We love making a Thanksgiving feast – and perhaps we would argue that it should be enjoyed more than just once a year.
This year, we made our herb butter spatchcocked turkey, cranberry sauce, stuffing, roasted carrots, gravy, broccolini, and apple hand pies. Just about everything came together in an afternoon, and it resulted in a wonderful meal — and eventually, a pot pie with the scraps (more on that later).
Read more for the details on each.
Turkey
Ingredients:
* 10-14 lb turkey
* 8oz/227g Kerrygold unsalted butter
* 1 orange
* 1-2 yellow onions, plus some shallots (we had them on-hand)
* 3-4 large carrots
* 2 stalks of celery
* Salt for brining
* 1 pack rosemary
* 1 pack sage
* 1 pack thyme
We picked a 12-13 pound turkey from Whole Foods, which was a nice size. The day before our feast, we defrosted it in a large plastic storage container filled with cold water for around 8 hours (checking on it periodically), until mostly defrosted. Once defrosted, we started butchering and salting it. John cut out the backbone for us (RIP one pair of kitchen scissors) and then separated the breasts and legs. We also made sure to keep the giblets on our sheet pan for salting and roasting. Then, we carefully separated the skin from the meat and generously salted it all over with Morton’s course salt. After that, it was time to rest the turkey in the fridge overnight. The next day, we took the turkey out at about 12pm.
We made it like this:
* Preheat oven to 350 and remove turkey from fridge.
* Chop one pack each of rosemary, sage, and thyme (we used the fresh ones from Trader Joe’s).
* Soften an 8oz/227g block of Kerrygold unsalted butter in the microwave, then mix in the chopped herbs.
* Rub herb butter all over the turkey – particularly under the skin.
* Roughly chop an onion, carrots, shallots, celery and an orange to add to the sheet pans (these are just aromatics – feel free to improvise)
* Stick thermometer probes in the deepest part of the breast.
* Bake until thermometer registers 150-155 degrees – monitor for carry-over temps. This only needs 50 seconds at 155 to be pasteurized (it will need 3 minutes for 150 degrees). Don’t overcook your bird!
* The thighs can stay in the oven much longer – remove once they look thoroughly browned and cooked, maybe 30 more minutes.
Kitchen notes:
* We didn’t really need the thermometer in the thigh – and we actually could have cooked the thigh for much longer than we did. Put two thermometers the in the breast (for extra accuracy), and take the thighs out later or when ready to eat!
* Initially, we took the breast out too early – at just about 145 degrees – anticipating a lot of carry-over heat (and a poorly placed probe). But, since it didn’t coast as much as we anticipated, we put back in the oven just before serving at 450 degrees to crisp and finish cooking. NO overcooked turkeys for us, thanks.
Stuffing
Ingredients:
* 1 loaf of crusty bread
* Carrots
* Celery
* 1 onion
* 4 eggs
* Chicken stock (we used chicken bouillon and water)
* 4 T Kerrygold unsalted butter (or olive oil, or a mix of both)
* Salt
Ashley was apprehensive about how much stuffing she would eat during the dinner planning phase. For that reason, we omitted using any meat and just kept it to the basics – bread, mirepoix, stock, and eggs. This is a biased opinion, but it was scrumptious!
Our inspiration for making stuffing came from the extra frozen loaf of wheat bread (see the Saturday White Bread recipe from Ken Forkish, adapted to use a portion of King Arthur’s Whole Wheat Flour) that had been sitting in our freezer. Ashley really enjoyed the heartiness of using this crusty, somewhat wheat-y bread. John would have preferred a softer white bread in the more traditional stuffing sense.
Here’s how we did it:
* Slice the bread into cubes and dry in the oven at a low temperature, no more than 250 degrees. Bake until dry.
* In a skillet, melt the butter/oil, and cook carrots, celery, onion until softened.
* Add water, chicken bouillon (or stock, if using), and salt to the skillet. De-glaze, if needed.
* Add the dried bread to a separate casserole dish (if it won’t all fit in the skillet) and pour the vegetable and stock mixture on top. Stir to combine.
* Once the mixture is cool enough to not risking scrambling, add the eggs.
* Bake everything at 400 degrees for about 50 minutes, or until everything is set and brown bits are forming on top.
Kitchen notes:
* Ashley likes the stuffing consistency to be similar to bread pudding. This stuffing achieved a good mix of cragginess and moist pudding-like texture.
Cranberry Sauce
It’s a Thanksgiving classic, it’s crazy easy to make, and it’s another one of those things that should be enjoyed more often throughout the year (it also made for a really good leftover turkey sandwich). Ashley made this in the middle of our other dinner prep, because it really is that simple. Thanks to J. Kenji Lopez-Alt for the base recipe.
Ingredients:
* 1 bag cranberries (we used a 12 oz bag of frozen ones from Whole Foods)
* 1 cup sugar (adjust as needed)
* 1 cinnamon stick
* Juice of 1 orange
* Salt
To make the sauce:
* Combine all ingredients in a saucepan and cook until jammy. Check on it occasionally to ensure nothing is burning. Ashley added some orange zest and simmered the peels for a bit, too. Keeps well in the fridge!
* With the other unused orange scraps, Ashley made candied chocolate-covered oranges.
Gravy
We did not have any gravy prepped, nor did we end up using the drippings to make it (into the stock pot with those!). So, we made chicken bouillon gravy. Ashley was a skeptic, but it worked! Next time, we plan on adding some soy sauce to the gravy for the umami (and color), as well as cooking the roux just a little longer.
Ingredients:
* Chicken bouillon
* Flour
* Butter
* Water
* Soy sauce
Method: Use equal parts flour and butter (or any fat) to make the roux. Cook until toasty. Slowly add water and chicken bouillon (or stock) and soy sauce. Cook until thick and combined.
Kitchen notes: So, we didn’t actually add any soy sauce this time. But Ashley wants to add it, and many recipes do.
Apple Hand Pies
So as to not be burdened with an entire apple pie for the two of us (though, how bad is that, really?), Ashley made apple hand pies. She followed Martin Phillip’s recipe from the Sassafras Curio, which has also been posted on the King Arthur Baking site.
Kitchen notes:
* Ashley made two versions of the dough: one using 40g of whole wheat flour as written, and one with only all purpose flour.
* Ashley also used Kerrygold unsalted butter as the fat, and she subbed Icelandic Provisions 2% Skyr for the sour cream. Both worked great.
* The apples can be prepped a few days in advance. Ashley used a combination of Honeycrisp, Pink Lady, and Fuji apples, cooked in a couple tablespoons of butter, cinnamon, brown sugar, vanilla, and salt, then thickened with a corn starch slurry. Freeze in ice cube trays and use as portions in the pastry dough.
* Don’t be afraid to make the filling more syrupy, and caramel sauce is an excellent topping.
* When trimming the dough, use a ravioli cutter: it makes the edges pretty, and it seals them well.
* Dough scraps are perfect for eating alongside turkey pot pie leftovers.
* The pastries (filled, sealed, and ready to bake) freeze and bake perfectly. Bake from from frozen, and add just a couple minutes to the bake time.
