Professional Left Podcast #677

“Fuck the Fucking Yankees!”  -- Steve Gilliard

 

Don't forget to visit our website -- http://www.proleftpod.com -- for all those sweet bells and whistles:  there are links to donate to our podcast work at that site, as well as links to our swingin' Zazzle merch store,  our respective blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Kittehs! and much more. Many thanks once again to @theologop for building it all for us!

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The Professional Left is brought to you by our wholly imaginary "sponsors" and real listeners like you!

Plus, today only, for our fellow veterans of Thee Olde Days, the late Steve Gilliard's very own receipt for Beer-Can Turkey.

Enjoy, bon appetit and Fuck the Fucking Yankees!

There are a hundred debates about what makes a great Turkey, brining, frying, injecting. 

Well, this is the place to debate the great turkey issues of the day. 

Beer Can Turkey

Last  year, I prepared a Classic Roast Turkey. This year I wanted to provide  another variation on turkey and had decided on smoking the turkey. When I  received my September 2005 issue of Cook's Country Magazine and found  an article featuring Beer-Can Chicken, I decided to modify that recipe  to work for a turkey.

The use of a beer can inserted into a  chicken is an old barbeque trick to provide flavored steam to the inside  of the chicken as it cooks. At the same time, the beer supposedly adds  flavor to the chicken. Problem is, I don't quite buy it. If the beer is  giving off steam, then most of that steam is just going to be water...  most of the beer flavor will just be concentrating in the can. However,  it seems that it would be sacrilegious if I used the beer can but left  out the beer.

The first step is to brine the turkey. Find a  non-reactive (polycarbonate plastic, glass, or stainless steel)  container large enough to hold the turkey. Prepare a brining solution of  1 cup table salt to 1 gallon water and soak the turkey in the solution  in the refrigerator for four to six hours. (If your turkey has been  infused with a solution, then reduce the salt content in your brine or  just soak it in a container filled with plain water.)

Pour  out the brining solution and rinse the turkey. One convenient way to do  this is to position a rack in the sink and place the turkey on the rack  to rinse. After the turkey has been rinsed, let it dry by placing it on a  rack on a sheet pan in the refrigerator overnight (or for eight hours).  Alternatively, use a blow drier on cool setting (no heat) to blow over  the skin of the turkey until dry.

In order to prepare beer  can turkey, a beer can is necessary. However, a normal 12-oz. beer can,  perfect for a chicken, is a bit too small for the large cavity of a  turkey. At my local convenience store, I found this 24 oz. micro-keg  shaped can of Heineken. It looked to be about the right size, so I  bought it.

After pouring the beer into another container (a  large measuring cup), remove the top of the can. I used an OXO Good  Grips can opener to cleanly remove the top (it took only one pass).  Removing the top provides enough surface area from which the steam can  rise. The small opening made by the pop top just isn't enough of an  opening to effectively provide moisture to the turkey.

Deposit  six bay leaves (broken up) and two teaspoons dried thyme into the can.  Unlike the beer, the herbs will provide noticeable flavor and aroma  while the steam helps keep the turkey moist during it's long cooking  process.

Soak a cup of hickory wood chips in some water.

Prepare  a spice rub by combining two tablespoons brown sugar, two tablespoons  paprika, one tablespoon kosher salt, one tablespoon black pepper, and  one teaspoon cayenne pepper. Mix the spice rub well.

Rub the  spice rub over the entire exterior of the turkey. Loosen the skin over  the breasts and thighs and rub the spices under the skin. Finally, rub  the remaining spice rub inside the cavity of the turkey.

Pour  half the beer back into the open beer can (reserving half for your  drinking pleasure). Not pouring all the beer back reduces the risk of  spilling as you transport the turkey to and from the grill. Lift the  turkey up and lower it onto the beer can.

