Move over Mama-Splatts, the men boys are taking over the kitchen today. Not really, we are just gonna try our hand at making a Blackberry Cobbler Recipe we found and a little experiment with the Thanksgiving Turkey this year. Experiment... that doesn't sound too promising or mouth watering does it???
Welcome back to another great week of Food Flyin', meat slicin',dessert overloadin', Food Coma educing, Food Fight Friday. So if you haven't made your way through the Food Fight Arena over to the Contender Post to place your vote... Click Here Or If you are feeling a little blue and just in one of those blaah moods... Click Here Now if that doesn't make you giggle or at least grin slightly... ummmm... contact @dandays for professional help. Alright now if you all are ready let me introduce my contender for Round 71...
We kept things on a smaller scale this year, due to the health of our dog, Sadie. She is getting older and has been having a tough time getting around. We didn't want to leave here alone all day as we head out of town for Thanksgiving. So we stayed home and had a little Thanksgiving Dinner with just the 4 of us. Now just because there is only 4 of us doesn't mean we are cutting back on the food... nope not around this place. first lets get this Turkey going because it is going to take the longest. The prep time takes a while and so does the cook time.
The Apple Turkey Experiement
Nobody wants a dry turkey, that is if you managed not to burn it. The best way to keep that tasty Turkey meat moist is by brining the whole turkey prior to cooking. I typically brine a turkey over night in a cold saltwater brine with some various spices and seasonings. This year I had something I wanted to try, an Apple Brine. So when I was at the store picking up some last minute groceries before the huge influx of people come raiding the stores, I grabbed some local Fuji Apples.
Now I want a concentrated apple juice and that is why I am going to use my juicer to juice these apples. I don't think just a store bought apple juice will provide that intense apple flavor I am needing for this brine.
I got about 2 quarts of concentrated freshly made apple juice from those apples. This will be added to the saltwater that I made in a big pot on the stove. There needs to be enough salt in the water so a raw egg will float. Slightly heating the water will help dissolve the salt. Now I don't measure how much salt, I just keep adding it in and stirring to dissolve it. Then place a raw egg in the water to see if it floats.
As you let the salt water cool, get your turkey ready for it overnight bath I this potentially tasty apple brine. Give the turkey a good rinse and pull the goody bag and gizzard out from the inside. I use a 5 gallon bucket lined with at brine bag when I brine my turkeys. They work great. The bucket had a handle to carry it out to the cold garage and the brine bags have a zip loc top on them. First I added the 2 quarts of apple juice into the brine bag.
Then add the cooled salt water and place the turkey in the apple brine. Now if the turkey isn't all the way submerged, just add water until it is. Just for some added flavor I threw in some Applewood season into the brine also. Then zip it shut and set it in the garage overnight.
Up an attem bright and early!! I will be cooking this turkey on my Green Mountain Pellet grill and it is gonna take some time. 8 hours @ a temp of 185 F then approximately another 2 or more hours @ 275 F. This is literally an all day event when it comes to smokin' and cookin' a turkey.
Pull the turkey out of the brine and pat dry. Then I seasoned it up with some more of the Applewood seasoning. Take a wooden spoon and separate the skin from the breasts and spread the seasons all over the breast meat under the skin.
Then season up the rest of the turkey liberally. Make sure to get seasoning in every little nook and cranny
With the BBQ heated up to 185 F, I placed the turkey breast side down in a baking pan. I just pick up a cheap $5 pan from the store because most likely you are not going to want to clean up this pan after this. About every hour I sprayed the turkey down with apple juice to keep the skin moist. I put the turkey on the grill at 6 am so hopefully the timing works out... but it probably wont so I am not goin to get my hopes up. Now I just let the grill do its thing and add some smoky flavor to this Apple Brined Turkey.
So while that experimental turkey is smoking away on the Green Mountain Grill, @lil-splatts and I try our hand at a little dessert makin'. We bought this recipe book from one of the local college kids going door to door to help with tuition. Up until this point we have never made a recipe from it.
After thumbing through pages of salads and entrees we hit the dessert section of the book. Well would you look at that... A recipe involving blackberries. That seems to be just what we are looking for, considering I have 5 - 1 gallon Ziploc bags full of frozen blackberries from this years garden.
Blackberry Cobbler... don't mind if I do. Would you look at that? We already have all the ingredients, besides some vanilla bean ice cream to throw on top... OMG I can't wait!!
I tell you what, this recipe was so stinkin' easy even a Lineman could... nevermind. Simply mix up the Blackberries and a few of the ingredients to make the main "filling" and dump it into a baking pan
Then mix up the ingredients for the crumble topping and layer over the top. Then bake at 350 F for 30 minutes or until the top has become slightly toasted.
