Thanksgiving, 2022

[Dr. Teeth]

37 minutes ago, blue_dolphin said:

 

. I don't have the particular liqueurs you used

This is greatly to your credit.

 

I would assume coconut would work.   Coconut has a certain tendency to overpower, but so does the stuff I put in

[kayb]

The bird is in the oven, the dressing is ready to follow it, and I’m about to finish up the corn, Mac and cheese and make the streusel topping for the sweet potatoes. Will get to asparagus and rolls, which are on the first rise, after that. Brandied pumpkin pie and cranberry curd pie done yesterday, as was cranberry salad. Turkey was locally raised, dry-brined. He’s stuffed with a stick of butter, a quartered onion, a q uartered apple, and two sizeable sprigs of fresh thyme.

 

We’ll eat between 4:30 and 5.

[NadyaDuke]

The inevitable adjustments. Two friends can’t make it, so no cheesecake and no green beans. I’m making the Brussels sprouts mustard slaw from NY Times Essentials. I’d given it a test run a few weeks ago before my friend volunteered green beans and we like it. Winemaker friend is bringing a red wine cranberry sauce so I’m not making one. And I know we’ll be fine for desserts:  here they are minus the last minute garnish for that cranberry tart. And a pic of my butter calculator from last night’s prep!

Edited November 24, 2022 by NadyaDuke (log)

[Kim Shook]

We just received a photo from my MIL of her stuffed, cooked turkey sitting on her kitchen counter a full FIVE HOURS before we’ll be eating. 😱   Pray for me. 
 

and…HAPPY THANKSGIVING! 

[Dr. Teeth]

Middle son and I made the two cranberries this morning.

 

Youngest and I made the sweet potatoes.

 

Brussel sprouts cut and in the fridge.

 

Smoked turkey ready to go.

 

Just need to make the mac and cheese with the oldest and the creamed corn with the middle one.

 

Mrs Dr Teeth made the desert.

[Shelby]

52 minutes ago, Kim Shook said:

We just received a photo from my MIL of her stuffed, cooked turkey sitting on her kitchen counter a full FIVE HOURS before we’ll be eating. 😱   Pray for me. 
 

and…HAPPY THANKSGIVING! 

😳

[chromedome]

1 hour ago, Kim Shook said:

We just received a photo from my MIL of her stuffed, cooked turkey sitting on her kitchen counter a full FIVE HOURS before we’ll be eating. 😱   Pray for me. 
 

and…HAPPY THANKSGIVING! 

My GF's mom used to slow-roast hers overnight, stuffed, at a very low temperature (250F, I think?) and then leave it on the counter from mid-morning until the big meal in mid-late afternoon. Then it would sit out all evening for random passers-by to nibble at. My poor sweetie thought she was cursed, because she would invariably be sick over the holidays.

Then a few years back she found herself in a new relationship with a former chef/food safety trainer, and it hasn't happened since. Go figure.

[Dr. Teeth]

So. . .fun fact.   You’re supposed to soak the dried corn for cream corn (my favorite at Thanksgiving) for 4 hours before you cook it.

[Shelby]

21 minutes ago, Dr. Teeth said:

So. . .fun fact.   You’re supposed to soak the dried corn for cream corn (my favorite at Thanksgiving) for 4 hours before you cook it.

Can you speed it up in the Instant Pot?

 

Similar to how you can speed up beans?

Edited November 24, 2022 by Shelby (log)

[kayb]

Cranberry salad and turkey.

 

 

Dressing and sweet potatoes.

 

 

Corn casserole, mac and cheese.

 

Not shown: Gravy, rolls and deviled eggs.

 

I did not cook the asparagus. Green stuff is overrated.

[Tropicalsenior]

As expected, our Thanksgiving ran pretty much as true to form. You all thought I was kidding about the turkey and I now have the pictures to prove it.

Whole turkey cooked.

Close up of the cooked breast.

Sliced turkey, quite dry but somehow it was head and shoulders better than turkeys from the previous years.

Kabobs ready to go on the fire.

 

In the process of cooking.

Kabobs from my plate. Ground lamb, absolutely delicious, in the middle and Chicken on either side. Hamid explained the theory of cooking meat in Persia and the custom of overcooking is a cultural thing that predates the Islamic religion. Originally the Persians were vegetarians and when it became necessary to add meat to their diet there was always a danger of contamination so that they felt that the only proper way to cook meat was in the fire and to be sure that it was overcooked to prevent the diseases of that time. The process goes back 3,000 years.

And as expected, Teresa's ham was delicious. The spaghetti salad brought by another guest.. not so much.