Place the turkey on  the grill. If using a gas grill, position the turkey over one burner,  away from the other burners. Turn the burner under the turkey off and  turn the other burners on low. If using a charcoal grill, start the  charcoals (you'll need a couple batches of about 100 briquettes each  over the course of the smoking). When they're ready, push them to the  outer edges of the grill leaving the center available for the turkey.  Make a container with aluminum foil (or use a metal wood chip tray) and  fill it with the wood chips that were soaking in water. Place the  container over the other burner or on the hot coals. My grill was not  large enough to cover the turkey without the lid touching it, so I  placed a V rack in the middle to prop up the lid. I also inserted a  Polder Cooking Thermometer into a thigh to track the temperature of the  turkey.

Close the lid of the grill. If the turkey is too tall  for your grill lid, find a way to prop open the lid just enough (so the  lid is mostly closed, but not touching the bird). Then use heavy duty  aluminum foil to cover the gap that's left. The aluminum foil lets out a  lot of heat, but will help keep the smoke in long enough to flavor the  turkey.

The actual cooking of the turkey is a bit finicky and  has a lot to do with your grill and how much cooling air is getting  into the grill from the slightly open lid. If you didn't need to prop  open the lid of your gas grill, keep the burners on low. However, if you  did need to prop open the lid, you might need to turn up the heat to  compensate for the heat loss? Don't turn on the burner underneath the  turkey - we want to cook it with indirect heat. If using charcoal, after  the first one and a half to two hours, you'll need to start a new batch  of charcoal and replace the original coals as they lose heat.

Halfway through the cooking, about two hours, rotate the turkey to allow even cooking.

When  the thigh meat reaches 160°F (71°C) (about 4-1/2 hours in my example),  prepare a simple glaze with two tablespoons brown sugar, two tablespoons  ketchup, two tablespoons distilled white vinegar, two tablespoons beer,  and two teaspoons of hot sauce (I prefer Frank's RedHot Original Hot  Sauce). Brush the glaze onto the turkey and cover. After five minutes,  brush on another layer of glaze and allow it to cook until the thigh  meat registers 170°F (77°C). If you don't have a thermometer, at least  poke the turkey with a skewer to see if the juices run clear. If the  fluid that comes out contains traces of blood, continue to cook the  turkey

#GivingTuesday

#GivingTuesday is...

...a global day dedicated to giving back. On Tuesday, December 2, 2014, charities, families, businesses, community centers, and students around the world will come together for one common purpose: to celebrate generosity and to give.

It’s a simple idea. Just find a way for your family, your community, your company or your organization to come together to give something more. Then tell everyone you can about how you are giving. Join us and be a part of a global celebration of a new tradition of generosity.

This year I would like to directing your attention to the The Hope Institute's #GivingTuesday campaign.  At Hope, they provide 24/7 care for kids with cognitive and physical disabilities -- especially kids with Autism Spectrum Disorders.  They are not a giant, international charity.  Instead, they have been quietly providing kids from all over Illinois -- many of whom are profoundly challenged -- with amazing, compassionate care for over 50 years.

It's a cause that is very dear to me --

-- so if you are inclined to give this Tuesday, I would strongly urge you give to Hope.

And tell 'em "DG sent me".

The link is here. 

Regular posting will continue as usual, but I'll be keeping this one pinned to the top of the blog until #GivingTuesday is over.

Thanks!

Professional Left Podcast #260

Once again, thanks to Kevin for our promo video!

"Happy Thanksgiving Citizens!"

--  The Professional Left

Links:

• .#GivingTuesday:  The Hope Institute, Springfield IL -- Tell 'em "DG Sent Me"
• Chris Hayes:  Mo Brooks can’t hear “Reagan” hears “Clinton”
• PBS Newshour:  Ruth Marcus coddles David Brooks

Da' money goes here:

Dear Conservatives

As you lurch wildly back and forth between fetishistic obsession with overwhelming firepower and ominous yawping about "Second Amendment remedies" every time anyone from the gummint looks at you funny ...and a smirking certainty that any unarmed black kid in America who is gunned down by any cop or wannabe cop somehow "had it coming"...I know how reeeeeeally hard your have been trying to forget all about those overtly seditious and deeply deranged mash notes you wrote during your torrid three-way with Sean Hannity and Klavern Bundy last Spring.

