pseudonym of a man
Your favorite chili recipe
Fill the muffin pan with chili
Freeze
Voila! First Bubba Chili pucks!
What the heck. First Bubba comes up with chili pucks, and you’d have thought an idea like this would have come from Canada. Oh, wait this may be a million dollar idea as the puck idea sweeps across Canada. And why not expand the horizon of pucks to include, stews, soups and a ton of desert pucks.
Put your favorite chili recipe or other puck ideas in the comments.
Hasselback is a cooking term that originated in the 1700’s in a Stockholm, Sweden restaurant named Hasselbacken. Hasselback techniques are commonly used for cooking potatoes by cutting around as if an accordion, then infusing oil into the cuts this made the potatoes creamy on the inside and crispy on the outside. Now there are all sorts of dishes prepared using this process.
Here is a good way to make Hasselback Wild Turkey.
Split a wild turkey breast lengthwise leaving half the breastbone in each side. A mear clever works well for this process.
Slice cross-grain or against the bias down to the bone making each a half to one inch. Season in between cuts with salt and white pepper.
Prepare your favorite dressing/stuffing. My go to is a couple of carrots, onions, and sweet peppers chopped fine using a chef knife then cooked until soft; toss in a couple of cups of bread crumbs that have been processed fine in a food processor. Preferred seasonings salt, white pepper, sage and tarragon to taste. Work the dressing into each cut as pictured above. Bake on flat baking sheet bone side down at 350 degrees Fahrenheit until internal temperature of 155 degrees.
Remove from oven and let rest for 15 minutes. Internal temp will rise another 10 to 15 degrees as the juices set up in the meat fibers.
Use a filet knife to cut the “steaks” away from the bone for serving. Please accept my apology for not having a picture of the turkey on the dinner plate; my guests were so excited to eat this the dinner plates were snapped up as fast as I could plate the meat. Hasselback turkey turns out very juicy and fork tender.
One wild turkey tenderloin with tendons removed. Gently flatten with a smooth meat mallet.
Place in a bowl with 1 cup buttermilk and marinate overnight or for up to 2 days.
Remove from buttermilk and pat dry with paper towel. Season to taste with salt, ginger and sweet paprika.
This is good served over a bed of rice. Cook your choice of rice per the instructions for that rice. Wild rice is my preferred rice. While rice is cooking prepare the Kiev butter.
Kiev Butter
4 tablespoons butter
1 tablespoon heavy cream
1 teaspoon lemon juice
chives
dash of garlic powder
Melt butter then add cream and lemon juice stir and reheat. Add chives and garlic.
Melt a quarter cup of butter in a pan and add turkey to poach over low heat
When the turkey is done remove from the pan and place on top of rice. Pour the warm Kiev butter onto the turkey and rice. Enjoy!
Time to eat wild turkey.
One of my summertime favorites is cedar planked turkey breast. Here in Wisconsin cedar trees are considered a native invasive because they turn the soil acid and use a lot of water. Foresters encourage editing cedar out of hardwood stands this provides me with ample opportunity to acquire 10-12 inch red cedar logs which are kept under the overhang of the shed so that direct sunlight will not over dry them. When a disk of cedar is required for cooking, I saunter out, fire up the chainsaw and cut the disks about an inch thick. Unlike the over-dried, thin store-bought planking wood these fresh cut cedar disks do not require soaking.
One half wild turkey breast with the silver skin and wing tendon removed. Use a Jaccard type meat tenderizer to perforate both sides of the turkey breast to facilitate penetration of the marinade.
Marinade
Marinade the turkey overnight then drain, rinse and set aside to dry while you prepare the grill.
Place marinated turkey breast on the red cedar disk and with a closed grill cover.
Cook to an internal temperature of 165 Fahrenheit.
Remove from grill and rest for 15 minutes. Slice and serve.
The method will result in tender, moist wild turkey breast meat that can be eaten with your favorites sides or sliced thin for use in sandwiches and snacks.
Other woods can be used to plank turkeys such as oak, hickory or apple. If you don’t have a wild turkey a domestic turkey from the grocery store can be cooked using this method.
