We have a wide range of food preferences in our family, so trying to cook for this group is a tall order, and the key is to find a favorite of everyone’s and then go from there. Of course, some of the best dishes are those carb-laden comfort food favorites, and inevitably we’ll end up with more than one. One year, instead of green beans we blanched some brussels sprouts, cut then in half and roasted them with an Italian dressing drizzle. Delicious!
Anyway, enough about the context, here’s what we made for our first Thanksgiving in Raleigh, which was declared “the best Thanksgiving ever” by many at the table. Try one or all of these recipes and mix and match with your own.
Here’s what’s on the menu:
- Brined Grilled Turkey
- Red wine-reduction Cranberry Sauce
- Lauren’s Mashed potatoes
- Nancy’s Southern Belle Corn Puddin’
- Mum-mum’s Turkey Dressing (stuffing)
- Szechuan green beans
- Olivier’s salad
- Dessert
My Thanksgiving turkey is first brined and then grilled. The brining is a process that permeates the meat with flavor and moisture through osmosis and takes at least 24 hours. If your turkey is frozen, thaw it first and then brine it. The result will be succulent and juicy enough so that even non Turkey eaters will ask for seconds.
In order to serve dinner at mid-afternoon on Thursday, I began the brining very late on Tuesday. I took the Good Eats Roast Turkey recipe on Foodnetwork.com and then modified it based on the ingredients we had at hand and anything I thought would taste good. http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/good-eats-roast-turkey-recipe/index.html
12-14 lb turkey (make sure it fits in your biggest pot and can be immersed)
1 gallon Swanson’s chicken broth
1 cup Kosher salt
½ gallon water
½ gallon apple juice
1 tbsp whole black peppercorns
5 cloves of minced garlic
4 sprigs of rosemary
1 bag frozen chopped onion
1 big pot to hold all of the liquid and immerse the turkey
- Sauté the onions and garlic with a little olive oil until transparent, then add the rosemary sprigs and peppercorns and heat them for about 4-5 minutes.
- Transfer the onion-garlic-herb mixture to the bottom of the brining pot and add the salt with a cup each of the chicken stock and apple juice and swish it around to dissolve the salt.
- Then put the turkey into the pot and then pour the rest of the apple juice, chicken stock and water to the pot.
- Put it in your fridge and leave it there overnight.
- Allow about 3 hours to cook, so take the Turkey out of the brine right before you put it on the grill.
- I did not put the turkey directly on the grill, but instead in a roasting pan with a V-shaped rack on top of the grill.
- Place the bird breast-down on the rack and then cover it with aluminum foil until 1 hour before taking off the grill (in other words, let the skin get crispy brown but not burnt).
- In order to be sure it was cooked, but not overcooked, I used a meat thermometer that sits outside the cooking area with a probe stuck directly into the thickest part of the breast. ($6.99 at IKEA: http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/80100406)
- Once the breast temperature hit 153°, I turned off the heat and took the Turkey inside and let it sit undisturbed for 10 minutes or so.
- To serve, I carved the turkey in the kitchen and arranged the meat by dark vs. white on a platter.
Winey Cranberry Sauce.
12 ounce bag of fresh cranberries
1 cup of sugar (or 24 packets of Splenda sweetener)
1 cup of red wine (any kind)
- Pour the wine into a pot over medium heat.
- As the wine warms, add sugar and stir until it dissolves.
- Rinse the cranberries and add them to the warming wine-sugar mixture.
- Bring it to a boil and lower the heat to a simmer and let them cook on a low boil for about 10-15 minutes, stirring occasionally while letting the cranberries pop while cooking.
- Turn the heat off and let the sauce cool on the stovetop. It thickens while it cools.
- NOTE: You can make this cranberry sauce the night before and then heat it up on Thanksgiving day.
Mashed Potatoes
This is Lauren’s favorite and she does it so well that I give her wide berth in the kitchen and don’t get in her way. Part of the key to a great Thanksgiving is to apply economic theory about division of labor and let anyone make part of the meal if that’s what they do best and/or enjoy doing it. There’s plenty of work to go around.
While the turkey is baking, you can make the mashed potatoes first and then keep it heating as described below.
3 pounds of potatoes
1 stick of butter
1% milk
Salt & pepper to taste
- Take 3 pounds of potatoes, peel them and then chop them into cubes.
- Boil them in salted water until they fall apart with a fork (10 minutes or so).
- Drain and then transfer the pieces in large spoonfuls to a potato ricer.
- Rice the potatoes into a large ceramic bowl.
- Slice a whole stick of butter into pats and spread around the bowl so it melts into the potatoes.
- Add salt and pepper to taste (lots of pepper, easy on the salt).
- Get a hand-held mixer and mix 1% milk into the potatoes until the consistency is light & fluffy.
- Suspend the ceramic bowl over a pot of hot water, cover with aluminum foil and stir occasionally to keep warm while you work on the other parts of the meal.
