Non Traditional Thanksgiving / Hasty Bake

Another cook on my oldy but goody 40+ year old Hasty Bake Model 130 cooker.

This is my 3rd cook on it as I am trying to get this cooker figured out and I did get a pretty nice meal out of it yesterday.

There are just the two of us and we sometimes don't go to all the hassle of cooking up a big meal for the holidays. We decided to just cook something up plain and simple for Thanksgiving on my new old cooker.



I started out with stuffed pepper halves. For the stuffing, I used pulled and chopped pork, sharp Cheddar cheese, Worchester sauce, chopped onions, cream cheese, and bacon. I also par-boiled the pepper halves before I stuffed them.



Added a little rub and the bacon and this dish was ready for the cooker.



I took a head of Romaine lettuce and cut it lengthwise right down the middle to have two pieces. I then drizzled with olive oil, sprinkled on some fresh cracked black pepper, some sea salt, and some garlic powder to both sides and this treat as well was ready for the cooker.



Next step was to get a couple of nice thick ribeyes ready for the cooker. I sprinkled on some fresh ground black pepper and some garlic salt on the meat.

For my bread, I then prepped some Cresent Rolls for the cooker.

This is the way I set up the cooker and maybe some of you Hasty Bake owners can tell me if I got it right for this cook. My older cooker doesn't have the slide out firebox so I just loaded thru the top of the cooker and filled the right side or right half of the firebox full of lump charcoal. I placed the heat deflector over the left side of the cooker so I could cook both direct and indirect at the same time. I lit it up and brought it up to temp and raised the firebox up to just under the cooking grates.



I placed my stuffed peppers on the left or indirect side of the cooker.



I then placed my raised baking grid over the peppers for my Cresent rolls.



I placed the Cresent rolls on the indirect side of the cooker and then loaded the Romaine lettuce on the direct side of the cooker. The lettuce only cooks about 3-4 minutes a side to just get some char or black on some of the leaves and to get it warmed up in the middle.



Looked and smelled great coming off of the cooker. I shreadded up about a half cup of fresh Romano cheese and sprinkled it on top of the lettuce.



Placed the steaks on the direct side of the cooker and right over the fire and cooked them to about medium rare. Took about 6-7 minutes a side.



The steaks came off looking good.



I took the stuffed peppers off next but the bread was not ready.



I finally took the bread off after about 12 more minutes and it didn't come out as brown as I would like but it was done. I guess I just had the lid opened up tooo many times with the rest of the cook to build up enough heat to brown the bread.



You know, it sure wasn't a traditional Thanksgiving meal but it sure was a good replacement in my book.

That was the first time I did that lettuce like that and it was KILLER!