Put Buddy Through His Paces Today

[mrbill]

Invited my mom over to watch football today and decided to give Buddy a work out.

First cook(lunch) was pretty simple. Just burgers and bbq wings. Only one shot of this cook, burgers on the flip and wings about to come off. Bbq sauce was homemade from scratch.



Dinner was a different story. Did my first spatchcocked chicken, my first fatty and my now standard grill/mashed taters. Fatty consisted of ground turkey breast that had been mixed with Simply Marvelous Sweet and Spicy then stuffed. I'll make you wait to find out what it was stuffed with. The chicken was spatchcocked, then brined in water/salt/lemon juice. After the brine it was patted dry and dusted w/some more Sweet and Spicy. Wasn't sure how the fatty would hold together since it consisted of ground turkey breast on the outside, so I wrapped it in foil for the first several minutes of the cook until the meat firmed up. I also poked several holes in the foil to allow for fat to escape and flavor to enter. Taters were my usual grilled spuds then mashed(skin on) w/sour cream/butter and cheese.

So, here we go.

Chicken and foil wrapped fatty going on



Foil off the fatty. The glare off the white meat makes it hard to tell. You can also see some of the rub coloring the meat.



Taters goin on. Just washed em and tossed em on, no other treatment.



Fatty sliced up. What you see in the center is deer sausage. That's right, I went double meat on my first fatty!



Chicken quartered. Sorry about the blur.



Taters all mashed up



The plate. Sorry about the orientation. Top left is the taters, middle is gravy and right is more homemade bbq sauce. Fatty slices and chicken on bottom.



Lesson learned, ground turkey cooks much faster than ground beef/sausage. I based it's cooking time off of those and the turkey section was overdone and dry. The gravy helped, but next time if I use turkey, I'll shorten the cook a bit. Other than that, everything is great!

[kendoll]

Looks pretty damn good from where I'm sitting. Chicken looks great, kudos on jumping right in with both feet on the fatty!

Ken

[1buckie]

   "That's right, I went double meat on my first fatty! "

Dang straight ya did !!!!


Great move in the ever-shifting Weber kettle chess game........


All looks real good from over here......a good move to block the drying out thing w/ ground turkey is to add uncased turkey sausage, or even an Italian pork sausage....one part to say, three of the standard turkey......if that still doesn't do it, wrap the bugger in BACON !!!!!!

[Chasing_smoke]

Mrbill that looks great! I think I'm going to fire up an 18 tomorrow. I forget that you can cook a ton of food on an 18!

[MacEggs]

That looks awesome, mrbill!  Buddy got a good workout,eh?!!

I'm still learning the ropes on my 18, but it's a lot of fun. 

[mrbill]

Thanks folks!

Ken and Buckie- Really liked the fatty other than being overdone/dry. I'll definitely do it again though.

CS and Mac- The 18's are great for avg sized family cooking. The chicken/tater/fatty cook fed 3 adults w/enough leftovers for near 3 work lunches for me w/just some left over brown rice added.

Buddy performed flawlessly. Kept the vents open but not full out between the two cooks and only added some unlit to the remaining lit from the lunch cook to do dinner.  Right now, Between Buddy and my WSM, I can easily cook for a small-med sized party and still have leftovers. Only other cooker I'd want to add would be a super cheap gas-assist performer, just for the convienience of the propane coal start and work table.

[Kilted_Griller]

Excellent cook up, mrbill!! Excellent indeed!