Turkey Burgers

Turkey burgers baked in a jumbo muffin pan
as mini-meatloaves (same bat time, same
bat temp) with a brush of garlic jelly as a glaze

I just adore Chris Kimball, America's Test Kitchen and their recipes.  They are almost uniformly a few steps more intensive than I'm willing to do on a regular basis, but I forgive them because they are always so, so right.  That said, I am willing to live in the place between Right and Easy, a little place I like to call Rational Compromise ;)

The July 2012 issue of Cooks Illustrated includes an egg-free, carb-free recipe for a moist, light turkey burger.  The one major departure I make from this recipe is that I do not grind my own meat by purchasing a bone-in hunk o' turkey, cutting the meat off the bone, partially freezing it and running it through the food processor for just enough pulses to produce the "perfect" grind.  Huh-unh.  Not gonna do it.  I used 1 1/2 lbs. ground turkey instead and got delicious results.

There are some surprising ingredients here...soy sauce, baking soda, gelatin.  I can't remember all the science but there's a reason for it.  Go to your local public library and check out this issue of CI for details.  A super-cool bonus of the science is this makes a nice tender burger without the usual carb-y additions or eggs for those with egg allergies.

Regarding the mushrooms...the mushrooms get very finely chopped and effectively disappear into the burger.  It's not like eating big chunks o' mushroom with your burger, in case you have some fungi-phobes at your dinner table.  I will say that you do need white button mushrooms here instead of something fancier for aesthetic reasons.  I made this recipe with brown cremini mushrooms, and they just come out looking very unappetizing in the final product.  With brown mushrooms, the burger is still PERFECTLY DELICIOUS but UGLY AS ALL HECK.

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Roast turkey breast three ways

My grocery had those 3 lb. boneless turkey breast roasts on sale this week. We're far enough away from Thanksgiving that I can safely put turkey on the dinner rotation without protest LOL Turkey makes an interesting change-up from chicken, is leaner than beef and this week was cheaper than pork. A 3 lb. roast is a lot o' turkey for 4 people though, so I'm roasting it once and making 3 meals out of it. Observe and be amazed :D

1st: Roasted turkey with rosemary-orange sauce and mashed mixed root vegetables (both recipes adapted from the 28 Day Diabetic Meal Plan available from 28daymealplan.diabeticonnect.com...you have to register with them to get it, but it's worthwhile!  Lots of good recipes in this one!)

Turkey Tequila Fettucine with broccoli rabe

2nd: Turkey Tequila Fettucine (adapted from Guy Fieri's recipe )

3rd: Turkey Royale sandwiches

Meals #1 and #2 are prep-aheadable (and #1 is freezer kit-able too!).  Meal #3 is a quick and easy no-prep meal.  Tequila is optional for meal #2...substitute white wine, vermouth, sherry, chicken stock or orange juice if you wish.  The flavors in Meal #3 seem weird but are Ah.May.Zing together...don't count this one out just because it looks unusual!

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Chicken Biscuits

What doesn't taste better in a biscuit, I ask you?  This is a fabulous upcycle recipe for chicken (or turkey) leftovers.  You can tweak it to suit your palate...add Italian seasoning if you want a Mediterranean flavor, taco seasoning for Mexican, Cajun seasoning for a little Creole flavor, or leave it pretty plain with just salt and pepper.  Any type of cheese will do, though I prefer a cheese in the "melting" family...mozzarella, provolone, gruyere, fontina....rather than the "shape-retaining" family...goat, cheddar, jack, swiss.

You don't want the filling to be soupy, so be sure to drain canned tomatoes well or squish the seedy innards out of fresh tomatoes.  I use dry minced onion to help absorb any extra liquid from the tomatoes, though you can choose to use a bit of fresh onion instead. 

I usually use refrigerated "whomp" biscuits (as the Sweet Potato Queen calls them, cuz you "whomp" them on your kitchen counter to open the tube) for this recipe.  Nota bene: you'll want to get "regular" size biscuits, not "jumbo" biscuits (I screw up so you don't have to!)  When I do make homemade biscuits though, I use a recipe from a fundraiser-type cookbook called All Maine Cooking.  It is *the* best biscuit recipe I've made...not too heavy, not too wet, not too salty, not too sweet, and easy to put together and roll out.  I give the recipe halved as you'll only need half to go with the Chicken Biscuit recipe.

Nerd Note of the Day...did you know cream of tartar is a by-product of winemaking?  Tartaric acid (which is what CoT is) comes from the leftover grape bits.  You could use about 3 tsp of baking powder instead of the baking soda and cream of tartar if you don't keep cream of tartar on hand, though there are other uses for it like stabilizing whipped egg whites and making your own playdoh.
 
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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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Thanksgiving leftovers

I've gotten pretty darn good at handling Thanksgiving leftovers without resorting to five straight days of turkey sandwiches.  The trick is to shop ahead for a few extra ingredients to make the following recipes at the same time you're shopping for your holiday meal.  And it's not just the turkey that needs using up, so I have a couple of leftover side dish recipes as well. 

In giving shop ahead lists, I assume you'll have pantry and refrigerator basics on hand already...spices, onions, garlic, butter, oil, eggs, and basic baking ingredients.

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Poppy Seed Chicken variation

Ground turkey was on sale this week, so I made a variant of the Poppy Seed Chicken Casserole with browned ground turkey instead of baked chicken.  I also used crunched up Ritz crackers for the topping since I couldn't bear to make another appliance dirty by making breadcrumbs in the food processor. 

Double batch, frozen in 2 8x8 disposable pans.

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Veggie-stuffed turkey meatloaf

This is adapted from a Better Homes and Gardens recipe.  I like using grits instead of breadcrumbs in turkey meatloaf.  Ground turkey can be, well, squishy and breadcrumbs just seem to amplify that quality.  Grits give a little more tooth to a slice of turkey meatloaf in my opinion.  If you don't have grits, just use breadcrumbs but I do think grits are worth keeping around if only as a breadcrumb-substitute.

The vegetables tucked inside the meatloaf help keep it moist and almost count as their own side dish.  You need 2 cups of lightly cooked, chopped vegetables.  Doesn't really matter what they are.  A brilliant plan would be to get some frozen mixed vegetables, nuke them a couple minutes and pulse them a couple of times in the food processor to chop them.  You'll wind up with enough vegetable stuffing from a 16 oz. bag to do two meatloaves in advance.

As far as the glaze, it's delicious but not really necessary.  Skip it if you want, or use whatever type of jelly/jam you have on hand.  I would avoid strawberry or grape, personally, but apricot, currant, apple, or blackberry would all be delish.

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