For Friday, Thanksgiving day.
Last year, I can't remember if I wrote a blog or not about it; but I made a Thanksgiving Turkey for Marcie and I. Last Turkey day was the first since we got married. Before that, we had thanksgiving at her family's or when we lived in Vegas for a year, we had a make-shift buffett in San Diego.
Last year, I followed an idea from Alton Brown (chef on Food Network). I like his shows and he really does a great job explaining things. So much so that my brother has even given me a cookbook (or two?) of his.
The thing is that there is a real science behind food prep, ingredients and cooking. He is a geek in that he shows what not to do (even though lots of people do it the other way...etc), and how to do something correctly.
Anywho, I followed a recipe of his that was for a regular turkey. However, his involved a brine and a vegetable stock, neither of which I made. Either way, I followed it to a T, except for the candied ginger...couldn't find it (still can't find it!). And the turkey was hands down amazing.
This year Im doing the same thing. I wanted to change it up a bit, but due to my having to work on Thanksgiving, we are having the T-day on Friday instead. So we went to the store tonight to get all the goodies and I started cooking.
First...the veggie stock...taken from allrecipes.com
16 cups of water (I had to tweak the recipe)
3 carrots
1 1/2 bunches of green onions
1 1/2 red onion
10 sprigs parsley
10 cloves garlic
1tbsp salt.
2 stalks celery
handful of thyme (didn't have any sprigs...just guessed, lol)
3 bay leaves
chopped everything up and boiled. Last year, I chopped stuff up into larger chunks and boild it. This year I figured I would chop smaller pieces of all the veggies and even used the food processor for a few things. I figured the more pieces, the more flavor that will get out of the stuff and into the liquid.
Fry in a tbsp of oil the veggies for about 5 minutes, then add the gallon of water. boil and then simmer for 30.
After that, I continued altons recpie of making the brine. After the stock was done and drained, I added 1 cup of salt, peppercorns, allspice and brown sugar to the stock, boiled again until everything was mixed...and now its sitting to cool and i will put it in the fridge tomorrow. Tmorrow night, I will put the turkey in a cooler (instead of garbage can like last year, lol) and along with a gallon of ice water, let it sit overnight.
I will then chop up a red onion, red apple, cinnamon stick, rosemary and sage and with some water..nuke it for about 10 minutes until everything is steeped through, then stuff er in the now washed out birdy. Toss it in the oven at 500 for a while, then knock it down to 350 to finish and a couple of hours later...mmm.
I never thought of using aromatics in a turkey before. Actually never even heard of it until last year when I started looking for recipes. Lots of people stuff the bird with stuffing, but that acts like a sponge and soaks up all that good moisture in the turkey. When you use the brine mixture, the salt gets the brine and flavorful veggie stock to go through the bird...then the aromatics continue by releasing that smell and pushing it throughout the bird as it cooks; resulting in a turkey that smells wonderful and is extremely moist.
Unfortunately, I have to wait until Friday, but thats ok. It should be a rather short work day and I can get back to cook it in time.