. Mom will also make a pumpkin pie for my wife and my wife will make a cheesecake for my son. Maybe I'll contribute some sort of baked pears.

Sounds like a plan doesn't it? I hope I remember to take pictures!

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year to all my faithful Blog readers. And a Happy New Year to all you first time visitors too. Everyone's welcome here at WhiteTrash BBQ.

My wish for all of you is that we all have a happy, healthy and prosperous 2007 filled with excitement and joy.

This year, I plan on constantly looking and moving forward, be it in my personal, professional or barbeque life. I will be loosing the things, people, places and habits that tie me down. This year I will try and accomplish new things. On every level.

Hold on, it may be a bumpy ride.

Photograph of New Year's Eve in Times Square courtesy of Uri's Blog.

EDIT: I just read some great thoughts on the New Year from Terry_Jim over at the Lazy Half S Ranch. With the magic of cut and paste, I've republished it here. Be sure to stop by and check out his blog.

It's Always Okay To Begin Again
"The object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul." – G.K. Chesterton

Pay Attention to the Little Things
"It is often said that before you die your life passes before your eyes. It is in fact true. It's called living." – Terry Pratchett

"No trumpets sound when the important decisions of our life are made. Destiny is made known silently." – Agnes De Mille

Know What You Want
"I can teach anybody how to get what they want out of life. The problem is that I can't find anybody who can tell me what they want." – Mark Twain

Don't Think You Know It All

"The more we live by our intellect, the less we understand the meaning of life." – Leo Tolstoy

"And he goes through life, his mouth open, and his mind closed." – Oscar Wilde

Don't Be A Couch Potato
"Literacy is a very hard skill to acquire, and once acquired it brings endless heartache – for the more you read, the more you learn of life's intimidating complexity of confusion. But anyone who can learn to grunt is bright enough to watch TV… which teaches that life is simple, and happy endings come to those whose hearts are in the right place." – Spider Robinson

"If I show up at your house 10 years from now, and find nothing in your living room but Reader's Digests, nothing in your bedroom but the latest Dan Brown novel… I will chase you down to the end of your driveway and back shouting 'Where are the damn books?… Why are you living the mental equivalent of a Kraft Macaroni & Cheese life?'" - Stephen King, to the 2005 graduating class of the University of Maine

You're Going To Have Some Bad Days
"Life does not have to be perfect to be wonderful." – Annette Funicello

"Life is like a train. It's bearing down on you and guess what? It's going to hit you. So you can either start running when it's far off in the distance, or you can pull up a chair, crack open a beer, and just watch it come." – Eric Forman, on That 70s Show

"My life has been filled with terrible misfortune; most of which never happened." – Montaigne

Have Courage
"Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. Security does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than exposure." – Helen Keller

"Those of us who refuse to risk and grow get swallowed up by life." – Patty Hansen

Love Your Job
"Work is about a search for daily meaning as well as daily bread, for recognition as well as cash, for astonishment rather than torpor; in short, for a sort of life rather than a Monday through Friday sort of dying." – Studs Terkel

Don't Forget to Have Fun
"Do not take life too seriously – you will never get out of it alive." – Elbert Hubbard

"Life is truly a ride. We're all strapped in and no one can stop it…. I think that the most you can hope for at the end of life is that your hair's messed, you're out of breath, and you didn't throw up." – Jerry Seinfeld

"Humanity has advanced, when it has advanced, not because it has been sober, responsible, and cautious, but because it has been playful, rebellious, and immature." – Tom Robbins, Still Life With Woodpecker

"Don't be afraid your life will end; be afraid that it will never begin." – Grace Hansen

Remember the People Who Are Important to You
"There is only one happiness in this life, to love and be loved." – George Sand

"When you grow up, you have to give yourself away. Sometimes you give your life all in a moment, but mostly you have to give yourself away laboring one minute at a time." – Gaborn Val Orden

"I was fourteen years old the night my daddy died. He had holes in his shoes and a vision that he was able to convey to me even lying in an ambulance, dying, that I as a black girl could do and be anything, that race and gender are shadows, and that character, determination, attitude are the substances of life." – Marian Wright Edelman

Today Is The First Day of The Rest of Your Life
"Life is a journey, and with every step we reach a point of no return." – Gaborn Val Orden

"Many adventures await you upon the road of life. Enter these doors, and take your first step…" – from a placard above The Horn and Hound Pub Happy New Year, Roy H. Williams

"What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset." - Crowfoot, (1811-1890) a Native American warrior of the Blackfoot tribe.

BBQ Around the World: Pakistan

I found this in the Daily Times, A New Voice for Pakistan. I don't know much about Islam, but if eating barbeque is part of the religious holidays, I've got to get to know more!

The Eid mentioned in the article is Eidul Azha when the faithful slaughter a goat, sheep, cow, buffalo or camel to emulate the example of the Prophet Abraham and his son, Ismael or Ishmael. Affluent Muslims perform Hajj a day before Eidul Azha by traveling to Mecca for the annual pilgrimage.

Sharpening knives and barbeque grills, all set for Eid

By Imran Naeem Ahmad

ISLAMABAD: In a small shop, sparks fly off Tahir Mahmood Qureshi’s grinding wheel as he sharpens knives and choppers all day.

With Eidul Azha approaching, Qureshi is overworked in the busy Aabpara Market. Hundreds of knives of all shapes and sizes lie next to him on the floor, and after grinding each, he holds up the respective knife to see the end product. The knives he sharpens will soon be used to slaughter animals and chop meat.

The workload in the run up to Eidul Azha is such that Qureshi expects to sharpen between 3,000 to 4,000 different knives in the last two days before the event. “It is a lot of work but this is the time of year when we make good money,” he says as a meat shop attendant arrives with four big choppers. “I worked on 700 knives today and this number may increase to about 4,000 later on,” said Qureshi.

As he continues with his work, elsewhere in the market brand new knives, skewers, barbeque grills, coal and wood chopping blocks are up for sale. Qamar Zaman manages one such shop and says, “The business is good and knives and grills are selling well.”

With sacrificial meat being distributed and exchanged in abundance for Eid, there is barely a household without a surplus of mutton or beef. Hence people like Amir Raza and Iftikhar Khan, both government employees, opt for barbequed meals.

“We look forward to this every year. The children particularly enjoy it and it is good fun for them,” says Amir, while Iftikhar narrates how his family went to Simly Dam last year to grill the meat: “It was a day out my children still remember.”

However, for those wishing to avoid this hassle, some restaurants also offer to roast meat. This is a good bargain for those with a few hundred rupees to spare. “We have many people bringing in their meat,” says a restaurant manager.

Indeed Eidul Azha provides a good chance for many to earn quick money, be they cattle owners selling their animals at the H-11 Market, shopkeepers at centres like Aabpara, coal sellers or butchers.