That is not a typo - this dish does not have a “g” at the end because it is truly as southern as magolias or civil war re-enactments. Whatever your sentiments, corn puddin’ is a delicious dish so make it part of your Thanksgiving. This comes directly from Lauren’s family cookbook and is attributed to her mother, Nancy.
2 eggs, beaten
1/3 cup sweetened condensed milk
2/3 cup milk
3 Tbsp. butter
1 can Green Giant Niblets Corn
1 Tbsp. flour
Pinch of salt
- Pre-heat the oven to 350°
- Beat the first three ingredients together, then add the butter to make the custard.
- Mix gently.
- Drain the corn and dredge it with the flour and salt.
- Fold the corn into the custard.
- Pour into a buttered baking dish.
- Put the buttered baking dish into a pan with a little bit of water in it and all into the oven.
- Bake for 35 – 40 minutes along with the turkey dressing (below) or until the top of the puddin’ is golden brown.
- This can keep warming in the oven covered in foil if your timing is off.
Lauren’s grandmother on her mother’s side is Kitty Edwards, but all her grandkids (and great-grandkids) call her Mum-mum. She grew up in Suffolk, Virginia and last year we celebrated her 100th birthday. Needless to say, she’s a big part of the family and one of her dishes at the Thanksgiving table is the turkey dressing.
5 cups of bread cubes toasted and brushed with melted butter (or go buy 5 cups of Pepperidge Farm unseasoned stuffing mix)
½ cup of celery sliced thin and chopped
¼ cup of onion diced (or a half-bag of frozen chopped onions)
1 egg beaten
10 dashes of Worcestershire sauce
½ tsp of salt
1 tube of Jimmy Dean “Pork Light” sausage (50% reduced fat) http://jimmydean.com/products/premium-pork-light-sausage.aspx
5 cups of Swanson chicken stock
- Preheat the oven to 350º
- Mix the sausage, bread crumbs and other ingredients in a large bowl.
- Grease a 9 x 13 lasagna pan (or any pan that goes in the oven)
- Press the sausage-bread-etc. mixture into the pan
- Pour the chicken stock slowly over all of it so it moistens everything.
- Bake along with the corn puddin’ for 20-30 minutes until the top is brown.
1 big package of frozen Green beans (Trader Joe's french green beans are awesome)
1 tsp Ginger – grated
2-3 cloves of Garlic – minced or pressed
drizzle of Sesame oil
1.5 Tbsp Olive oil
sprinkle of Sesame seeds
Salt to taste
- Lightly steam the green beans in the microwave with a little bit of water and a covered dish (3 min. on our microwave).
- They should still be crisp at this stage.
- Put about 1 Tbsp. olive oil in the bottom of a pan and then drizzle a little bit of sesame oil for flavor.
- Heat the garlic and ginger together to bring out their flavors but not so much that they turn brown.
- Add the steamed green beans and stir so that they are coated.
- Let it cook about 5 minutes, stirring occasionally.
- Add salt to taste and then the sesame seeds.
- Mix it all up and serve hot.
Like me, my brother-in-law knows his way around the kitchen, and he enjoys entertaining and eating. Well, it so happens that he is French, and considering how serious the French are about gastronomy, Olivier does his heritage proud with the most amazing salad dressing. I never tire of eating his salad because the dressing is so flavorful and savory, so we’re always happy when Olivier makes his salad.
The lettuce he uses is romaine, and he adds tomatoes, cucumber slices, carrots and sometimes avocado. This dressing is so good, you can even use it with a bag salad from the grocery store and I guarantee you will have no leftovers. This amount of dressing is enough for a big salad for 10-12 people and there still may be some leftover. It keeps well in the fridge in tupperware, so go ahead and make the whole thing - you won't be disappointed.
For 2 cups of dressing:
8 cloves of pressed garlic
2 tsp of Grey Poupon Dijon mustard
¼ cup of red wine vinegar
2-3 Tbsp of Kraft parmesan cheese (the green can)
1 Tbsp of salt
20 grinds of fresh ground pepper
2-3 Tbsp of dried dill weed
1 cup of extra virgin olive oil (or however much you need to bring it to a total of 2 cups of dressing)
- Mix all the ingredients well with a stick blender until it has a runny paste consistency.
- Add little by little to match the amount of lettuce you have and don’t worry if you have left overs.
- Do not over-dress the salad – I can’t describe how much is too much dressing (which I find unappealing), so taste it along the way and decide for yourself.
What would Thanksgiving be without dessert? We’ve discovered that our local farmers market includes some baked-goods vendors that do an outstanding job with pies. So we usually outsource our dessert to those fine and talented folks by getting a pumpkin and a pecan pie and then serving it up with Harris-Teeter Natural vanilla ice cream.
This year, we went to the mountains to see the leaves turn colors and ended up in an apple orchard. Of course we came home with a mountain of apples, so Lauren prepared two apple pies and froze them so we can thaw and bake on Thanksgiving. If it works out well, I’ll post that so you can give it a try. In the meantime, I hope you try one of these dishes for your Thanksgiving. Let me know what you think!
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