Bear here...

Theresa and I have noticed a lot of people like our wood burning stove pages, so I have decided this blog will be about cooking a turkey in the stove. Only one slight problem. Ivy (the cat) noticed the problem before I did (kidding). (Yes, I really am kidding, we noticed at the same time.)  Anybody else notice a problem with cooking a big dang bird in a small dang stove? 
​
​What to do...  ...  ?

Time to break down the bird. (Parts is parts!) Breaking down a turkey is a lot like breaking down a chicken, only bigger (click to see instructions-scroll down the page). The breast meat (center, in the photo below) is easy to take off. The dark meat (right) tends to come off in small pieces, I have found out it is better cook it on the carcass (left).  The skin can be fried flat until crispy or used to flavor stock.

Cooking the breast meat and larger pieces of dark meat is easy as 1, 2, 3...

3. Wait with cat (while cooking meat for 1 to 3 min. on each side). Remember you want charred meat not more charcoals!

For the rest of the bird I cheated. I put the parts on the coals to get them charred then finished two different ways in a 400 degree F oven. 

First way.  I scraped all the coals off then put the carcass in a roasting pan, threw in a couple of rough chopped onions and covered them with water. 2 hrs. in the oven, let cool and strain, and I had some good stock or soup starter. I also had the patience to pull the cooked meat  from the bones to use for sandwich meat or whatever.

Second way. After scraping the coals off I covered the legs and wings with a mixture of mustard, soy sauce, oil, and chive vinegar. No need to cover the pan, just put it in the oven until it temps at 360 degrees F. (My first temp check was at 45 min.) Strip the meat from the bones and add 1/4 cup of the drippings to the meat for a stronger sauce flavor.  

Be sure to get all the meat from the bones, just sayen...

There you go...  Ways to use all the turkey and your wood burning stove. Free your inner Cook of Anarchy and you can create some nice meals.

Type at ya later...

Bear here...

It's early March. It's the middle of the week and there are wind advisories in our area. I STILL GET TO GRILL, and try a new dark beer while grilling.

I ground up 2 lbs, of tip roast with 2 heads of garlic. That got mixed with 3 lbs. of lamb burger. Grand total of 18 burgers made.

Life is good, just sayen...

​Type at ya later...

Bear here...

Last year I was inspired by our friends at Appalachia's Homestead with Patara. They do a lot of helpful videos. Apparently they had some haters who didn't like how they did their videos, but she responded with something like: "We're not professional movie people. This is who we are. Deal with it. If you think you can do better, then do better." I appreciated her attitude and courage. 

We're not trying to do "better," but we're trying to do it our way. And hopefully people will like it.

​Our website is more popular than I thought it would be (thanks everybody, we appreciate it) and I figured that people would also like to see videos of us (or of me- Theresa is camera shy and editing this). So here's our first video. It's more fun than "how to." We used it to begin learning shooting and editing techniques. 

Theresa has heard that if you want a video to go viral, it should have cats. Since we included cats, I'm thinking this should go viral. Right? Let's hope.

Theresa hopes not- she says that would be embarrassing.
Bear thinks... what are you thinking?
​
Enough of this...

Type at ya later...