Meat-o-vision
In the time between the previous Meatwave and this one, the ideas were not flowing and I began to wonder if my 20-plus years of grilling and barbecue recipe development may be coming to an end. Then, a week out before the cookout, new creations flooded my brain and I filled up the menu for this event as well as ones spanning into next year. So while Meat-o-vision was the last Meatwave of 2025, it certainly won't be the end of my outdoor cooking journey.
The cool and crisp fall weather is what really jogged my imagination and had me hankering for some hearty, beefy delights. It had been a minute since I made a pastrami and decided that this salty, peppery piece of brisket would be a perfect start to the menu. However, since I've done pastrami on its own and as reubens, I needed some new ideas and came up with two—the first being pastrami empanadas where caramelized onions, Swiss cheese, and a mustard sauce paired up with the cured beef.
I needed one more wing recipe for my upcoming 2026 Wing Month in January and thought maple wings would be a nice fit for the day. However, I'm not the biggest fan of maple syrup in purely savory applications because I find it to be a flavor that really stands out, so I opted to balance and blend the sweet syrup with layers of heat that included a hot pepper jelly, mustard, chipotle, cayenne, and black pepper. The end result was a great balance between spicy and sweet maple that melded very well in the overall flavor profile.
Acorn squash isn't something I've grilled since my earliest days of learning how to cook and decided now was a good time to bring it back. My original inclination was to grill these smallish winter squash and then stuff them with a sausage based filling, but I lean into vegetarian recipes more these days since everyone can enjoy them, and opted to do a mushroom, kale, and bulgur mixture instead. It was hearty and tasty, but oddly no vegetarians showed up to this Meatwave, so it would have been the perfect time to act upon the meaty variation that would have been even more to my personal liking.
While acorn squash is something I rarely cook, brussels sprouts is one thing I turn to over and over again since they're a favorite veggie of mine. They're especially great when cooked at high heat and they get some caramelization and crispiness to them, and I did that for this brussels sprouts salad, but then paired up those roasted sprouts with finely sliced raws one too. I really liked how those two textures came together, plus the other salad components of dried cranberries, walnuts, ricotta salata, and a mustardy vinaigrette were hitting the right notes for me.
I always need to grill some sweet potatoes each fall and got them in on this day via these grilled vegetable wraps. Those roasted orange spuds were joined in the tortilla by grilled eggplant, red onion, feta, spinach, and dijonnaise. I dug them as a whole with some sweetness, salitiness, and sharpness making this a full flavored sandwich, but I was left wishing there was something a bit more firm in there, so have to figure that out if I make something similar again.
Lastly was my second use of the pastrami in reuben hot dogs. I also had a lot of Vienna Beef on hand from the first Meatwave of 2025, so defrosted a pack of those, grilled them up, and topped them with sauerkraut, pastrami, Swiss, and Russian dressing. For my tastes, this was preferred over more traditional pastrami reubens because the strong taste of the pastrami was present, but tempered by the more neutral hot dog. I missed the rye flavor of the bread a bit, but not so much that I'd be inclined to make my own rye hot dog buns, although I could see myself affixing some caraway seeds to the bread on a second go round.
Kellyn always seems to outdo herself on the dessert front, this time making a cake version of reuben hot dogs. She really nailed it and it's hard for my brain to even comprehend that the entire thing is only cake and frosting.
The Meatwave these days seems to attract a minimum of 25 people at each cookout and while I really enjoy spending my days with so many great friends, I sometimes miss the more intimate gatherings that we used to have now and again. So it was a nice surprise when this Meatwave had a relatively small attendance of 13 total and I was able to relax and chat more. Then, once the sun went down, we transitioned into an outdoor showing of the Addams Family Values, which is fall favorite of mine and was a nice way to put an end to another great year of food, friends, music, movies, karaoke, and all around good times.
