patrickamory

Ah, that makes sense. I'd just add to watch out for the added salt & other ingredients many brands come with, making comparisons...

I was at first very intrigued by the Pushpesh Pant book but the reviews, confirmed by Jenni's comment above, put me off completely. Duplication and omission of ingredients are pet peeves of mine. Another is cookbooks that won't stay open!

I'm not sure I can agree with this.

I think the correct response this time is an emoticon:

Humidity / dryness can be issues too. Why not a small wine fridge?

Sopa de lima per David Tanis's recipe for using the turkey carcass and leftover meat in Wednesday's Times. I followed this pretty much to the letter. Just added a little Mexican oregano.

This question has always fascinated me. For one, any recipe for chicken from a book that's more than a couple of decades old specifies how old the bird should be for the recipe. "Find a young fryer" or "an old stewing bird" etc. Julia Child illustrates this graphically with about 8 different birds in the roast chicken episode of the French Chef. Richard Olney goes into great detail about the different ages of chickens in the Poultry volume of the Good Cook. But where is there a butcher who will sell me older chickens? If I go to my local quality butchers and ask, will they have stewing birds? Maybe I should just try (Chinese supermarkets always have a variety of different birds, but they still seem to be battery-raised and don't taste as good to me as Murray's. I've tried going to a vivero in Washington Heights to buy live poultry, but I walked out after a few minutes. The smell was just a turn-off. There was also a process issue with the different windows & nobody really eager to help, and since I was walking and it was in the 90s outside, it just didn't feel good to think about walking around with a few pounds of freshly killed chicken. Will try again at some point.)

ChefCrash: this is great, and combines a couple of processes I've been wanting to try. Question: you said you'd be milling the bulgur, but then I don't see a reference to that in your description above. Did you do it before placing the grains in the oven, or after they came out of the oven but before combining with the yogurt?

I'm taking the leftover carcass, bones, some meat and the unused neck to make turkey stock, simmering away right now. Then tomorrow I'm going to make sopa de lima per David Tanis's suggestion in this week's New York Times: http://dinersjournal.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/21/what-can-i-make-with-leftover-turkey-besides-sandwiches/?ref=thanksgivingday Another Thanksgiving tip I discovered this year - throw a star anise in your Ocean Spray cranberries while heating them up with the boiling water & sugar. Also, go a little lighter on the sugar than Ocean Spray recommends - it doesn't need to be so sweet.

Haven't been there in about a decade... the steamed lobster was pretty good for Boston (not a patch on Maine). Don't think I went much beyond that. Is there a Summershack location near the waterfront?

Thanks! I actually did the stuffing both inside and outside. The outside stuffing got an extra knob of butter, a generous dusting of semi-sharp paprika and maybe a quarter cup of water. Cooked it stovetop, then browned it in the oven. Both benefited from your recommendations regarding the sausage meat - half of which was rendered to release the fat (in which the celery and onion got softened, with the addition of a stick bof butter), the other half placed in the freezer for 10 minutes before hand-mixing with the rest of the stuffing ingredients. Both versions were great.

I haven't been to Delhi, but Julie Sahni's recipe for butter chicken (which she calls Velvet Butter Chicken and translates Makhani Murgh) is absolutely fabulous. It appears in Classic Indian Cooking, which was published in 1980. Interestingly, she includes a totally separate recipe for chicken tikka masala, which is simply Murgh Masala, and translates Chicken in Onion Tomato Gravy.

Is the Barking Crab still open at this time of year?

Jaymes - lots of great ideas in there. Is top round what they use in Philly for cheese steaks, I wonder? You mention German brown bread. Do you make your own, or buy it somewhere? I've never been able to find great, sour German / central European brown or black bread in NYC (at least since Grand Dairy closed its doors).

I'll second L'Express. And second Schwartz's Deli - you HAVE to go there!

Total success - one of the best turkeys, and some of the best stuffing, I've ever made, I think. Thanks rotuts! Times and temps were exactly as above. I'm not sure whether being tightly steamed in a foil bag for the first segment means that it cooks more slowly, but the thigh was at about 130F when the turkey came out of the foil. Not a great photo unfortunately.... it looked & tasted a lot better than this

Extremely intrigued. Keep posting details.

Everywhere in downtown Boston is close, but getting around can be complicated.

And the rendered fat lasts for months in the fridge.

Hi rotuts - no injections in the B&E. I think the time & temps are a bit high. Gonna play it by ear (and thermapen). Thanks!

Okay, so here's my dilemma. I'm combining two turkey procedures that have each worked very well for me separately, but one of them has to change aspects of the other and I can't quite figure out how. Any tips appreciated. Turkey is a 14 lb Bell & Evans. 1. Gourmet recipe from several years ago from a Hungarian-American that involves effectively steaming it inside a buttered foil "bag", tightly crimped all around, for 2 1/2 hours at 450, and then an additional 30 minutes at 375 to brown the breast, till 165 in the thigh, then 15 minutes rest. 2. Dry-brine or pre-salt adaptation of Alton Brown - 36 hours in the fridge exposed on a rack and salted according to his measurements (1 tbs kosher salt per 5 lbs inside and out). Last year I did #2 and cooked with the convection feature in my mother's Gaggenau, totally open, much faster. That was for a heritage breed. With the Bell & Evans, I want to return to the foil bag method. BUT I'm told the salting will reduce the cooking time and to start checking thigh temp at 2/3 of the cooking time. Obviously difficult with the bird sealed in a foil bag, not to mention the extra browning time at the end. What is the best way to reconcile the two approaches? any rules of thumb?

rotuts: thanks, sounds yummy! I bought sausage meat ( what they use in their sweet Italian sausages ) from Ottomanelli's when I picked up the turkey. It's PLENTY fatty, so I may fry it before stuffing. Maybe if I get a leaner sausage next year.

In any event, I'm dry-brining (or pre-salting) my Bell & Evans turkey this year. It's 24 hours in, sitting uncovered on a rack in the fridge. Cooking starts at about 1 PM tomorrow. I did the same thing for my heritage turkey last year. Definitely preferred it to wet brines I've used in prior years.

When I went to pick up my turkey at Ottomanelli yesterday (again - the one on Bleecker Street, not the uptown one which is an unrelated company I believe), the guy ahead of me was picking up a very large fresh goose.

Really! No worries about the stuffing and/or the bird not being all the way cooked this way (since so many people are worrying about precisely that already)? I've been meaning to try Andie's tip about putting the metal tube from a bulb baster into my stuffing to ensure that it cooks at the same rate.... but my baster gave up the ghost earlier this year, and looking in the stores, all the baster tubes are now glass