 Hamid's wonderful chicken Olivier salad that is served every year.

Roasted potatoes.

And they were probably five or six other dishes that I didn't get a picture of.

My first plate. Dressing and gravy at 1:00, turkey at 5:00, butternut squash at 7:00, ham at 10:00, potato at 11:00, and I haven't the foggiest notion what the dish was that is at 12:00 but it was delicious. Some sort of beef, I think.

 

Two of the tables for the appetizers and I didn't get a picture of the desserts nor was I in any condition to eat any of them.

 

Two of the smaller guests at the party. The Doberman is an absolute sweetheart and the cat is an attack cat.  I have the scars to prove it. She hates everybody.

The guests were all terrific company. We had people from Venezuela, Columbia, Costa Rica, and Japan. And that was just one family. There were also people from Iran, Turkey, Canada, Argentina, and the United States. It was a wonderful Thanksgiving.

Edited November 25, 2022 by Tropicalsenior (log)

[MaryIsobel]

8 hours ago, kayb said:

The bird is in the oven, the dressing is ready to follow it, and I’m about to finish up the corn, Mac and cheese and make the streusel topping for the sweet potatoes. Will get to asparagus and rolls, which are on the first rise, after that. Brandied pumpkin pie and cranberry curd pie done yesterday, as was cranberry salad. Turkey was locally raised, dry-brined. He’s stuffed with a stick of butter, a quartered onion, a q uartered apple, and two sizeable sprigs of fresh thyme.

 

We’ll eat between 4:30 and 5.

Cranberry curd tarts are on my menu for Christmas dinner. First time so I'm anxious to hear what you think. Happy Thanksgiving!

[Tropicalsenior]

9 hours ago, MaryIsobel said:

Cranberry curd tarts

I'm slightly visually impaired and I had to do a double take. That is a dessert to say carefully.

[Ann_T]

Shouldn't have looked at this thread.

 

Now  I have a craving for both ham and turkey.

[Shelby]

I hope everyone had a good day yesterday!  I started messing around in the kitchen around 11:30 yesterday morning--while watching soccer  

 

Got half a turkey breast ready to SV

 

 

Also seasoned up a turkey quarter to roast, which I guess I didn't get a picture of.

 

Deviled eggs and shrimp cocktail that I put out around 4 to snack on.

 

 

 

Cranberry sauce--I really like this.  Dump 3/4 bag of cranberries in a pot.  Add a cup of sugar and the juice from a can of mandarin oranges.  Bring to a simmer.  Mush the berries until it thickens a bit.  Add the rest of the bag of cranberries.  Stir until they pop.  Remove from heat.  Stir in oranges.

 

 

Green bean, blue cheese and mushroom tart

 

 

I made THE green bean casserole.  I used a lot more of those crunchy onion things than the recipe said.  It was pretty good for me not really liking it lol.  Ronnie was happy.

 

 

Gravy

 

 

Stewed tomatoes

 

 

The turkey.  Gosh it was good.  Both cuts.  SV'd at 142.5F for 6 1/2 hours.  Roasted at 350F for about 40 mins until internal temp of 160.

 

 

My plate

 

 

When I took my bread to my sister in law she sent me home with her pumpkin rolls!  She knows I love them

 

 

So those and bourbon pecan pie for dessert

 

 

 

 

[Dr. Teeth]

16 hours ago, Shelby said:

Can you speed it up in the Instant Pot?

 

Similar to how you can speed up beans?

 I guess I could have.   But I discovered my mistake before I opened anything for the corn and it was just the five of us due to some unforeseen circumstances.  And there was a ton of food.

 

I love the John Copes corn, but it involves enough cream and milk that I can’t justify it as anything other than a once a year thing. (Hence my not knowing the recipe required presoaking)

 

I had also recently seen a Curtis Stone recipe for spiced pork chops over creamed corn.   So I held off on the corn with a plan to have my once a year next week with some chops we have in the freezer from the last Costco pork loin.

 

Just seemed a better idea than more leftovers.   
 

But thank you for the help and for the mustard recommendation in the dinner thread.

[blue_dolphin]

I made @Dr. Teeth's Piña Colada Cranberry Sauce (his recipe above with a splash of Kōloa Kaua'i coconut rum) and toasted coconut chips to garnish. I thought it was pretty good. 
Brought  Vivian Howard's salad with apples, Brussels sprouts, pomegranate arils in a blue cheese honey vinaigrette which was more popular than in previous years. Got 4 requests for the recipe
Also made a cranberry curd tart, generally following the ATK recipe but with Dorie Greenspan's cranberry curd. I brought along garnishes  to pretty it up but the dessert buffet started up while I was out of the room so it went out naked with the bowl of whipped cream on the side. 

