Chomp!

By Ron Aiken

 

 

In our freezer was a turkey. Outside was rain, flooded roads and moisture beyond belief or recall.

Dinner was due, rain or no, and it was about to be turkey-time at the Chomp! compound.

Now, you must understand at this point that turkeys and Chomp! have a troubled history. Troubled! We just don’t mix, even though turkey basically tries to mix with everything it possibly can, like the tramp it is, whether naturally or unnaturally (turkey bacon, turkey bologna, turkey burgers, turkey milk, etc. I’m sure there is turkey milk, BTW).

So even with turkey’s loose standards, it and I were a no-go. Too much bird, too little space in the refrigerator, to much trouble to cook, too much everything. It’s precisely that level of hassle that kees the whole turkey off kitchen tables except for special occasions. (Kind of like the Cornish hen, but in reverse. The cornish hen is just too danged small to be remotely worth the trouble to bake in the oven. And the bones? Who wants a Hershey’s Kiss-amount of meat with two legbones to negotiate and dispose of? Americans do not, I can tell you. We have turkeys over here, and they’re huge and will do anything to get on your table. ANYTHING.)

So we’re making turkey. Here is that turkey.

 

This baby came in at 6.9 lbs., which was a great size for a family of five with leftovers for sandwiches.

 

After thawing out the broad – I mean, bird – I decided to get creative for the skin. Realizing that rubs really only flavor the skin and not the meat in most cooking environments where you can’t marinate for very long, I got funky.

As it happened we’d just made cookies a bit earlier in the day, and any good follower of Chomp! knows that Chomp! uses jalapeños in his cookies, with jalapeño and shaved coconut being a given.

With diced jalapeños handy, see below…

 

This size is about right if you dare to make this rub, because what you want out of it are the oils, not the skin. With small bits of pepper skin to work with it’s much easier to grind it down.

 

I added it to my handy mortar and pestle along with the following ingredients.

 

You can use any variety of spices you like, but these were on-hand and worked great for Chomp!

 

Just eyeballing how much would make enough to coat the turkey, I set about the work of crushing all the ingredients into a fine consistency, which I then applied to the turkey using the honey as a glaze, though the work was messy and it didn’t stick exactly as I’d hoped. But still, it got the job done.

Into the oven at 350 degrees it went, and three hours later out this beauty came:

 

Now I realize the rub isn’t the most appealing to the eye as it kind of clotted on me, but let me just tell you flavor is what matters, OK?

 

And the flavor was phenomenal. Truly, I jest not at all. The bird was incredibly moist; far and away the juiciest turkey I’ve ever made. And the skin? Insanely good. Not hot, just deep, developed, passionate. And it did make it through to the white meat if only by virtue of the juices flowing to the bottom of the pan and pouring those juices onto the meat.

In short, it was a turkey dinner in three hours that probably took 15 minutes to prepare. If you’re like Chomp! at all, you often have tough decisions on how to cook the same things, the same proteins especially, differently for your children to keep them excited about the nutrition you are so generously providing. I confess that when doing so at the grocery store I NEVER think of buying a turkey. Now, however, I will, because I AM THE MASTER OF THAT BIRD AND NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND, GOT IT?

Let me know how it works out for you, OK? Can’t wait to talk to you next week. Til then!

 

 

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