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Newfoundland Grillers Smokers & Boil-Ups Guild Mike's Winter Cooks 2025
The new year started off great when Bassan and I got an SOS call from a good buddy who was gifted a beautiful quarter of moose. We headed across town with our butchering tools in hand to get the quarter processed and vacuum sealed in no time.
In addition to a great selection of roasts, we cleared about 40lbs of Ground meat as well.
With our buddies moose all packaged up it was time for Bassan and I to make another batch of his family recipe Italian Alce Salsaccia Moose Sausages.
We also got to try out Sandra's new rolling kitchen Island which worked out great having more counterpace to work from!
We always let sausages sit for 24hours in the fridge before vacuum sealing and freezing.
Christmas time Sandra and Shelagh decided to try their hand at making sour dough, which began with a two week process of creating our very own starter. Keeping with tradition we named ours Fred.
It took a couple tries having used the wrong flour the first time but a month later we finally had the right action going on. When I get time, I'll do a write up on this process as there was a lot more to it than we thought.
The first actual bake with Fred was sour dough dinner rolls to go with our fresh Roasted Red Pepper Soup.
The first bake was an absolute success!
Next up was our first crack at sour dough bread. I don't personally understand all the steps from mixing, folding every half hour and cold proofing but Shelagh did a bunch of research and gave it a go.
The bread came out looking nice, but was way too dense and tasted awful, so back to the drawing board.
Next up was sour dough discard crackers which was just discard spread on parchment paper, some Italian seasoning and parmesan cheese. The results were outstanding!
Next up was Shelagh's Ultimate Roasted Red Pepper Soup, check out the link for the whole recipe and how to!
Tonight I cooked supper for everyone and I chose one of my favourite recipes from this site, my Roasted Red Pepper (Pesto Alla Calabrese) Pasta Sauce which is always a hit!
Sour Dough creations continued in late February when we decided to make homemade sour dough pizzas since we were housebound due to a winter snowstorm.
We made an individual size pizza each laying it out on the wooden pizza peel.
Before going to the oven, I used an empty condiments squeeze bottle to get air under the dough so it slid off easily onto the hot pizza stone in the oven.
We then used our thin metal peel to remove each pizza and place on a wooden cutting board to set up.
Needles to say our pizzas were absolutely deadly, a great treat on a stormy night!
In March I tested out a new to me recipe which I'll call the Ultimate Breakfast Grilled Cheese Sandwich. Follow the link to the full recipe of this easy and absolutely delicious feast!
In April after a four month winter hiatus we finally fired up the Blackstone for one of our favourite cooks, Smash Burgers! I'm pleased to report that the griddle wintered just perfect outside on the back deck protected by the hard metal lid and the OEM accessory soft cover.
This week we were in the mood for a good Barbeque with sides reminding us of warm summer days. I started out by frying out some Spicy Italian Sausage meat.
My salad of choice today was Southern Style Coleslaw, I was out of the sauce so I whipped up a batch which will be enough for quite a few salads over the next few months.
Sauce is poured hot over the vegetable ingredients, this will wilt the cabbage. Let the mixture marinate for 30-60 minutes before serving.
The fried Italian Sausage was stuffed into mini sweet pepper and topped with cheese.
Sobey's had absolutely beautiful thick cut pork chops on sale, they were just screaming to be put on the barbeque.
I seasoned mine with Kinders SPG and a little Meat Church Holy Voodoo.
The Webber Genesis II weathered another snowy season just great with no issues, no corrosion. It will get a polish soon on the next warm day.
A late supper today but an early start to another wicked barbeque season!
Cheers, MIKE
Copyright © 2025 Michael Smith |
