Recipes

"2T Chinese cooking wine (white wine will do)"

Have you ever done it with actual shaoxing wine?

It's a game-changer to use the real Chinese ingredients as opposed to the "Will do" substitutes. Honest.

Back to the turkey conversation. I'm not a big fan of turkey in the normal sense but I freaking LOVE "gobble poppers".

Look it up on youtube. Tons of recipes out there. Most are using wild turkey but store bought works as well. They are a bit of work but well worth it.

General Gao’s Chicken

Batter —

l egg

1/4 cup beer

2T light soy sauce

1/4 cup cornstarch

1/2t baking powder

1/2t salt

1/4t white pepper

Sauce —

1/2 cup chicken broth or stock

5 cloves minced garlic

1T minced ginger root

1T cider vinegar

3T brown sugar

4T light soy sauce

2T Chinese cooking wine (white wine will do)

Mix seperately 2 t cornstarch and 1 t sesame oil to thicken sauce

Misc Ingredients —

2 whole chicken breasts (~1.5 Ibs)

6 dried hot chile peppers (+/- to suit tastes)

3 scallions (chopped ~1/4”)

1/2 cup flour

1/2 cup corn starch

Directions —

Make batter, cut chicken breasts in ~1”pieces and add to batter. Refrigerate for ~30 min.

Mix sauce and prep (chop) scallions.

Mix 1/2 cup flour and 1/2 cup cornstarch in re-sealable plastic bag and toss battered chicken in to coat.

Fry (deep or wok) chicken till golden brown. Place chicken in bowl in oven on low to keep warm.

In clean hotwok add ~2T vegetable oil. Add dried chile peppers (broken in half) to hot oil and stir till blackened.

WARNING: Try not to let the oil get smoking hot as you WILL make hot pepper fumes.
Once peppers are blackened add sauce and bring to boil. Add thickener (corn starch/sesame oil) to sauce and stir
constantly till thickened. Add chicken nuggets to sauce and toss to coat. Serve immediately.
This dish is usually served with or on rice; either white or brown. Serves 3-4.

Fried turkey was great for keeping the kitchen from getting too hot when we lived in Florida - and the guys were all comfortable outside making sure they didn't catch the neighborhood on fire. ;-)

But now I'm a fan of brining and the oven warming the kitchen - I had to break out my long johns this week!

If one had to do a lot of turkey for a very large crowd, frying would make a lot of sense. Especially in something like a restaurant situation where you had staggered eatting times. The fried turkey I had in the past was really good and, as I recall, it only takes about an hour to cook a 16 lb bird.

I like fried turkey, but we do a big Thanksgiving lunch at work every year. Every year, Im in charge of the turkeys. So last Thurs I fried 8 turkeys, had 4 fryers going.

After doing all that every year, I never feel like frying for actual thanksgiving at home ... thank goodness the wife is taking care of the turkey today.

I have found that brining the bird does not necessitate it being cooked upside down to preserve the moisture and flavor of the breast meat. So I get the best of both worlds - flavorful and juicy with the glorious crispy skin on the breast, plus it just makes for better presentation.

VA - I see no reason why you couldn't brine and do breast side down, though you may not need to. The biggest thing with cooking turkeys is just using a meat thermometer and not that pop-up timer.

"We have a couple of small birds I'll be trying to smoke."

Smoked turkey? What time should we be there? :-)

I had never heard of doing a turkey breast side down. Some day we'll have to try that, but so far boobies up has worked for us. A paper bag is helpful for really ugly ones. My dad taught me that years ago. I use that technique occasionally.

We have a couple of small birds I'll be trying to smoke. I've never heard of breast down or fat soaked cheese cloth. Sounds interesting.

I used to do breast-side down, but converted years ago to brining. It has been a game-changer.

I've been doing breast side down for years. I wrap the bird in fat soaked cheesecloth first, because that also cuts down on the amount of basting required and then flip it and remove the cheesecloth for the last half hour or so.

Melvin - "Turkey breast side down and flip upright for the last 30 - 45 minutes is not uncommon."

For a long as this idea has been around, I'm still surprised at the number of people I've talked to that don't know about it.