But we didn't forget.

In fact, the minute you bring up "Ferguson" at Thanksgiving, expect to hear us repeat -- over and over again, very loudly -- "Cliven Bundy".

Cliven Bundy.

Cliven Bundy.

Where was all you hatred of moochers when the moocher was Cliven Bundy?

Where was all your "If you act in any way that any cop or wannabe cop might interpret as in any way disrespectful or intimidating  -- even if you're unarmed -- you deserve what you get!" moralizing it was Cliven Bundy and his merry band of armed bigots?

We don't expect and answer, any more than we have ever really expected you to answer any of the other hundreds of deeply embarrassing questions stemming from all those bedrock moral beliefs you pretended to have under Clinton...which you then summarily jettisoned under Bush...and then miraculously rediscovered under Obama.  

And frankly, we'd all really rather just spend a peaceful holiday sharing stories and memories of family and friends, both here and gone. 

But if you insist on going there, expect us to make you regret it.

Nothing Says "Thanksgiving"

Like the great WKRP turkey drop.

Oh the humanity!

In The End, The GOP Failed To Learn

The most basic Thanksgiving lesson of all.

Turkeys.

Can't.

Fly.

A Note to my Commenters

First, thanks more than I can say for your lively and thoughtful contributions below-decks and via email. I don't say that nearly often enough, but I mean it most sincerely.

Second, in the big, wide world of the internet I have found you can save yourself a lot of typing if you ignore the Dementor Trolls: the ones who only show up when they can feed off of the disappointment of others, reliably counsel nothing but hopelessness, and speak in declarative sentences about things they cannot possibly know about.

They haz a bottomless sad and they want you to haz it too.

However, thirdly, the way I run this bar, anyone can run their mouth as they like until they make threats or get on my nerves. Then...


This is how I was taught, and sadly it seems to have become ever more anomalous as ever more of the blogosphere turns into a high school cafeteria purity ball (The outraged!sellout! finger-wagging I got for dinging a couple of prominent lefty bloggers once or twice out of the nearly 3,000 posts I've done was hilarious: as fine and silly a Discommendation


as I could have ever hoped for :-)

Lastly, as regards, President Obama's tax swap-o-rama, I have no idea if the deal he cut in secret with the GOP was the very best deal possible. I'm pretty sure it wasn't. However my anger with President Obama doesn't come from any mystical insight into his "real" sinister motives which for some reason I and only I possess.

(Dude! He's controlled by aliens! How blind can you be!)

No, I'm incredibly pissed for the simple reason that his statements fail the test of their own internal logic so laughably that it insults my intelligence.

Because, Mr. President, if you really believe -- as we do -- that Republicans are hostage-taking thugs you would speak and act accordingly.

But instead, your Administration's reflex action right along (Van Jones, Shirley Sherrod, public option, bankster bailout, etc.) has been, when in doubt, mollify the hostage-taking thugs on the Right (because you fear them) and then whine that the Left is unreasonable for getting pissed off that you are mollify the hostage-taking thugs on the Right (because you does not respect us.)

And, so when your actions of conciliation and appeasement clearly belie your words of condemnation (and when your reaction to being called out by your supporters for this glaring dissonance between word and deed is to lash out at those supporters) then you forfeit your right to be surprised when we start to doubt your motives or lose faith in your capacity to do the very hard job we hired you to do.

The Thanksgiving Classic

- Watch more Videos at Vodpod.

Christmas may have the best songs, movies and best catch-phrases (from "God bless us, every one!" to "Merry Christmas, Charlie Brown!"), may spring from the superior creation myth, may have the most commercially perfect central character as its front man, and may come with the highest probability of drunken office career suicide and/or sexual harassment lawsuits...

...but Thanksgiving will always have this heartwarming holiday classic about one visionary man, some turkeys, and the laws of physics.

Beer Can Turkey Redux

In the castle kitchen, curled up behind a hodgepodge of tea boxes, is a small collection of cookbooks which have come down to me as part of my ancestral legacy.

