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1lb of home ground beef and pork 50/50 mix. Brown in large skillet. Drain fat it necessary. Add 15 oz of tomato sauce, salt and pepper to taste and 1t steam roasted garlic. While 8 ozs of egg noodles are cooking make the sour cream sauce. Mix together: 1/2C sour cream 1.25 C cottage cheese 1/2 C sliced green onions Pepper to taste Add cooked noodles and stir. Grate 1 C cheddar cheese. Add a layer of 1/2 sauce and noodles to a casserole dish followed by 1/2 the meat sauce and then 1/2 the grated cheddar cheese. Repeat one more time and bake at 350 F for 20-30 mins. until the cheese is melted. Baked. Plated.

I had been going back and forth over whether to try a leg of lamb for Easter, mainly because based on previous experience, I thought I was looking at having to buy an 8-10 lb. leg of lamb, which would have been way more than the four of us could handle. Luckily, this weekend I found a 3 lb. boneless New Zealand leg of lamb at one of our local stores. Still a lot of meat for a family of four, but much more manageable. For this cook, I followed a recipe that I found on the Serious Eats website. Here goes. The rub is a mixture of rosemary, garlic, shallots, red pepper flakes, lemon zest, and anchovies, sautéed in olive oil until the garlic and shallots are tender. After transferring the mixture to a bowl to cool, I added in kosher salt and black pepper, and mixed it up good. Here’s the leg of lamb, fat side up. I opened up the leg, and spread about half the rosemary garlic mixture on the inside. Then I rolled up the leg again, and trussed it up with some butchers twine, because my understanding is that if the leg of lamb opens up when cooking, it’s a big mess. The remaining rosemary garlic mixture gets rubbed onto the outside. At this point, I could have stuck into the fridge to wait overnight, but I didn’t plan that far ahead. The leg went into Smaug, who was set up for indirect cooking at 275ºF. I waited until I hit an internal temperature of 130ºF. Here’s what it looked like when it was done. I took out the heat deflector, fired Smaug up to 500ºF, and direct grilled the outside for about 10 minutes. Here’s the final product. Sliced open, and served. It was delicious — super tasty and juicy. The lighting in the sliced open picture makes it look like the outside was cooked much more than it was. In addition, I think lamb holds up better to being cooked to medium than beef does (I like steaks medium rare). Just think of a lamb gyro that’s cooked to well done, and is still juicy and delicious if done right. Happy Easter!

I've been experimenting with pot roast on the grill for a while now - both top round and chuck roasts. (Bottom round is just a bit too tough to cook dry, even lo & slo!) I cook them like a brisket - to an IT of 210F. Usually injected with Butchers Brisket injection. Outside rub has varied; I've done Sucklebusters Hoochy Mama, Oak Ridge Black Ops, and Dizzy Pig Raising the Steaks/Red Eye Express. All have been very good. Serious beefy flavor. Has become a house fav. Only reason for me to do a brisket anymore is for Burnt Ends. My philosophy is - If the meat comes out a bit on the dry side, that's why we invented gravy!! My go-to is to saute onions and mushrooms until just brown, add a little AP flour, cook slightly, add beef stock with some Herbs de Provence, reduce until just about thickened, then finish with a nice dollop of veal demi-glace, S&P to taste. Doesn't get much better than that!

Crazy, drunk, neighbors showed up in the middle of all this which made for an interesting cook to say the least. Scallops were a little overdone but other than that the meal was spot on. Menu has the details. Cheese cake coming along. A violet kiss. Hasselback potatoes and pineapple. Stuffed lobster and scallops. Mrs skreef hit a home run with this desert.

Gurl, you make the most outrageous food porn on this site! You have mad camera skills. Plus, it looks seriously tasty, too!

Never seen that done before. Only a crazy Okie would come up with something like that!

Hi Ken, I did the potatoes in our kitchen oven. They were your basic “toss potatoes with olive oil, rosemary, garlic, salt, and pepper, and roast at 400°F†dish. I got my timing of the dishes wrong, which is why I had to use the oven. Total cooking time for the leg of lamb was a little over 3 hours in Smaug’s belly, including searing at the end. Prep time was about 30 minutes.

Leaves more time for drinking!

Watch out for the boiling water warping the plastic in the cooler. I use the 10 gallon round coolers for homebrewing and during cleanup transferred boiling water into one and warped the inside plastic badly.

I too just buy the peeled garlic. Where I live they usually come in a bag with about 6 smaller bags inside. Makes garlic so much easier to use. If you use a decent amount of garlic you'll use it up long before it goes bad.

As noted in our thread about a special forum for smoking woods and charcoal - I'm a big fan of Fruita!