In honor of the election, I asked Chatbot to create an image of a patriotic turkey.
It’s Monday before Thankgiving… do you know where your Thanksgiving turkey is? if still in the freezer, drag it out stat! You’ve got 2 days if you’re going to brine it, 2 1/2 days otherwise, so not a minute to waste. Most food safety experts would say you should defrost in the refrigerator, but when time is short we tend to “forget” ours on the counter for a few hours right at the beginning, until the surface is just beginning to soften and still below the 39 degree setting of most fridges.
After we defrost our Thanksgiving turkey we’ll repeat the dry-brine method which turned out to be a hit in 2023; from that point we’ll follow the method first described several years ago:
We’ll cook our turkey this way following the options from sfgate.com with a light brining, stuffing, and roasting at moderate heat with a paper towel or cheesecloth covered with oil or butter over the breast till the last half hour. We’ll use this stuffing recipe, though we’ll dial back the spices because we will be using our bread machine bread for stuffing which has the spices already mixed in, accompanied by fresh cranberry sauce which, according to our taste test, is the best option and very easy.
The next day we’ll have turkey sandwiches on some good stiff country sourdough with leftover stuffing, gravy, wilted salad and cranberry sauce, nicely lubricated with Durkee’s Famous Sauce. And then the real work begins as we figure out what to do with the remaining 15 pounds or so of turkey.
