This recipe is from the booklet pictured here, that came with the Rival Crock-Pot BBQ Pit. This link goes to someone else’s blog with a review of this appliance, where you can get an idea of what it’s like. I’m not sure if Rival is making these any longer, as they no longer seem to have it on their official website. But you may still be able to find one at a local store or online; I did see some a while back for sale, used, on sites like eBay and Amazon. It would be too mbad if they quit making these, as I really enjoy mine.
If you do pick one up used, it may or may not come with this booklet. But I have a .pdf version of it, available for anyone who wants it to download.
I made this turkey recipe tonight. It was excellent, but here are a few notes about it…
At least where I shop, a whole boneless turkey breast is hard to find. I ended up buying a bone-in one, and boning it out myself. It’s not that hard if you have a decent boning knife. And then you end up with the bones, which of course should be used to make slow-cooker turkey stock. You can then use this stock to make a soup from any leftover turkey, throwing in some rice or noodles, and some veggies (good ones are carrots, celery, green beans, peas; a bag of mixed frozen veggies of these varieties is perfect here!)
You COULD cook it bone-in if you are lazy, but keep in mind that it will add another hour or more to the cooking time. Also, you need to brine it ahead of time, and you might not have a pot that will fit in your fridge, and hold the turkey and the brine. You could do as I’ve done for whole Thanksgiving turkeys, and brine it in a large picnic cooler with plenty of ice. But my large cooler is in our Public Storage unit, and I didn’t feel like going out there to get it. So I boned it out and used the bones to make the stock.
The breast I got weighed about 6 1/2 pounds, which is way bigger than what the recipe calls for. Boning it out took off about a pound. I did not increase the glaze recipe at all, it was more than enough as is…but it will take about an hour longer to cook as the recipe calls for.
I also suggest that you remove the skin before cooking this. If you were doing this in a real BBQ or in the oven, the skin would be nice and crisp. But in any kind of slow-cooker, even this BBQ Pit thingy, there’s a lot of moisture, which causes poultry skin to be icky and gummy. So peel off the skin and throw it into the stockpot, along with those bones!
The BBQ Pit booklet recommends that you pour some kind of liquid into the well in the crockery insert. Plain water will pretty much just keep the fat that drips down from the meat from smoking and burning. But beer, wine, stock or broth, fruit juice, etc, will also infuse some flavor into the meat as it cooks. I like to pour a bottle of beer into the well; this time, I used a bottle of Samuel Adams Cranberry Lambic that I had sitting around. It’s not my favorite beer to drink; it came in an assortment package that I had bought over the winter. But for a recipe like this, which uses cranberries already, it does add a nice flavor.
Okay, so here is the recipe…to lazy to type it out, so I screen-capped it from the book.
I love that I have one of those little netbooks. Rather than using up paper and ink to print recipes I find online, I can just set up the netbook in the kitchen and have the recipe right there in front of me.
Could this recipe be done in a regular slow cooker? I haven’t tried it, but I would guess so. You would need a larger model, at least 5 quarts, and oval shaped. You would also need some kind of wire rack that would fit inside the cooker to put the turkey breast on. You could also probably roast a turkey breast like this in a regular oven (follow package instructions). But do not put the glaze on until it is almost done, because the sugars in it will cause it to burn in a regular oven if you brush it on too soon..
Anyhoo, this is great any time of year, you don’t have to wait until Thanksgiving to enjoy a turkey dinner. This would also be good if you are doing Thanksgiving on a smaller scale, and don’t want a zillion leftovers.
Enjoy!