Still pretty and a nice counterpoint to the pumpkin and pecan pies. 

 

[Smithy]

I HAVE to try that cranberry curd tart! But yesterday was not the day for it, nor for the pecan pie I'd contemplated, nor even the tarte soleil that's been been on my to-do list since @CookBot showed it off here. I didn't even bake bread. Somehow, with only the two of us, ambitions and timing fell by the wayside. We ate at almost our normal dinner time, rather than in midafternoon as we'd intended. Still, we had family phone calls and a good day. And we ate well.

 

I got a bee in my bonnet about deviled eggs yesterday, thanks in part to this topic but mostly because our housesitter texted me to see if there was a deviled egg carrier in our house. (Yes, there are two. I was able to steer her to the one most conveniently stored.) I remembered that we already had a hard-boiled egg in the refrigerator. My filling was much too gloppy, but we enjoyed the appetizer anyway.

 

The rest of the menu was

• smoked pork shank, slow-cooked in the oven with carrots and potatoes, topped with sauerkraut
• green beans with walnuts and feta cheese, based on this recipe
• smoked corn, cooked with a bit of butter
• a cucumber relish / salad, made of very thin slices of cucumber marinated in vinegar with a touch of sugar and salt, to be squeezed and garnished before serving

Appetizer, and getting ready to serve:

 

 

Served:

 

Not shown: the cucumbers. I discovered them this morning, still marinating. 😆

[kayb]

14 hours ago, MaryIsobel said:

Cranberry curd tarts are on my menu for Christmas dinner. First time so I'm anxious to hear what you think. Happy Thanksgiving!

i thought it was wonderful — a tart and light counterpoint to a rich, heavy meal. I’m contemplating another piece of it for lunch, along with egg salad from the leftover deviled eggs. Obviously, @Smithy, it was gloppy egg day. I hot mine too thin, too.

[heidih]

@Smithy is yiur oork shank smoked by you? I wpndered because of the smoked corn. Can you elborate on the corn? My dad and his wife often do the grocery store smoke shanks with sauerkraut but she thickens the dish with raw grated oir blemdered potato when the shank is getting half way maybe. She is Viennese

[Smithy]

53 minutes ago, heidih said:

@Smithy is yiur oork shank smoked by you? I wpndered because of the smoked corn. Can you elborate on the corn? My dad and his wife often do the grocery store smoke shanks with sauerkraut but she thickens the dish with raw grated oir blemdered potato when the shank is getting half way maybe. She is Viennese

 

No, we buy smoked pork shanks from a grocery store that carries them, back in Duluth. (I don't think we've ever found them in Yuma, oddly enough.) I'll have to try that thickening trick; it sounds like a good variation on what we do.

 

The corn was smoked by my husband's daughter last fall. Each summer she buys dozens of ears of corn, soaks them in a bucket of salt water (1 cup of salt for a big pot, I think about 16 quart capacity) for 4 hours, then smokes them in her pellet smoker at 185F for 4 hours. She shucks them after they're smoked, then cuts the kernels off and vacuum packs them for freezing. 

Edited November 25, 2022 by Smithy
Added the words "of salt" in the water discussion (log)

[ElsieD]

On 11/24/2022 at 2:08 PM, Kim Shook said:

We just received a photo from my MIL of her stuffed, cooked turkey sitting on her kitchen counter a full FIVE HOURS before we’ll be eating. 😱   Pray for me. 
 

and…HAPPY THANKSGIVING! 

 

Yikes!

[Shelby]

@Kim Shook Did you survive the turkey?  We're worried about you lol.

[scubadoo97]

Hanging with the fam 

Hope everyone who celebrates  had a nice Thanksgiving 

[BeeZee]

Predictably, my sister didn’t follow my timeline for meal prep (this was her first time hosting Thanksgiving) and at 3pm I opened the fridge to put something away and the turkey was still in there😵. It was a bone-in breast around 6 lbs, so I took it out to come to room temp, prepped it for her, and in the oven around 3:30. It was done at 6:15. The lasagne she made primarily for her husband wound up getting served as a first course while turkey rested, it wasn’t quite warm enough in the center, but by then we’d had it with his whining. My cousin gleefully boasted how she doesn’t follow recipes and her 2 pies were evidence, but they were OK. I was exhausted because I more or less wound up cooking most of the dinner, sans the clean up.