In October we will be celebrating my mom's 90th birthday with an open house. Looks like the three of us kids will be in charge of the food. As it now stands, my sister has salads, sister-in-law will do sides, my wife will do a cake, and I have the main dish (I don't know why it bugs me when people say protein).

For some reason rolled flank steak and stuffed chicken thighs are what come to mind. I have had varying degrees of success with pinwheels. I love doing thighs, but have not stuffed them very often.

I am open to other ideas. Any suggestions, hints, or recipes will be appreciated. In the next week or two I hope to do some trial runs. We are anticipating  around 50 people.

First how many guess are you expecting?  Anyway as i sit out on my deck drinking wine the following came to mine debone the thighs season an wrap in bacon.  Another idea is to make Korean wings, pull pork is also good and goes along way.   Also stuffed mushrooms.  Another possibility is cedar planked salmon.  Most importantly enjoy the day and i am sure your Mother will have a ball

I don't know if you have access to sous vide, but if you do, the 2 dishes you suggested could all be cooked in advance and then grilled to finish!  I think it is a day you want to reduce as much cooking as possible and have the time for the day.  Good luck and give your Mom a hug for me!

I don't know if you have access to sous vide, but if you do, the 2 dishes you suggested could all be cooked in advance and then grilled to finish!  I think it is a day you want to reduce as much cooking as possible and have the time for the day.  Good luck and give your Mom a hug for me!

I have never done sous vide. This might be a good excuse to give it try. I can probably find someone with the equipment or break down and buy it myself. My only reluctance is that I have heard it changes the texture of the meat.

You are right, I will want to do as much ahead of time as possible, not only to enjoy the day, but because of where we are having the party. It will be at a community building (another term I dislike and have a hard time using is wedding or banquet venue. For crying out loud, it is a building, room or hall!). There is a very nice kitchen, but they don't want a lot of prep work done there.

My thought was to do the beef rolls ahead of time on the smoker and refrigerate overnight. The day of the party I will slice them and reheat them on a wire rack in a covered hotel pan with beef stock on the bottom to create steam. I have done this for similar things and it has worked well. I would do the same thing for the chicken thighs, with chicken stock.

urnmor - I think we are probably looking at around 50 people. Salmon is definitely a consideration. MikeMcQ's twice smoked salmon salad has become a staple. For some reason I have kind of lost my taste for pulled pork, I am not sure why. However, it just hit me that I could do a stuffed pork loin to compliment the beef. It is a work in progress, so we'll see where the journey goes!

 
 Can't help with the cook....    Say Happy Birthday to your mom from Canada.

What are you stuffing the thighs with?

What are you stuffing the thighs with?

I don't know yet.

Mushrooms & Swiss!

A new twist on the pinwheels. My sister told me she has one of those pre-cooked beef roasts from GFS in her freezer that I can use. I am not a big fan of those, but if it is being given to me, I figured I could come up with something.


I found a recipe for French Dip Pinwheels. It called for using croissant dough and rolling it out in a sheet. Then it is layered with thin sliced roast beef, Swiss cheese, mushrooms and onions. Roll it up and slice it like cinnamon rolls.

I did a trial run. It came out OK. I think it has potential, but there is room for improvement. I used the tube crescent roll dough. I don't ever remember using it before and I wasn't too impressed. Puff pastry might work or I could make my own. It's been 35 years since I've done it, but was pretty good at it back in the day.

The gravy was beef stock with a little Better than Bullion added, along with a little beef rub. I will keep playing around with it and see what works.


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I see you have lost your taste for pulled pork. You could buy a couple of butts and brine cure them. then smoke and make pulled ham, that could be split and served as just pulled ham or BBQ sauce added and have ham BBQ for sandwiches.

There are a few posts on here about doing it. this is mine from a while back. I made sliced ham but you would just smoke to a higher temp to pul/shred as you would for pulled pork.

https://pelletfan.com/index.php?topic=6428.msg65171#msg65171

I would try puff pastry for those pinwheels.  You use to be able to buy pre-made sheets in the grocery stores.  If not there, then often local bakeries will sell you pre-made sheets.

You also may want to buy the actual au jus packets, usually made by something like McCormack's.  To me they are just a bit hardier than a broth.

Stuffed chicken thighs were a bust. Did a test run yesterday and was not pleased with the results. They took longer than anticipated to make and I also over cooked some of them a little bit. They were not uniform in size so that contributed to the problem. I could probably fine tune it a bit and make it work, but would rather do something I don't need to fuss with as much.

I will be doing practice round number two for the pinwheels later this week. The last time I sort of threw it together to see how it might work. This time I will be paying closer attention to the dough and the gravy. I have three different groups that are willing to be guinea pigs later in the week, so it will be good to get their reactions. One of the groups is family, do I know they won't be responding just to be polite!

You do not pound the thighs out to a uniform flatness?

You do not pound the thighs out to a uniform flatness?

Yeah, I pounded them out. My problem was that I went with boneless skinless thighs. There were a few that looked beautiful the others were  small and mangled. If I went to trim them up there wouldn't be anything left! Normally it would make sense to get bone-in and trim them myself. For this event it is more time than I want to take.

Have you thought about doing some smoked meat loaf for the event?
3 pounds ground chuck
1 lb ground pork
4 slices white bread, crumbled
1/3 C whole milk
1/4 C BBQ sauce
1/4 C Worcestershire Sauce
1 medium yellow or white onion, finely chopped
2 eggs, beaten
2 T Garlic & Herb seasoning

Combine milk and bread and let it sit for 10 minutes
Mix remaining ingredients in a large bowl. Add the bread. Combine by hand.
Line a loaf pan with saran wrap. This recipe makes 2 loafs, so if you have 2 pans, do this twice.
Divide the meatloaf mixture into the 2 pans.
Place in the freezer for at least 4 hours (can leave overnight) then remove the meatloaf from
the saran wrap and paint with a binder and sprinkle some BBQ seasoning and smoke at 250 on your smoker until it hits temp.

I don't typically do anything fancy with chicken thighs to give a suggestion there unless you would be interested in doing yakitori skewers.

Have you thought about pork belly burnt ends?

Trying to think of things that people can really enjoy that don't break the bank when feeding so many and that can hold. I always liked Mississippi prime rib (smoked bologna) but that may seem to low brow for what your trying to achieve.