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Not smoked, but we made our first duck for Christmas which had this honey balsamic glaze on it.....DAMN, that thing was good!

Smoked a petit jean ham for the traditional Christmas meal.



Also, the night before for Christmas eve my MIL decided to do steak and lobsters. Got some steaks and made those. Then, the MIL showed up with frozen lobster tails and asked me to cook them. Like....wtf, lady. I ain't ever cooked lobster before. But, they turned out pretty good.



ETA smoking pre-cooked hams is kind of a lot of work to get little more than a small bark and some glaze on it. But, shoot, when it's 70 degrees outside and the sun is shining, there are worse ways to spend 3-4 hours.

cardinalkarp wrote:Not smoked, but we made our first duck for Christmas which had this honey balsamic glaze on it.....DAMN, that thing was good!

Where'd you get the duck? How'd you cook it?

In my experience cooking them which consists solely of ducks shot during hunting (ie, wild ducks) they are incredibly gamey if taken past 130 degrees or so and typically require some external source of fat as they're so lean. But, then there are the restaurant ducks I've had which are nothing like the wild version.

AWvsCBsteeeerike3 wrote:

cardinalkarp wrote:Not smoked, but we made our first duck for Christmas which had this honey balsamic glaze on it.....DAMN, that thing was good!

Where'd you get the duck? How'd you cook it?

Got the duck from Whole Foods. It was a 6 lb'er so not too big. We cooked it in the oven (roasting pan).....we did it for 15 min at 425 and then lowered it to 350 and went for another hour (but we probably could have went down to 45 min). We then began basting it w/ mixture of a 1/2 cup of balsamic vinegar (Botte Piccola) and the juice of 1 lemon every 10 minutes for 30 minutes and then w/ the remaining balsamic/lemon mixture (about 3 tablespoons) added about a 1/4 cup of honey to that basting again every 10 min for 30 minutes.....then let it rest for 10 minutes.

It had an amazing flavor and the fat would literally melt in your mouth.

That sounds delicious! Why do you say maybe cook it at 350 for 45 minutes instead of 1 hour?

AWvsCBsteeeerike3 wrote:That sounds delicious! Why do you say maybe cook it at 350 for 45 minutes instead of 1 hour?

Well, w/ duck being able to be eaten medium rare it could've easily went 15 less minutes w/o it being in any danger of being underdone.

AWvsCBsteeeerike3 wrote:Smoked a petit jean ham for the traditional Christmas meal.



Also, the night before for Christmas eve my MIL decided to do steak and lobsters. Got some steaks and made those. Then, the MIL showed up with frozen lobster tails and asked me to cook them. Like....wtf, lady. I ain't ever cooked lobster before. But, they turned out pretty good.



ETA smoking pre-cooked hams is kind of a lot of work to get little more than a small bark and some glaze on it. But, shoot, when it's 70 degrees outside and the sun is shining, there are worse ways to spend 3-4 hours.

Gosh, your MIL sounds awesome. i hope your crockpot could handle all that

Lol yeah thank goodness for the crockpot.

dan patrick show is doing a "meat madness" where viewers cover songs and incorporate meat and traeger grill...and with some dan patrick show lore, i guess? i've been watching the show live since working at home. anyways, they allow viewing voting for first round, i think, so if you need somethign to do



http://www.danpatrick.com/meatbracket/

Yall,

Its a [expletive] time in the world right now, no doubt. No doubt.

But, [expletive], we can put our kids to work doing what we once reserved for ourselves as an excuse to drink beer and bull [expletive]. Further, the meat we'd be cooking is the stuff no one wants in the supermarkets during these trying times.

So, my plan on not this monday, but the monday after that is to get little AW to cook a smoked turkey. I'll carve it. And then he can take the carcass and make a big chicken (aka turkey) stock. This sounds like one of the best, nay, the best daddy day care classes of all time.