Turkey Fest Part III – The Big Day!

And now for the big day!

So after hitting the sack around midnight on Wednesday after cooking and completing a shift at work I woke up at 6:30am to take my Big Ass Bird out of the fridge so it could get to room temperature by the time I needed to get it in the oven, which was 8am since we needed food on the table at 2pm for this particular Turkey Day.

Admittedly, I could have planned all my food preparation a whole lot better instead of cooking until midnight and getting up 6.5 hours later to make sure everything was done on time.  I’m not Martha Stewart and I like to procrastinate. Oh well : )

Anyways moving on this is how I finished up the rest of food noms.

Big Ass Bird

• Brought to room temperature by 8am
• In the oven breast side down on a roasting rack at 425F for 30 min
• Take it out, turn the oven down to 325F and flip it over with clean towels without burning your hands off (I tell you this is a feat with a 20lb turkey)
• Roast until the deepest part of the thigh reads 160F with your handy dandy meat thermometer (I took it out at 157 it was close enough)
• This took about 5 hours in total as I calculated approximately 15min/lb for roasting time for a heritage turkey over 16lbs according to all my interweb searches
• Tent it up and let it rest for 45 minutes. Carve and Serve

Glorious.

Kale Salad

• Clean your kale
• Remove the ribs
• Slice it up into long strips
• Add the dressing I made the night before and let it sit for at least 2 hours before serving

Roasted Beet Salad

• Dice into 1/2 inch cubes
• Make dressing
• Add scallions and goat cheese
• Mix it all together

Carrot Cake

• Remove cake from pans
• Frost it
• Decorate with chopped walnuts

Grain Free Carrot Cake with Ginger Cream Cheese Frosting

Gravy

• Heat it up on the stove
  

  Gravy with pureed chicken skins and giblets.....mmmmmmmm

Roasted Garlic Cauliflower Puree with Caramelized Onions

• Heat it up on the stove
  

  Always gotta garnish

Thanks to my prep the night before the last two items were super easy.  If I hadn’t done that beforehand things probably would’ve ended up more like this

Hungry people on Thanksgiving means everything blows up in the chefs face....

Fortunately things all went quite smoothly and everything got on the table and also onto the surrounding shelves because all of it wouldn’t fit. Yay for gluttony!

Not even the complete spread, which I forgot to capture because I was too excited for food noms

There was still beet salad, kale salad, gravy, cranberry sauce, pies, cakes, rolls, and half of a turkey not featured on this table.  Also the after picture looks almost the same because the 12 of us failed to make a significant dent in our spread.  Amos, we failed you : (

On the good side though, Jeff and I got to take home lots of turkey leftovers as we deconstructed the half eaten carcass

Taking the turkey apart and breaking the wishbone

I won!

Too angry to look at the camera because he lost. Mwah hahaha!

Needless to say it was a great day and all of us and our bellies were thankful for food, company, and chance to spend some quality time with those we love.

Hope you had a fabulous Turkey Day too! Happy Thanksgiving!

Turkey Fest Part II

*Sorry for the delay. I forgot my lappy at Mynchia’s house on the big day and did not get a chance to retrieve any of it until last night.

As my bird is brining away today I needed to get down and work on some of my side dishes for the nomful day looming ahead.

First off, this is what I’m planning on making for the big day:

Carrot Cake – ala the Food Lovers

Cranberry Salsa – borrowed from Kalyn’s Kitchen

Grain Free Gravy

Roasted Garlic Cauliflower Puree

Roasted Beet Salad With Goat Cheese

Kale Salad – borrowed from Food Gal

Big Ass Bird – borrowed from the LA Times

Party guests will be contributing other Thanksgiving favorites, which I’ll happily eat when the day comes.  After passing out from food coma I will then share with you cyber family the rest of the noms : )

Now for the food prep game plan….

Carrot Cake

• Bake the cake
• Make the icing
• Assemble it on Turkey Day

Cranberry Salsa

• Made it on Sunday

Grain Free Gravy

• Make it today
• I suggest making it earlier though : )

Roasted Garlic Cauliflower Puree

• Make it today

Roasted Beet Salad

• Roast the beets today
• Make dressing day of and assemble

Kale Salad

• Make dressing today
• Assemble morning of Thanksgiving
• (In retrospect it tasted better after sitting for a whole day, perhaps next time)

Big Ass Bird

• Let it brine today
• Cook it tomorrow

And this is how I felt at about 11:30pm

Turkey Fest Part I

So as promised here is part one to my Thanksgiving chronicles for this calendar year.

This year I have decided with Mynchia (Mother Tao & Cynthia) to host Thanksgiving and cook a heritage bird.  If you don’t know what a heritage turkey is they look like this …..

Now that's a bird!

Generally most Americans eat the broad breasted white turkey during our beloved holiday.

This looks like a glorified goose to me

Since their introduction to the market the broad breasted white turkey has more or less pushed heritage turkey farming to extinction, because like in all grand things American “Bigger is better!” The broad breasted turkeys have much larger breasts, don’t need to eat as much and can’t fly so it’s easier to raise them.  Additionally, they have to be artificially inseminated since they can’t mate on their own, which in my book just seems gross.  Our heritage friends however can still run, fly (briefly albeit) and get down and dirty with their bad self! Thus they need more space to peck around and are generally slaughtered at 24-30 weeks instead of the 16-18weeks for broad breasted.  Remember “Time is money!” but it sure ain’t as delicious (Think BBQ, low and slow is always better).  Anyways if you want to read more about it check out the Heritage Turkey Foundation site.

Moving on, it is suffice to say I believe this will be a tasty turkey and will have an authentic turkey taste whatever that is.  I’m not sure, but it seems like something I’d like.  So in this spirit to celebrate this turkey for its turkiness I am using the Judy Bird technique aka a dry brine.

Dry-Brine Technique from LA Times

Ingredients:

Kosher Salt ( 1 Tbsp for every 5 lbs)

*Example: 20lb Turkey/5lbs = 4 Tbsp Kosher Salt  (Yay Math!)

Process:

1) Clean and Dry your turkey (inside and out)

Squeaky Clean!

2) Lightly salt the cavity of the bird and then moving to the outside salt liberally all over your Turkey.  Be sure to use all the salt which you measured out and concentrate more than a Tbsp just on the breast area.

Salted!

Check out that salt crust

3) Once you’re done bag your Turkey.  Ideally you should have a sealable bag so air can’t get in, but I didn’t so I just used a rubberband on one of those oven bag things.  If you don’t have one of those I’m sure a garbage bag would do just fine.

Bagged!

4) Stick it in the fridge breast side up for 2 days. On the 3rd day turn it breast side down. (I made this decision a bit late so mine will only be brining for 2 days. Google told me that this would be okay……)

5) After your 3 days pull that sucker out of its bag.  There should be no salt visible on the surface and leave it uncovered in the fridge for 8 hours ****

**** Google also told me this part is optional.  If you skip it just pat your Turkey down with paper towels instead.

6) On Turkey Day take your birdy out of the fridge and let it sit at room temperature for an hour before putting it in the oven.

And that’s it for Turkey brining stay tuned for Turkey Cooking!

p.s. Cross your fingers that Google doesn’t fail me in my brining shortcuts!