Happy Mutants food and drink topic (Part 1)

i just put a 15 pound lasagna in the oven about 10 minutes ago. i made the sauce last night. a bright, spicy tomato based sauce with ground sirloin, hot italian sausage, and diced pepperoni for meat, along with some finely chopped serrano peppers to enhance the spiciness. this morning i parboiled the pasta and then stopped the cooking with a bowl of ice and water. i just made the cheese filling with whole milk ricotta and sour cream along with a generous handful of chopped parsley from what’s left of our herb garden out front.

we’ll have garlic bread for our side dish and for dessert i tried a recipe for chelsea buns. since i had no raisins or currents i substituted some finely diced fresh apples i cooked a little bit with spices, light brown sugar and butter. they look really good and everything is starting to smell wonderful.

14 Likes

Has anyone ever survived this and ate Turkey from this method?

4 Likes

Recipe for Japanese style simmered kabocha

  1. With a sharp heavy knife cut the kabocha in half, scoop out seeds and discard. (Microwaving the pumpkin for a few minutes can soften the skin to make cutting easier)

  2. Cut the kabocha into rectangular pieces about the size of a fun sized snickers with the skin still on.

  3. Boil 4 cups of bonito dashi (4 cups of water, 4 tsp of dashi powder), 1/4 cup of sugar, 1/4 cup soy sauce, 1/4 cup cooking sake or mirin
    (This is an all purpose broth for simmering all sorts of veggies)

  4. Add kabocha pieces and turn down heat to a simmer. Simmer for at least 30 min. When skin is soft enough to pierce with a fork.

Best if let sit overnight. Can be served cold or reheated.

6 Likes

The difference between Japanese and American Mayo is the Japanese one has a lot more MSG and has a near infinite shelf life.

I am finding the stuff in supermarkets these days. Acme and Target have it in my area. But I am also less than 2 miles from both a Korean and Japanese supermarket. So it could just be a neighborhood thing.

6 Likes

I only saw this on a TV show in the 1990s. I thought it was some kind of joke.

5 Likes

I have fried probably 50 turkeys in the last 20 years. Never been to the ER or needed the fire department.

13 Likes

Bourbon pumpkin pie is in the oven…

11 Likes

Soon…

15 Likes

Nice! I think the problem is that not everyone is careful. Cooking recklessly can cause disasters.

But, how does it taste? I mean, I think a turkey is such a big bird, how long does it need to be immersed in the hot oil to be ready to eat? I never imagined that this would be an effective method of cooking a bird.

7 Likes

Tortilla?

6 Likes

Deep-fried turkey cooks for 3-1/2 minutes per US pound – so, about 45 minutes for a 13-lb hen. Taste can vary depending on your marinade or paste or rub. I met a guy in St. Louis, Rendell, that mass-fries like 30 or 40 turkeys every year and sells them. He often uses orange Fanta for a marinade. Hell, he’s probably frying right now.

12 Likes

Thank you.

I think that for most people it is better to buy a fried turkey than to try to make one at home.

14 Likes

Oh, yes. It’s a big pain in the ass. I mainly do it for large gatherings, like our “friendsgiving” tradition where there’s 50 people. Thanks to COVID, this will be first year since 1993 that I have done no frying. Frankly I’m more than OK with that.

13 Likes

Home making or buying festive meals?

My father once got a piglet for a Christmas dinner from a customer.

As it didn’t fit in the oven at home, my father took it to the bakery, which charged cheap to bake Christmas dishes.

At night, when he went to take the piglet, he ended up bringing a much larger one by mistake.

But the sight of a large animal, roasted whole, with an apple tucked in its mouth, lying on the table made all the children in the house start to cry and grumble.

We ended up eating only potato salad and panettone that year. Luckily we were nice and Santa brought bicycles for everyone. So the poor pig was forgotten, much to my father’s relief, who was laughing nervously.

14 Likes

Tha’s the one thing I can’t stand about a lot of “American” food is that usage of sugar syrups to marinade… a bit of sugar to caramelize, or make a nice crust…ok, sweetnesss throughout the entire dish, count me out please.

6 Likes

I’ve never used any king of sugar (except maybe a little brown sugar) in any of my pastes or marinades. Rendell and his buyers are South St. Louis African-Americans. Everyone likes different stuff. I will say that marinating a turkey for frying does not really leave a crust like you may be thinking of. I haven’t tried Rendell’s bird, but it might not be all that sweet.

6 Likes

But why? :laughing:

10 Likes

I’ve done it a few times. Usually over the summer, or visiting my parents Camper on whatever the shit isolated beach it’s parked on. We did 1 turkey, 3 ducks, and a pile of cornish game hens for a large post Thanksgiving party one year. Only once for thanksgiving, we ended up with 2 turkeys a couple years because my sister was getting a free one from her crappy boss and did not want to keep it for later. It was typically too small to cover our large group.

So we had some “turkey off” situations where I could finally do some of the wackier preps. Like sous vide deep fried turchetta or frying.

I don’t like it. Prepping turkeys identically the fried turkey was notably drier, especially around the outer 1/4" of the breast. It was a lot moister than the archetypical over cooked bird I’m used to from childhood. It didn’t really pick up a lot of deep flavor, just sort of blah. Very good skin though. I think you get a better turkey just roasting at lower temp, and being careful to pull it at the right temp.

When we do them on the beach (and for that party) we do them buffalo style, or mess around with it a bit. We’ve done pekin duck marinade and battered and fried like fried chicken. That tends to make up for the shortcomings. And it’s a fun way to make any free or cheap turkeys you score more interesting.

It’s also made entirely from yolks rather than whole eggs, and uses cider vinegar rather than white distilled vinegar or citrus juice. American mayo tends not to contain MSG at all.

On shelf life you’re fooling yourself if you think American packaged mayo doesn’t have a near infinite shelf life. Both are pasteurized to create a shelf stable product, and both will stay good in the fridge for a very long time once opened.

Japanese mayo is pretty easy to make if anyone can’t find it.

6 Likes

Kabocha Pie just out of the oven. The house is starts to smell Thanksgivingly!

13 Likes

What no candied cherry eyes?

5 Likes