Talking Turkey

It's November which means Holiday Cooking Season is officially open!  If I'm cooking, I start planning my menus weeks in advance.  If I'm making the whole meal, I also break each recipe into steps, figure out which ones I can do in advance and how far in advance, and draw up a schedule to save myself the grief of discovering that I need to do 8 different intensive cooking tasks at once.  Making Thanksgiving (or Christmas or New Year's or Easter) dinner in a step a day makes life so much easier on the holiday itself!

I don't generally subscribe to notions of "tradition" and "convention" and "because we always do it this way" LOL  I mean, I've done that for holiday meals b/c my husband prefers it when I don't muck around with his favorite dishes, but truthfully, it kills a little bit of my soul not to try at least one thing new.

I have come to a point though where I've found a few things that work really well and so I gravitate to those recipes.  I don't do exactly the same thing every year, but I've got a rotation of less than half a dozen Thanksgiving main dish recipes now.  My favorite preparations are either brining the turkey or using some kind of butter-herb rub under the skin.  Brining gives a very moist turkey with crispy skin after roasting, while the sub-q butter gives the turkey an unmatched flavor although it sacrifices the crispy skin.

Either way, you want to make some turkey stock in advance for gravy.  I have occasionally seen boxed turkey stock at the store, if you wanted to buy it rather than make it.  No, homemade gravy is not hard (whereas canned gravy is yucky).  The turkey needs to cool before you whack into it anyway, so there's plenty of time for gravy-making.  If you make stuffing, you can also use the turkey stock for the stuffing.  Btw, I do not stuff my turkey, partly b/c of the health recommendations against doing so and partly b/c if I make stuffing, I want those crunchy, crispy bits that only come from being baked next to rather than inside of a turkey.

A quick thought about thawing...the standard line is that you want to give the bird 24 hours in the fridge for every 5 lbs, so a 15 lb. turkey should thaw in 3 days, etc.  I find that this never is sufficient to thaw that block of ice in the cavity, the one you'll have to chisel the giblet package out of if you don't have a totally thawed turkey.  So I calculate 1 day per 5 lbs. plus an extra day for the giblets.  And if you plan to brine, don't forget to set your thawed-by target 24 hours prior to actual cooking (I screw up so you don't have to).

First things first, stock.  Make some the weekend before Thanksgiving (or earlier) and freeze it.  Use the meat from the wings/drumsticks in tacos, soup, pot pie, salad, sandwiches...you know, any of the Thanksgiving leftover recipes.

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Beurre Manié

Say wha?  Not so much a recipe for a finished product as an aggravation-saving hint.  This something I'm convinced everyone should put in their freezer stash if any stews, sauces or gravies are in their future.  It's not hard to cook a roux-based sauce at all, and truly getting out a tbsp or two of butter and flour to start a sauce isn't all that hard either, but due to counter space restrictions, flour lives in my pantry which is a toddler-free zone which in turn means a Royal Cage Match with the aforementioned toddler every time I want to get it out and put it back.  Not worth it for 1 tbsp of flour, know what I mean?

This is THE thickener of French cuisine (and also of cheese sauce and turkey giblet gravy...very important).  Beurre manié is a combination of flour and butter, and is used to thicken a finished stew, cooked briefly to start a sauce or cooked a long time to form a flavoring agent in Cajun cooking. 

Most recipes call for equal parts butter and flour, which is perfectly fine by me, though I do think you can go as high as a 2 -to-3 ratio of butter to flour and still be fine if you want to cut out a little fat. 
Beurre Manié
Makes 8 portions (each corresponds to 1 tbsp flour called for in a recipe)

1/2 cup butter, softened

1/2 cup all-purpose flour

Combine well using a pastry cutter, food processor or mixer. 

Roll into a log and cut into 8 portions.

 
Freeze on a cookie sheet and put into a zip-top bag.

Lower-fat Beurre Manié
Makes 12 portions (each corresponds to 1 tbsp flour called for in a recipe)

1/2 cup butter, softened
3/4 cup all-purpose flour

Same procedure as above.

How do you use this?  Where a recipe says, "Melt X tbsp of butter and whisk in X tbsp flour", use 1 portion of this mixture for each tbsp of flour called for.  An example:

Cheese Sauce
Makes about 2 1/2 cups

2 tbsp butter
2 tbsp flour

OR

2 portions of frozen beurre manié

1 1/2 cup milk
1 cup shredded cheese
salt and pepper to taste

Melt butter over medium heat and whisk in flour, or stir beurre manié until melted and well-incorporated.  Cook 1 minute.  Whisk in milk slowly to avoid lumps.  Raise heat to medium-high until bubbles start to appear.  Reduce heat to medium and simmer 5-7 minutes, until thickened.  Stir in cheese and season with salt and pepper. Pin It

Easy-easier-easiest sides: Potatoes

You can't make and freeze everything ahead.  Sigh.  Some stuff--like vegetables--don't like to get chilly, so here's a step-wise approach to preparing fresh potato side dishes easily. 

Btw, the Lime-Thyme Potatoes were so good, they almost became appetizers instead of a side dish...and got a clean-plate double thumbs up from the toddler contingent!  And they can be made entirely using the microwave!

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The Single Tablespoon Quick Change

Compound butter and flavored olive oil.  Make some ahead, freeze it or fridge it, and turn Plain Anything into an Amazing Something with a tablespoon or two.  Pork chops, chicken breasts, fish fillets, baked potatoes, steamed broccoli, rice, pasta, scrambled eggs...it is astounding what you can do with this stuff.

In general, I'd use the oil and clarified butter to cook in and the compound butters and chimichurri to finish a cooked dish.

Mojo de Ajo
Makes about 2 cups
Thank you to Jason and Michelle for this one!

2 large heads garlic, cloves peeled and smashed slightly
1 - 1 1/2 cup olive oil
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 cup fresh lime juice
red pepper flakes (optional)

Heat oven to 325F.  Stir together garlic, oil and salt in a baking dish small enough to keep the garlic submerged in the oil (9x5 works).  Bake 45-55 minutes.  Add lime juice and return to the oven for 20 minutes.  Remove and mash garlic into a coarse puree.  Add red pepper flakes to taste, if desired.  Store in a pint jar in a cool, dry place (I keep mine in the fridge and take it out a few minutes before cooking to let the oil liquify)




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