From the Presbyterian classic "Mix, Munch and Marinade" to my Mom's own, handmade collection for her oven-challenged son, I've got 'em all, people!

This, however, is not one of those.
Those are for closers.
Only.

This is the late Steve Gilliard's famous Beer Can Chicken recipe which he re-purposed for the Meleagris gallopavo and republished on the "The News Blog Food Blog" four years ago. And I am re-republishing it here in its entirety in part because of a fine conversation I had last night with a friend of mine who is an up-and-coming Chicago media mogul.

The subject was the trend among media owners and their marketing consultants to hunt ever more obsessively for revenue and audience by subsecting their markets ever more microscopically by age, race, ethnicity, faith, gender, sexual orientation, class, political stance, sumptuary code, and so on. And that while inclusiveness as a general principle is certainly a fine thing, becoming too fixated on matching demographics with time slots or column inches can come at the expense of forgetting the reason anyone continues to read or listen to anything: the power of the words and the skill of the writer or speaker.

The converse of this showed up in the wild, young days of the Liberal Blogosphere with people like Digby and Steve Gilliard. An amazing number of people were shocked when it turned out that the person behind the muscular writings of "Digby" was a nice, middle-aged lady. And it was a source of endless amusement among many of us that about once every week or two -- like clockwork -- some prominent troll would clamber to its hind legs and try to get up in Steve's grill about his alleged "racism" (A well-worn GOP tactic in those days was to scream at the tops of their lungs that that anybody who opposed the Iraq War [or thought Michael Steels was a fucking tool] was racist) because it was impossible for them to comprehend that the amazing, prolific, ferocious torrent of prose that came pouring out of "The News Blog" every day was written by some black guy.

Let the People of the Church say "Good writing is where you find it" :-)

And part of Steve's trick in keeping it fresh (other than sheer hard work) was mixing it up. At "The News Blog" you got politics, policy, Rudy Giuliani, tech/geek stuff, dubious dating advice, a rowdy commentariat, history (world and military), the trials and triumphs of Manchester United, Chicago-style hot dogs vs. sucky New York dogs, Yankee-hating, the NY Transit Authority news.

And cooking.

After Steve died there was a lot of very sincere and extravagant "legacy" talk: there were to be books and blogs, endowments and video games and A!Major!Motion!Picture but after awhile all of that sort of evaporated into the air (OK, some of these I made up, but I would pay real money to see Samuel L. Jackson as Steve handling a troll


Or even Dave Chappelle as Samuel L. Jackson as Steve.)



Well, life happens, so instead of a glittering, animatronic-and-laser-effect-heavy "Steve Gilliard Experience" exhibit in one wing of the Smithsonian Museum of Blogosphere History, you get me, rooting around in the old steamer trunks from time to time. And since the subtext last night was "good writing", and the weather said "Thanksgiving", how could I resist a slice of Beer Can Turkey?

Turkey

There are a hundred debates about what makes a great Turkey, brining, frying, injecting.

Well, this is the place to debate the great turkey issues of the day.

Beer Can Turkey

Monday, October 24, 2005

Last year, I prepared a Classic Roast Turkey. This year I wanted to provide another variation on turkey and had decided on smoking the turkey. When I received my September 2005 issue of Cook's Country Magazine and found an article featuring Beer-Can Chicken, I decided to modify that recipe to work for a turkey.

The use of a beer can inserted into a chicken is an old barbeque trick to provide flavored steam to the inside of the chicken as it cooks. At the same time, the beer supposely adds flavor to the chicken. Problem is, I don't quite buy it. If the beer is giving off steam, then most of that steam is just going to be water... most of the beer flavor will just be concentrating in the can. However, it seems that it would be sacrilegeous if I used the beer can but left out the beer.

The first step is to brine the turkey. Find a non-reactive (polycarbonate plastic, glass, or stainless steel) container large enough to hold the turkey. Prepare a brining solution of 1 cup table salt to 1 gallon water and soak the turkey in the solution in the refrigerator for four to six hours. (If your turkey has been infused with a solution, then reduce the salt content in your brine or just soak it in a container filled with plain water.)