I do have to say, the boys of the Splatts house seemed to have nailed it on that one. I might just make another for fun later on this weekend. This literally took 10 minutes to put together... that is my kind of recipe.
So after making the blackberry cobbler @lil-splatts and I ventured out into the frigid temps to hit up the local skate part for a quick scootin' session. I tend to steal his scooter every now and again and attempt some sweet tricks. Attmept is the key word here.
I did manage to get in a nice bunny hop followed up by a partial back/sideflip thingy where you land on you elbow and hip. Now this is a very technical trick and shouldn't be attempted by the novice scooter rider. It should bruise up nicely. To think, he wants me to get a "Pro" Scooter and start scootering with him... maybe... just maybe...
Once our faces became numb and @lil-splatts couldn't feel his toes anymore, we headed home. Shortly after getting home it was time to crank up the heat on the Turkey. So I flipped the turkey over to breast side up and covered it while the temperature increased to 275 F and stabilized. After about 10 minutes I removed the foil and continued to cook the turkey until the internal temp on the breast reached 160 F. This seemed to take F-O-R-E-V-E-R !!!! Like I mentioned before about the timing... ya this isn't working out too well. While we waited and waited for the turkey to cook we munched on a bunch of veggies from the veggie trey Mama-Splatts made earlier in the day. We waited and we waited some more...
source
Finally It's Done!!
Green Mountain Grill
Now it is time for the test. I really hope all this prep work was worth it and that Apple brine takes this turkey to the next level of flavor. Ok before I show you the Thanksgiving dinner plates lets take a peak at the turkey after carving off one side of the breasts. Can you see the pink coloring on the outer edge? That is that smoke from the grill getting the smoky flavor into the meat. The meat was buttery soft to cut into and I am really glad I had a sharp knife.
So we just stuck with the traditional - Mashed Potatoes, Stuffing, Corn, Green Beans, and a Roll of sorts. We didn't do a ham because we felt we would end up wasting a bunch of food that way. After sampling everything a few more times than I should have dished up my plate. I was beginning to think this was round number 2 but I had only dished up once????
Now Mama-Splatts knows how to take it to the next level. She loaded up her roll with a scoop of mashed potatoes, some stuffing, and a few pieces of turkey. Now that is what I call a Thanksgiving Sandwich.
Ok I am gonna go ahead and advise everyone cooking a Turkey next year. Do the Apple Brine!!! Combined with the spraying of apple juice during the cooking it added a sweet taste to the turkey. The turkey wasn't dry at all and the overall flavor was... Amazing I think I just found my Go-To way to cook a turkey. Maybe I will try this with a chicken and see how it goes. I honestly don't think just regular apple juice has enough potency to add some sweet apple flavor to the turkey meat. Maybe you could get away with the frozen apple juice concentrate, but if you have a juicer I recommend doing it the way I did it. I am going to call this Apple Brine Turkey Experiment a success and definitely one to keep in the ol' recipe memory bank.
With plates polished off and dinner being really late it didn't leave much time or room to stuff some of that tasty Blackberry cobbler down the hatch. Maybe just a couple of these little cookies treats will satisfy my sweet tooth. They aren't homemade but they are tasty I can tell you that!!
My food hit me like a ton of bricks!!! All that pre-dinner snacking came back around and took me down for the count. All it took was finding a good movie and plopping down in the corner seat of the sectional couch and it was... Lights Out - Game Over - Food Coma Engaged!!
I did manage to recover nicely and I slept like a baby... But I am feeling pretty bad about not having a big helping of he Blackberry Cobbler. Oh well I guess I will just have to have some after lunch. :) See, that is just another little something something that makes Thanksgiving so great.... Left overs!!! So for lunch I gave one of those Mama-Splatts creations a try. The Thanksgiving sandwich is what is on the menu for lunch...
Followed by...
No I am definitely not one for making up stories, this "cobbler" ended up more like a "crumble"... wait what is the difference anyway?? Who cares, all I know is I am glad I had a scoop of ice cream to sweeten this up a little bit. The blackberries made it a little more tart than I would have expected. Maybe I put too many in??? I mean, 32 oz of blackberries... pour some in.. add a little more... yep that is a Splatts 32 oz's
There you have it my Food lovin' Food Flingin' friends A Thanksgiving Snack at the Splatts house. An experiment that actually worked out great, and a dessert recipe that needs a little work. With as many blackberries as I have, I should have no problem perfecting this recipe and adding a little Splatts to the mix
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