Smoked Pork and Turkey with Rice, Red Peppers and Cranberry
happy Mother's Day everyone
Two meats, three sides, one plate, and not one thing on it cooked in the last hour. This is the payoff plate from a smoke, assembled cold and warmed through.
The pork here is not cured — look at it, the meat is white under the black, not pink. That is a plain smoked loin, and it is a different animal from the pastrami on this site. No nitrite, no week in brine, just salt and pepper and four hours.
The peppers are roasted and skinned. That scarlet, slippery, almost translucent look only comes from blackening them whole and pulling the skin off. A pepper roasted with its skin on goes brown and leathery and will not sit on a plate like that.
- Feeds
- 6
- Hands-on
- 45 minutes
- On the smoker
- 4 hours
- Start
- The day before
What you need
On the smoker, the day before
- 1 pork loin, about 4 lb, fat cap scored
- 1 turkey breast, bone in, about 4 lb
- 3 tbsp coarse kosher salt
- 3 tbsp coarse cracked black pepper
- 1 tbsp granulated garlic
The peppers
- 4 large red bell peppers
- 2 tbsp olive oil
- 1 clove garlic, sliced
- A pinch of salt
The cranberry
- 12 oz fresh or frozen cranberries
- 3/4 cup sugar
- 1/2 cup water
- 1 strip orange peel
On the plate
- 4 cups cooked long-grain white rice
- Pickled banana pepper rings, drained
How it goes
1 — Salt and pepper, and nothing else
Both pieces, scored and seasoned heavily the night before, uncovered on a rack in the fridge. The point of this plate is two clean smoked meats — the flavour comes from the sides.
2 — Smoke both at 250°F, together
Loin and breast go on at the same time. Pull the pork at 145°F and the turkey at 165°F, roughly three and a half to four hours. Rest, then cold into the fridge overnight — both slice far better cold.
3 — Blacken the peppers whole
Straight onto a gas flame, or under the broiler turned every few minutes, until the skins are black and blistered all over. Not browned. Black.
4 — Bag them, then slip the skins off
Into a bowl covered with a plate for ten minutes. The steam lifts the skin and it comes away in sheets under your thumb. Tear them into wide strips, dress with the oil, garlic and salt.
pro tip — Do not rinse them under the tap to speed this up. You wash away everything you just spent twenty minutes building.
5 — Cranberries, fifteen minutes
Berries, sugar, water and orange peel in a small pan. They pop and the sauce thickens on its own. Stop while about a third of them are still whole — that is the dark, chunky look in the picture, not a smooth jelly.
6 — Rice plain and hot
Long grain, rinsed until the water runs clear, cooked plain. It is the quiet part of the plate and it should stay that way.
7 — Slice thick, warm briefly
Both meats cut into slices about a third of an inch, laid in a pan with a splash of stock and covered for three minutes. Enough to take the fridge off, not enough to cook them again.
8 — Build it in sections
Pork and turkey across one half, rice down the middle, peppers over the rice, cranberry in a heap at the top and banana pepper rings laid on the pork. Nothing touching that does not have to.
Every piece of this was already done. That is why it is a plate you can make for people you actually want to sit down with. LFG.