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November 24, 2005
Thanksgiving: The Turkey
I'll skip over the events of Tuesday and yesterday and just get right into today. We had planned to join Leslie and her clan for Thanksgiving dinner at the Waterfront on pier 70 in Seattle. Richard started getting snotty sick earlier in the week, and I tried to fight it off, but it finally tackled me yesterday and today. This morning, and I use the term "morning" loosely, I got up with a splitting headache, full sinuses and unable to breathe through my nose. Whee. So I called Leslie and talked to her and she said I should go back to sleep. Talked to Leslie's mom and she said I sounded horrible :)
So, thanksgiving was quiet this year. I scaled back in the cooking department. I think like 2 weeks ago, I got a really great deal on a 24 lb turkey. It was frozen so I let it sit in the fridge to thaw. I was sure that I had let it thaw too much (i.e. it had thawed days ago and was now rotting in the fridge), but when i finally got around to throwing it in the oven at midnight Tuesday night, it still had ice crystals around the wings.
I didn't bother to wash the turkey off, I just removed the giblet bag and tossed that, took the neck out and put that in the pan along side the bird. Turkey was breast side down, and I shoved a bunch of fresh sage, a bunch of fresh thyme, and a stick of rosemary up the butt. I preheated the oven to 350, and tossed the bird in on the bottom rack. Baked at 350 for 1 hour, then reset the temp to 200 degrees, and baked for another 23 hours. Yes. 23 hours.
While the turkey was cooking all day Wednesday, I made my frozen corn salad that I enjoy (Richard doesn't, so it's just for me) and my yummy raw cranberry sauce. I knew what I was going to give Richard (turkey, instant mashed potatoes, and canned green beans) so really the rest was just what I wanted. I was feeling crappy yesterday, and I had a lot of other work to do, so I figured that the corn and the cranberries would be plenty to get me through the meal we'd be having at midnight. If I wanted more stuff I could always make it tomorrow.
So midnight rolled around, I took the turkey out of the oven, turned the heat up and popped in a Marie Callander's frozen pumpkin pie to bake. Now, I was going to make gravy, but I was just not feeling motivated. So I decided that we'd just eat the turkey thigh meat last night, and deal with the typically drier white meat tomorrow with gravy.
We finished eating and I let the turkey sit a bit more (but less than 45 minutes out of the oven total, because as the pie's time was going off at 65 minutes, I'd finished cleaning everything up). Then I decided to get rid of the carcass tonight, so I picked off all of the stuff that wasn't the two gigantic slabs of breast meat. I ripped away the bones and skin and plopped the two gigantic breast slabs into another dish and covered them in foil and tossed them in the fridge. I then strained the broth into another bowl and let that sit for a bit and put that in the fridge too.
Then for lunch today when I had my first turkey, I saw that the juices had all stayed in the breasts and they were absolutely delicious. When I microwaved the turkey, juices actually came up to the surface! It was not dry and it has a really great velvety texture that is to die for. It will be easy to use up the rest in a variety of dishes.
The only addition I made this evening was some gravy with the leftover gelled turkey broth. I peeled the fat off the top and then threw about a cup and a half of the jelly into a pan, melted it, tossed in a packed of mccormick's turkey gravy mix and a pack of onion gravy mix. Stirred those in to make sure there were no lumps. Then I dumped in some milk (not sure how much, maybe another cup). Then finished the gravy with about a 1/4 tsp of Bell's Seasoning. Holy crap was that good gravy! On excellent turkey! What a meal!
Posted by jodikins at November 24, 2005 6:48 PM