2 Creative Meat Casseroles

Last winter I made a few pork roasts and other casseroles.  This cooking blog was only a good idea at the time, so I didn't get to take pictures and share all the fun of these comfort foods!  Here's two dishes I made recently:

Bacon Wrapped Turkey with Sweet Potato Fries 'n Carrots

To start with you need to get some pre-made bacon wrapped turkey patties.  You can find them frozen, they're not ground... you'll see, wrapped in bacon like I said.  

This is very simple.  Just put them in a pan with some frozen sweet potato fries and I also put carrots and onions.  This dish was inspired like many by what I had available in stock!  The carrots I seasoned with cinnamon and spices, the way I often season them.  All I did to the turkey was add some black pepper to the top.  Here's what it looked like going into the oven:

Everything will turn out just fine together even though some is frozen and some not.  375 for 45 minutes or so, turning over the turkeys and stirring things around during that time.  The bacon makes it all good and your carrots will be firm and flavorful in this mix.  Yummy!

Pretty Pork Roast and Veggies

Get a bigger pan for this one.  Grease the bottom so veggies don't stick.  Start off by seasoning the pork roast with the following:

• garlic powder 
• onion powder
• ground cinnamon
• Adobo
• black pepper

Once you have the meat seasoned wrap it up with some onion slices and put it in the fridge for at least half an hour to marinate with the seasonings and the onion.  

While that's going on chop up carrots, broccoli, celery and some more onion.  I like to dip my broccoli crowns in some butter and they taste great with Mrs. Dash Lemon Pepper.  For the carrots I used some of that Weber Seasonings Chipotle powder that I have used on meats before.  Of course I always like some cinnamon on my carrots too!

When the meat meets the veggies in the pan, here's what you have:

Roast it for up to an hour, you can temp your pork to make sure it's cooked.  Oh, I did have it covered for a portion of the cook time so that the veggies would steam.  The piece of pork I used was a little bit fatty and that made for awesome veggies.

I also made some Idahoan instant Loaded Baked Casserole potatoes on the stove in a pot of course.  This product will never be a casserole, or at least I've never been able to make one of it, but they a gooey and cheesy... that's the point!  I also made some instant rice with beans.  It all sounds like a lot, but then you're sure to have leftovers.

Kitties love their casseroles!

Dinner on the Grill

Last week my friend and I made the most wonderful dinner in the outdoor kitchen, all on the grill.  I thought it would be fun to outline the preparation in full... we had a pile of different foods!  It's like we couldn't stop putting stuff on there to see how it would taste BBQ style.  

Cinnamon-amon-namon BBQ Carrots

In my grilling pan I put baby carrots sprinkled with cinnamon and garlic powder.  I should mention that throughout the cooking process we had hickory chunks smokin' up the grill, yummy!  So I had the wee carrots seasoned in the pan also with a little bit of butter and olive oil and a minimal amount of water to help them steam slightly.  We put them on the grill and closed the lid so they would get smoke.  I had them covered with foil to aid in the steaming process- I poked holes in the foil to let the smoke penetrate.  

After they were on there for a bit, maybe 15 minutes, we uncovered them and let them cook more.  (uncovered is better so they get more smoke).  The final stage is the most exciting!  Now you're gonna add some of your favorite BBQ sauce, I used Trader Joe's Bold and Smoky KC Style.  That's what I had left in the fridge from the ribs.  I didn't use a ton of BBQ sauce because I don't like too much sticky and sweet.  Let them cook a little bit with the sauce and you'll have BBQ sweet and cinnamon carrots!

The Sweet Sides

In addition to the carrots, we also had an assortment of side yummies and grilled up condiments for the main course.  The grilled condiments included the traditional burned up poblano pepper, grilled onions and garlic.

We also put frozen sweet potato fries on an oiled disposable aluminum pan.  The pan was placed over the cool area of the fire and closely monitored so the fries would not burn.  We ended up with gently charred on the bottom super smoky fries.  They turned out perfect.

The most interesting side dish by far was the coconut shrimp!  These were also frozen, so putting them on the grill was taking a chance because who knows how hot the fire really is.  We did our best to try to follow the cooking instructions.  I know it must sound like I do all my shopping at Aldi... yes I did get the shrimp from Aldi.  Hey, but the BQ sauce was from Trader Joe's and the rest from the grocery store and fruit market.  Note on the shrimp:  lotta breading, which you'd expect from a bargain frozen seafood case.  They come with a sweet sauce that was actually good, but you have to really like coconut to enjoy these shrimp.  I liked them, but I wouldn't want to eat a whole pile, too much coconut for me!

So frozen food that is meant to be baked does work on the grill.

The Main Course

I don't know if you can call it a main course, but we're talking grilled turkey burgers.  In case you have food intolerances, Butterball Sweet Onion Turkey Burgers are gluten free, kinda neat.  Ok, we did thaw the burgers before tossing them on the grill.  I usually get carried away with seasoning and prepping my food, but I didn't do anything to the burgers.  The main seasoning I felt would come from the hickory and the cheese I chose to top them with.  Land O'Lakes Four Cheese Blend from the deli.  It's a brick of cheese that is sliced, not shredded cheese in a package.  The four cheeses are Parmesan, Asiago, Romano and American.  It's quite a potent cheese, but on a burger it's just right.

So we grilled up the burgers, putting the cheese on at the end of the cooking process.  The cheese is firm, so it didn't get mushy and drippy on the grill.  Toast up a few buns and you have smoky, cheesy, dreamy burgers!  We also topped them with Dijon mustard and I had wasabi mayo on the side and I tried that on almost everything a little.  The wasabi took down the coconut on the shrimp, worked for me!

Happy grilling, try some frozen food too.  I think I'm gonna try jalapeño poppers one of these days.  Mee-ows!