Pour out the brining solution and rinse the turkey. One convenient way to do this is to position a rack in the sink and place the turkey on the rack to rinse. After the turkey has been rinsed, let it dry by placing it on a rack on a sheet pan in the refrigerator overnight (or for eight hours). Alternatively, use a blow drier on cool setting (no heat) to blow over the skin of the turkey until dry.

In order to prepare beer can turkey, a beer can is necessary. However, a normal 12-oz. beer can, perfect for a chicken, is a bit too small for the large cavity of a turkey. At my local convenience store, I found this 24 oz. micro-keg shaped can of Heineken. It looked to be about the right size, so I bought it.

After pouring the beer into another container (a large measuring cup), remove the top of the can. I used an OXO Good Grips can opener to cleanly remove the top (it took only one pass). Removing the top provides enough surface area from which the steam can rise. The small opening made by the pop top just isn't enough of an opening to effectively provide moisture to the turkey.

Deposit six bay leaves (broken up) and two teaspoons dried thyme into the can. Unlike the beer, the herbs will provide noticeable flavor and aroma while the steam helps keep the turkey moist during it's long cooking process.

Soak a cup of hickory wood chips in some water.

Prepare a spice rub by combining two tablespoons brown sugar, two tablespoons paprika, one tablespoon kosher salt, one tablespoon black pepper, and one teaspoon cayenne pepper. Mix the spice rub well.

Rub the spice rub over the entire exterior of the turkey. Loosen the skin over the breasts and thighs and rub the spices under the skin. Finally, rub the remaining spice rub inside the cavity of the turkey.

Pour half the beer back into the open beer can (reserving half for your drinking pleasure). Not pouring all the beer back reduces the risk of spilling as you transport the turkey to and from the grill. Lift the turkey up and lower it onto the beer can.

Place the turkey on the grill. If using a gas grill, position the turkey over one burner, away from the other burners. Turn the burner under the turkey off and turn the other burners on low. If using a charcoal grill, start the charcoals (you'll need a couple batches of about 100 briquettes each over the course of the smoking). When they're ready, push them to the outer edges of the grill leaving the center available for the turkey. Make a container with aluminum foil (or use a metal wood chip tray) and fill it with the wood chips that were soaking in water. Place the container over the other burner or on the hot coals. My grill was not large enough to cover the turkey without the lid touching it, so I placed a V rack in the middle to prop up the lid. I also inserted a Polder Cooking Thermometer into a thigh to track the temperature of the turkey.

Close the lid of the grill. If the turkey is too tall for your grill lid, find a way to prop open the lid just enough (so the lid is mostly closed, but not touching the bird). Then use heavy duty aluminum foil to cover the gap that's left. The aluminum foil lets out a lot of heat, but will help keep the smoke in long enough to flavor the turkey.

The actual cooking of the turkey is a bit finicky and has a lot to do with your grill and how much cooling air is getting into the grill from the slightly open lid. If you didn't need to prop open the lid of your gas grill, keep the burners on low. However, if you did need to prop open the lid, you might need to turn up the heat to compensate for the heat loss? Don't turn on the burner underneath the turkey - we want to cook it with indirect heat. If using charcoal, after the first one and a half to two hours, you'll need to start a new batch of charcoal and replace the original coals as they lose heat.

Halfway through the cooking, about two hours, rotate the turkey to allow even cooking.

When the thigh meat reaches 160°F (71°C) (about 4-1/2 hours in my example), prepare a simple glaze with two tablespoons brown sugar, two tablespoons ketchup, two tablespoons distilled white vinegar, two tablespoons beer, and two teaspoons of hot sauce (I prefer Frank's RedHot Original Hot Sauce). Brush the glaze onto the turkey and cover. After five minutes, brush on another layer of glaze and allow it to cook until the thigh meat registers 170°F (77°C). If you don't have a thermometer, at least poke the turkey with a skewer to see if the juices run clear. If the fluid that comes out contains traces of blood, continue to cook the turkey

Happy early Thanksgiving people.

And fuck the fucking Yankees.