Turkey breast side down and flip upright for the last 30 - 45 minutes is not uncommon. But, you have to be careful when trying to 'flip the bird!'

Lol!

I kinda like DB's tip. The new vacuum sealer has a function for sealing "wet" items. I'm gonna try it out.

More of a process than a recipe, but for the last 10 years or so we've been cooking our turkey breast side down. The idea is that the juices from the fattier and juicier dark meat keep the breast moister, and the bonier back helps protect the bird from overcooking.

We do turn the bird over for the last 40 mins or so to get crispy brown skin. Also, if you wait for one of those pop-up timers to tell you your bird is done, there is a very good chance that it is over done. We usually pull our bird out at ~165F and cover it and let it sit and rise to the 170F needed to consider it done.

If you've not tried cooking a turkey this way, it's worth trying.

Cooking tip:

If you are tired of boiling water every time you want to make pasta, boil several gallons at the beginning of the week, and freeze some for later.

I didn't make note of the website when I found the squash casserole recipe I use to keep from drowning in yellow squash - but this one is close. Mine only calls for half as much stuffing and butter. And the two pounds of squash that mine calls for is probably about eight cups sliced thickly (1/2" - 5/8").

www DOT thekitchenismyplayground DOT com/2021/07/favorite-summer-squash-casserole.html

Sometimes I make one 9x13 pan and we eat it over several days. And sometimes I split it into two 8x8 foil pans with foil lids that go in the freezer after baking for home grown goodness in the middle of winter. I aim for a dozen 8x8 pans in the freezer each year - and would do a few more if we had a bigger freezer!

I tried heating up a lentil wrap before use and it was a little better than when it was cold, but I think the better way to do it is to just make the batter and keep it in the frig and make them as needed. Perhaps not refrigerating them may help, but there are no preservatives in them so not sure how long they'd last otherwise.

One thing that I just noticed. I just went to use one as a wrap. It was very flexible/durable when freshly made, but I put it in the frig in a ziploc bag and it broke when folding it.

Next time I'll try heating it up, and if that doesn't do it, just pre-make the batter and keep it in the frig and make them as I need them.

We bought dried lentals and ground them to a powder as our flour. You're right in that it doesn't have much of its own flavor, except that there was an undertone of lental flavor. The flat bread we made was probably quite healthy. But after dunking it in melted cheese infused with a generous portion of cooked and crumbled pan sausage, I question how healthy the meal ended up being. <chuckling>

I tried the red lentil flat bread I mentioned earlier and they came out well. Next time I will use a larger pan so I can do larger flat breads. I did not add any seasoning, so they could be used as sweet or savory.

I tried one with a little butter/oil, cheese, and powdered ranch on it (what I put on my popcorn at times) and it was good, but I think I need to cook them slightly longer. They don't have a lot of flavor on their own but they so a good job of taking on the flavor of whatever you put on them.

Aside from them being healthier in many ways vs my usual low-carb wraps ($5 for 6 wraps), the cost is a fraction of the store bought ones. It's about $0.50 for a cup of lentils and water is the only other ingredient. A cup of red lentils made 6 wraps about 9" in diameter. I will defnitely be doing these again. You do need a good non-stick pan to make these.

I'll likely experiment with them by adding flax seed meal and maybe a little baking powder to see it's effect. I rarely do sweet stuff, so may try adding some seasonings/herbs for additional flavor. Perhaps try some various Mrs Dash blends.

That's generally how we start an experiment. Try a small batch to see how we like it. Then try small batches with adjustments to see if we get something better.

The low-carb wraps I mentioned are only low-carb by virtue of having a bunch of fiber added. It's unclear from the ingredient list where/how they're gettting 30 g's of fiber in a wrap that contains 33 g of carbs.

I'm also not sure why you couldn't just add a leavening agent to this mix. Many breads use yeast, which I think would require sugar to work, but baking powder does not. As usual, when I do try this I'll try it as-is, then tweak it more to my liking.

We haven't tried the recipe you described. But we have made different types of breads by making flour from grinding the dried beans. The breads were unleavened, but they were tasty and proved the concept.