Pellet Fan
All Things Considered => General Discussion--Food Related => Topic started by: jdmessner on September 03, 2022, 04:23:20 PM
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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.
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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
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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!
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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!
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Can't help with the cook.... Say Happy Birthday to your mom from Canada.
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What are you stuffing the thighs with?
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What are you stuffing the thighs with?
I don't know yet.
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Mushrooms & Swiss!
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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
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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.
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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!
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You do not pound the thighs out to a uniform flatness?
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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.
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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.
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Elenis - Thanks for the suggestion, I love smoked meatloaf. My sister wants meatballs and my guess is this recipe would work well for that.
My sister had a pre-cooked beef roast in her freezer and I also have some leftover beef that will be good to use up. So, that's where the idea for the Italian Beef pinwheels came from. This should be easy to prep ahead of time and then just heat and serve the day of the party.
I was going to take some samples downstate a couple of weeks ago. Of course about halfway down I realized they were still in the freezer. So last weekend I pulled them out and experimented with them a bit. My biggest concern from my previous attempt was the lack of color for the pastry.
Also I wasn't sure if they needed to be completely or partially thawed. However, if I baked them un-thawed, they would have gone in completely frozen! For some reason it bugs me when someone says they unthawed something. I want to say: Me too, I left it in the freezer. But I digress.
I dscovered once the pinwheels are frozen on a tray, they can be stacked in a ziplock freezer bag until needed. It is almost too slick. I left some out to thaw and partially thawed the rest in the refrigerator. Before baking I brushed some with egg wash, some with butter, and kept some plain.
In the end there was not a big difference. I thought the thawed egg washed looked a little better but the thawed ones that were brushed in butter tasted a bit better. I will go with the thawed butter brushed pinwheels for the party. Hope this wasn't too drawn out or nitpicky.
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Not sure what happened with the pictures. There doesn't appear to be anything wrong when I go to post, just no pictures show up on the post. The joy of a new phone. I will see if I can readjust the settings.
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I have no idea how to help you all with the photos. I use a 3rd party and post a link, so just don't use the site to post photos. Don't even know how to post in a thread with a photo from my phone.
If there is anyone that wants to take on the roll of IT Director of PelletFan, please PM me. You get to use the G5 twice a year!
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Need to be .jpg. Forum doesn't know how to display .heic files.
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Need to be .jpg. Forum doesn't know how to display .heic files.
That makes sense. With my old phone I could post pictures directly from it. Now I guess I will need to download and convert.
The party is this weekend. Besides the pinwheels, the other thing I am doing is the twice baked salmon. I am planning on brining it.
Over the summer I got to talking with a guy who had a booth near my wife's at the Farmers Market. He sold fresh, frozen and smoked fish that came from Lake Superior. He told me to brine frozen fish while it was still frozen. It is supposed to work better and take less time. In the past I have only brined fresh salmon, so this was news to me. I guess I will give it a try and see what happens.
Elenis- by the time I got ahold of my sister to tell her I would do the meatballs, she had already purchased some frozen ones. Such is life. I do want to try your meatloaf recipe at some point soon.
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Need to be .jpg. Forum doesn't know how to display .heic files.
That makes sense. With my old phone I could post pictures directly from it. Now I guess I will need to download and convert.
I found this online; I'm assuming you have an iphone?
You can take some fantastic, high-quality photos using your iPhone camera. But unless you know how to convert HEIC to JPEG, you will have a hard time using those pics with many apps, websites and services.
An HEIC file is an image captured in HEIF (High-Efficiency Image File) format, Apple’s proprietary image file format since the iPhone 11 release in 2017. HEICs outperform JPEGs in many ways. For instance, its advanced compression methods allow higher quality images to be created in smaller file sizes than JPEG files.
However, HEIC has limited cross-platform compatibility. Learning how to convert HEIC to JPEG using different devices will allow you to use your photos anywhere.
How To Convert HEIC To JPEG On iPhone
The fastest and most straightforward way to convert HEIC to JPEG is directly from the phone. You don’t have to download anything or worry about using a third-party app.
By simply copying the photos and pasting them into your iPhone’s Files app, your device will automatically convert HEIC to JPEG.
To do so, open your Photos app and choose the pictures you want to convert. Tap Share and select Copy Photos to copy the images to your clipboard.
Next, open the Files app. Drag down from the center of the screen and tap New Folder. Then tap and hold a blank space in the folder and select Paste.
Your photos will appear in the folder, but they will now be in JPEG format. You can share them directly from this folder or move them back to Photos by selecting Share > Save Image.
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Thank you!
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Good info YLR.
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The party was yesterday. My mom was thrilled. The only problem with hosting a 90th birthday party is the number of people who are no longer with us, that you would give anything to have one more conversation with. But I guess that was actually what was special about yesterday, the conversations that were able to take place. Family and friends came from all over. There were people I had not seen in decades. While we were remembering the past, we were also able to look to the future. My son's family will be adding another branch to the family tree any day now!
I was very pleased with the way the food turned out. The Italian Beef Pinwheels were a huge hit. They were almost too simple to make. I used Louie's Italian Beef aus jus seasoning rather than making my own. It was quicker and tasted better than anything I have made.
The twice smoked salmon was also good, (even though I only smoked it once and then baked it). I did brine the filets while they were frozen. I don't think it worked very well and probably won't try that again.
Rather than using garlic bread, we toasted 2 inch rye squares in garlic butter on a griddle. Normally I would just chunk up the salmon and stir in the other ingredients. However, since we were using such small portions of bread, everything was mixed in a mixer. We used a one ounce scoop per potion and covered with grated cheese before rebaking.
I must say, even though the food was good, it paled in comparison to the birthday cake my wife made. It was a Hummingbird Cake, with bananas, pineapple and some other fruit. She used cream cheese frosting in-between the layers and butter cream frosting to ice and decorate it.
Here are a few pictures (I hope)! I took some food pictures with my old phone, so they should show up. I appreciate the detailed help and advice from yir. Actually my new phone is an android, but at some point I will try and get it figured out.
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I love how the counter matches the gravy.
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This is after they had been sitting out for a while, so the picture doesn't really do it justice.
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It all looks great, I have to admit I would probably have been waiting for people to start eating cake so I could revisit the pinwheels and salmon melts.
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All looks fantastic. Like Dave I would have definetly gone more than 1 round on the food.
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Great job JD.