With a 16 lb. organic turkey in the freezer (thanks to our amazing neighbors) we decided to invite a bunch of people over for Easter dinner. Having never made an actual turkey (just the tofu-kind), we got some advice and ingredients and set to work.
First of all, I had at least 3 different people recommend the Reynold's Oven bag to cook the turkey in. My husband and I are both anti-cooking-anything-in-plastic so we said no. We wanted to learn the old-fashioned way.
On Tuesday, I took the turkey out of the freezer and put it in the fridge to start thawing. I never would have taken it out 4 days before, but by golly- it still wasn't completely thawed by Saturday morning! (We had Easter dinner on Saturday so that we could cook all day). That morning, we put the turkey in a sink full of cold water for an hour or so. Reason #1 of how necessary our kitchen remodel was- the turkey filled the sink and we never would have been able to do that in our old sink, which was half as tall!
After a few hours and the removing of the nasty stuff in the plastic bag that I guess all turkeys come with, I chopped up some onion, garlic, celery and carrots and stuffed them up in that turkey (after taking it out of it's bath). I was told to use paper towels and dry the turkey off. We use about one roll of paper towels every 2-3 years, so I had to go looking for them. I used to be one of those people who grabbed a 6 pack of bleached paper towels every time I went to Target- but in the last few years, I've learned they really aren't as necessary as you would think! It doesn't take much to cut back on the bad habit of paper towel usage. Anyway, by the time I returned to the turkey with my 2 paper towels, it was already dry! So: use a few paper towels to pat the thing dry, or wait 5 minutes and let it air-dry.
I used butter and rubbed it all over the turkey. This is the part that might be gross to some people. You are getting a little intimate with a dead and de-feathered bird, rubbing slimy stuff up under the armpits and all, but it wasn't too bad. At this point, if your house is anything like mine, and you've got raw poultry sitting out, your cats and dog might start to drive you nuts due to the tempting smell. It's a good time to remind them that it's Easter, not Thanksgiving, and they should be enjoying the beautiful spring weather.
By the way, you should have had your mom bring a large pan if you do not own one yourself, and now it's time to put the turkey in that pan and stick it in the oven! Meanwhile, make a zillion side dishes.
I started with deviled eggs the night before. Because it was Easter, I decided to dye them. I used a beet that had been in the fridge a little too long and cut it up, then cooked in in a little water. After slicing up the hard boiled eggs and separating the yolks out, I put the whites in a bowl with the beet juice and let it sit in the fridge overnight, resulting in some very dark pink eggs.
That part was pretty cool, and the beets don't affect the taste of the egg much. The part I messed up was the yolks. I should have just left them yellow, but I decided to experiment and I added some turmeric (which
did affect the taste) and maybe too much paprika. The yolks looked more like a skin-tone and didn't match the pink part too well, but they still got eaten. And they made for some good conversation.
Recipe for Dyed Deviled Eggs:
Hard boil a dozen free range eggs by bringing a pot of water (with some salt if you want) to a full boil, carefully adding the eggs to it (it helps to have a designated large wooden spoon for this. I do.) Once the last egg is in, set the timer for 11 minutes. When the timer goes off, turn off the heat (remove from the burner if you have an electric stove) and set the timer for another 11 minutes. When the timer goes off, rinse the pot with cold water until it feels cool to the touch.
Then crack the egg shells off and compost them. Rinse the eggs. Cut in half the long way. Remove the yellow yolk part and put in a bowl. Dye as you wish.
Add to the yolks: 1 T mayonnaise or nayonnaise if you like the vegan stuff, 1 T vinegar, and one squirt of mustard. Dye as you wish. Mash it all together and scoop the yellow stuff into the white (or formerly white if you dyed it) stuff and top with paprika! Eat any of the ones that fell apart or don't look as pretty before putting them on an attractive platter.
As you can see above, I had the eggs out as an appetizer with a nicely decorated table- with tulip confetti and a bunny cut-out. I was trying to Martha Stewart-out the table!
While my mom and I cooked several sides, I put my dad in charge of the relish tray. My rules: it has to be colorful and on an attractive ceramic platter. His rules: It has to include olives and radishes. (He made a trip to the store).
Mom had recently made a Russian meal using Buckwheat, so she wanted to do a buckwheat side dish. We added lots of mushrooms and it looked good, but the buckwheat has a taste and smell somewhat similar to burning plastic. She wanted to pitch the leftovers, but I said no- let me experiment, and with the leftovers, I came up with a pretty darn good tasting dish!
Here's my experiment:
Buckwheat/Rice dish recipe (to be added as soon as I locate it!)
After all that dreading of facing the daunting task of cooking a real turkey (without a plastic bag!) it really wasn't that hard! The secret was calibrating the thermometer with a scientific thermometer. As homebrewers, we happen to have that stuff laying around the house. We knew our thermometer was off, but we found out it was 30 degrees off! We got it to be accurate, and the turkey came out of the oven at just the right temperature! (180 degrees).
Reason #2 of why our kitchen remodel was necessary- we could have 5 or 6 people actively involved in the meal preparation/table setting all at one time!
Other side dishes included a large mixed-green lettuce salad, homemade bread, green bean casserole (my secret recipe- involving sauteed onions, mushrooms
and white pepper!) and a few more. Needless to say, there were plenty of leftovers despite the 8 people eating all this food.
With everyone gone and just two of us to tackle all the leftovers, we got all the meat off the turkey we could, and despite a few turkey sandwiches made with some homemade chevre from a friend of ours-
excellent combination!- we couldn't tackle it all, so we froze some chunks of turkey meat. I then took the carcass and loosely followed directions from "Joy of Cooking". I put it in our very large Cuisinart Slow Cooker with some water and veggies and let it cook slow for a day. I tried skimming the fat off the top, but since it never really boiled, not much came to the top. I ended up refrigerating it before going though it, and that worked pretty well. For one thing, it was cool enough to handle. I pulled the meat off and saved the non-bony-fatty stuff and when I got it all out, I poured the rest into pint mason jars and froze them for later. The frozen meat will go in a future pot pie. We do own a deep freeze, which makes all of this a bit more possible!
We use real vanilla extract (as in, not imitation) for a lot of things. Homemade kahlua, homemade ice cream and much more. The stuff is expensive! So I was excited to hear that you can make your own. The first thing I heard was to stick a vanilla bean in a bottle of vodka. I went online to do some research and found a little more to it than that:
