Let's Talk Turkey

Believe it or not, for those of us in the United States, Thanksgiving is just a couple of weeks away. Thankfulness right now is probably a tough subject for a little under half the people in the US who just watched a convicted felon and sexual predator get elected to the highest office in the country. While it's easy to be thankful to live in a country that still offers opportunity and freedom (on some level), it's hard to be happy about the obvious fact that there is still so much hate and apathy within our states and hometowns.

But this isn't a post about politics.

Instead, it's a post about something I enjoy exponentially more than politics... food.

A week or two ago @diamonddave invited @mrsbozz and I to a dinner to show appreciation to his wife who has been really living up to her marriage vows taking care of him while he is recovering from a multitude of surgeries and health issues. I remember sitting in the hospital with her when she was trying to decide if she should take him off life support or wait a little longer. I can't even imagine.

The fact that he is still with us and thriving on many levels is a miracle. Sometimes miracles come with a cost, and like I said, "in sickness and in health" has become a very real thing for this family.

We went to a a local steakhouse called Lucky's that @mrsbozz and I have visited on several occasions. I typically try to avoid getting steak at places like this because I am always disappointed versus what I can grill myself at home. On this day, I decided to take a different approach and I got a dish I have never ordered before. It was called the "Bourbon Steak" and it consisted of New York Strip tips in a bourbon sauce with mushrooms over garlic mashed potatoes.

It was absolutely fantastic and might just be a new favorite for me. The potatoes were silky smooth, when I offered some to @mrsbozz she asked if they were as good as hers. I fumbled through some kind of "of course not honey" reply, then she took a bite and exclaimed "oh, those are good". The bourbon sauce was a little sweet, but also rich. Just ask @slobberchops how important a good sauce is. This dish was absolute perfection!

I paired it with a side of brussels sprouts with bacon, cheese, and a balsamic vinegar glaze. They were pretty amazing, but not quite as good as my wife's sprouts that she sautes in honey and spicy brown mustard.

I ended up eating about half of each dish and then I took the rest home to have as leftovers for lunch at work. It was a pretty amazing meal.

Earlier in the week, I got to play with a new toy I picked up. Back on Father's Day, @mrsbozz had her mom and dad over to celebrate her father. I think one of her brothers and his family came too, but everyone else was busy. It was a small gathering, so I threw a boneless skinless turkey breast on the grill and cooked it with some apple and hickory smoke for about two hours.

Everyone raved about the turkey and how good it was. I call it smoked turkey, but as I said, I don't cook it low and slow like you would with real smoked meat. Instead, I kind of bake it hot and fast by moving the coals to one side of the grill and throwing the turkey on the other side.

For labor day they had me do three of them at a time to feed a larger group. I realized at that time, my old grilling thermometer wasn't cutting it, so at the recommendation of @themarkymark and a sweet Amazon Prime Day deal, I picked up the Chef IQ digital probe.

I used it for the first time last week when I did three more turkey breasts for the family and it work flawlessly. That's what you see in the opening photo.

The base station actually connects to the WiFi in your house and the probes communicate with the base station. Then there is an app you can install on your phone and it monitors the data coming in from the base station. With this setup I could literally start a cook and go down to the store and not worry about losing track of it. Assuming I trust my grill to hold temp while I am gone. If it doesn't, I will know that too and I can rush back.

Each probe has four sensors in it plus it measures the ambient temperature of the grill so you can see how hot your rig is running. Each of the three breasts turned out perfectly. One of them we kept for ourselves to have for dinner and lunches through the week. One of them we sent to @mrsbozz's mom and dad, and the third we dropped off to her brother.

They actually enjoy it so much that I have now been tasked with doing another batch of them for Thanksgiving dinner. Although I let them rest for quite a while after taking them off the grill, you can still see how juicy they were in the photo above.

Plus, just look at that smoke ring! It might be a little hard to see in the photo due to the lighting, but if you look closely, there is a nice pink circle on the outer edge. It's nothing too intense, as I said, just a couple of hickory and apple chunks at the beginning of the cook to impart some of that flavor. Sometimes people can go a bit overboard with the smoke flavor and it ends up leaving the meat acrid and off-putting. I've made that mistake myself in the past.

One day I'd like to try and do a full turkey on the grill. Until I get brave enough to do that, these small three pound breasts fit the bill. The only thing they are missing is dark meat if you are a dark meat lover.