Thanksgiving

I. Love. Thanksgiving.

I love it in October in Canada and in November in the US. So welcome to Thanksgiving Month! This post will talk about the turkey and the timing of your thanksgiving feast. Recipes for everything will be covered as we ramp up to US Thanksgiving.

It will come as a surprise to literally no one when I say that I am person who loves a nicely set table. While I’m absolutely a fan of fine china and crystal I think that it’s okay for Thanksgiving to be a little more rustic.

I made the centerpiece by splitting a small bouquet of flowers between one medium and two small vases, then surrounded them with some ornamental gourds.

My menu for this Thanksgiving is

• Turkey and Gravy

• Dad’s Stuffing

• Lemon and Reisling Cranberry Sauce

• Mashed Potatoes with creme fraiche

• Roasted Heirloom Carrots with brown butter and thyme

• Corn Bread

• Pumpkin and Pecan Pie with Cinnamon Whiskey whipped cream.

Obviously the turkey is the main event, so I like to use it as the bench mark for everything else timing wise.

So we start the night before, with the turkey. It has a to cook for a while so the biggest concern is having it be dry; my go to for preventing poultry dryness is brining. So I pull out my turkey, remove the giblets, and get it into a brine.

I put the turkey (about 10 pounds) into an empty 12 qt container. I filled it with 10qts of cold water, and then made a seasoned saline solution on the stove. In a pot I brought 1qt of water, 1.5 cups of kosher salt, 5 garlic cloves (skin and all), 6 bay leaves, 8 sprigs of thyme, and 2 tbsps of brown mustard seeds to a simmer.

Once all the salt dissolved into the water I added everything to the container with the turkey, covered it and popped it into the fridge.

At this point I take the bread for the stuffing and put it out on a tray to dry out, boil the giblets and set aside for tomorrow.

In the morning I start with the pies, once they are in the oven I pulled the turkey out of the brine, patted it dry and let it sit on a rack to come to room temperature.

Then I make a compound butter with half a pound of unsalted butter (at room temp), fresh thyme, sage, oregano, rosemary, parsley, and garlic.

I diced the garlic, and chopped all the herbs quite finely. I mixed all of that together, then added a small amount of flaked sea salt, then put the whole thing in the fridge.

This is when I start the stuffing, the pies should be done and I set the oven to 350C.

Then I take the compound butter and put it under the skin of the turkey. The easiest way to do this is to first take a spoon and run it between the turkey and skin to create a gap and put in just over half the butter. This will let the turkey baste itself, and season the meat as it roasts.

Once that’s all done, I put the stuffing into the turkey (more on that later). I like to tuck the wings underneath the bird so that the tips don’t dry out, and tied the ends of the drumsticks together. This helps keep the turkey all together so that it cooks evenly.

I put the whole thing into the oven. The rule of thumb for turkey is about 20 minutes per pound. I like to start it uncovered, then once the skin starts to get brown I tent it with tin foil and let it finish cooking.

While the turkey is cooking I made the cranberry sauce, prepped the carrots and assemble all the ingredients for the corn bread. Then I set the table… in with the remaining 2 hours take a little break!

About 20 minutes before the turkey is finished I make the mashed potatoes, they can be left on the stove covered to keep warm.

Once it’s finished in the oven, the turkey needs to rest for at least 30 minutes so I leave the tin foil on it and leave the turkey on the stove.

I popped the cornbread into the oven, and pan roasted the carrots.

Once that’s done I pulled the turkey out of the pan, removed the stuffing, and left the pan on the stove to make gravy. I added a cup of chicken broth and a cup of white wine to the pan drippings.

Cooked it all down for 10 minutes, then I took 2 tbsps of corn starch and mixed it with 2 additional tbsps of wine, then added that slurry into the gravy to thicken it. Once it’s thickened I pour it through a mesh strainer to make sure that you have a smooth gravy.

Some people like to take a full turkey to the table to carve, but I prefer to break it down in the kitchen. I pull the wings and through them straight into the stock pot, pull off the legs, remove the breasts and slice it into several pieces.

The cornbread should be finished so I pull that out and put it on the platter and brought everything to the table.

I hope that everyone has an amazing Thanksgiving!