Bringing Cajun Flair to a Yankee Thanksgiving

Hey, everyone!  Jolie's husband Andy here.  I'm back again with another guest post.  No liquid libations to speak of this time, though.  Nope, this post is all about Thanksgiving.  Yup, FRIED turkey, delicious cornbread dressing, and of course, yummy pecan pie.

Let's start with the turkey, shall we?  My mom's youngest brother, my uncle Mark, is a whiz in the kitchen.  They are pure Cajun (or coon-ass as we say in Louisiana) and I've learned lots of dishes, tips, and tricks from them.  My uncle moved to Florida with his family about 10 or so years ago and I've reconnected with him on Facebook these past few years.  I genuinely hate Facebook, but it really is an easy way to stay in touch with family and friends.  Ok, back to the turkey.  I caught up with my uncle to get some turkey frying tips.  We talked for about 20 minutes and he gave me the necessary pointers to ensure success.

The most important thing is safety.  Because we have Thanksgiving dinner at Jolie's parents' house, I ran the idea of frying the turkey by her mom.  She was concerned about the house/garage being burned down.  I assured her that wouldn't be an issue.  There are two important steps to making sure you don't end up with a grease fire.  First is to know how much oil you're going to need.  Do this by placing your turkey in the frying pot and fill with water until the turkey is submerged with about an extra inch above the bird.  However much water you've used, that's how much oil you need.  Next, once you heat up the oil, you have to pat the turkey down to remove excess water and SLOWLY and CAREFULLY lower the turkey into the fryer.  This could take 5-10 minutes.  Whatever you do, you can't just drop the turkey into the hot oil, it will spill over the top and you WILL have a grease fire on your hands.

Ok, now that we have that out of the way, on to the nuts and bolts.  When frying, you want a bird between 10-14 lbs.  I ended up with one that was a touch over 13.  For the injectable marinade, I ordered Cajun Injector brand Creole Butter.  I got it online and it shipped from Louisiana.  Jolie ordered a nice, big stainless steel injection syringe from amazon.com.  Thaw the turkey and inject as you normally would.  I focused more on the breasts than anywhere else.  If there's one thing I can't stand, it's dry, flavorless white meat.  I injected the turkey with the entire jar.  After that, I used some Tony Chachere's Spice N' Herb seasoning.  I sprinkled it very generously all over the skin of the turkey and inside of the cavity.  Once finished, I stuck it in the fridge to marinade.  I did this almost 48 hours prior to frying the turkey.  Minimum marinade time is 12 hours but I knew that giving it 48 would make it that much better.

At that point I got started on the cornbread dressing.  This was another of Uncle Mark's concoctions and it is very good.  I made it for the first time last Thanksgiving and it was a hit with Jolie's family.  I started by mixing up 5 boxes of Jiffy Cornbread Muffin mix according to the directions.  I normally would split the mix into two pans for baking but the foil pans I picked up were too big so I just baked all 5 boxes in a big pan.  The cornbread came out beautifully.  At that point, I boiled a whole chicken in water for an hour.  Season liberally with salt and pepper.  Once the chicken is cooked, removed from the stock and let cool.  Do NOT get rid of the chicken stock.  I knew better than to do this and I fubar'd it by pouring it out.  In the back of my head, a voice was telling me, "you know you're going to need that stock...right?"  I ignored it and poured it out anyways.  Fortunately, Jolie had some chicken bouillon cubes and suggested I use them to recreate my stock.  So I did.  It wasn't bad at all, actually.
Next step was to brown a pound of pork and a pound of beef together on the stove.  I added in some Emeril's Essence seasoning, 5 tbsp of Cajun Power Garlic Sauce (also came from Louisiana), onion powder, garlic powder, salt, black pepper, and cayenne pepper.  While that was going, I went ahead and de-boned the chicken.  I kept the chicken stock at a simmer and once the chicken was de-boned and shredded, I added it back to the stock, along with the meat mixture.  Then I added 2 large onions, 2 celery hearts, 2 peppers, and I think that was about it.  I gave the mixture about 4 hours of simmer time on the stove.  30 minutes before it was done, I added in some green onions and parsley.

After the four hours is up, remove the pot from the heat and add to the cornbread.  If you've done the cornbread in two separate pans (unlike me), just pour half of the mixture into each pan and mix with the cornbread thoroughly.  Then cover and refrigerate overnight.  Whenever you're ready to cook, just leave covered with foil and put in the over for about an hour, then uncovered for 30 minutes or so.  I was busy with the turkey so Jolie handled the oven temperature and the timing this year.  The nice thing about the recipe is it makes two batches.  After cooling overnight in the fridge, stick it in the freezer and you've already got your dressing for Christmas dinner done!

(This blurry picture was from last year’s batch. It hadn’t been cooked yet. Imagine if it looked like this, except darker and way yummier.)

Meanwhile, it's time to get the turkey into the fryer.  Add however much oil you previously measured into the frying pot.  Turn on the burner and crank it up until it hits about 375 degrees.  Once it does, VERY slowly and CAREFULLY lower the turkey into the hot oil.  It will spit and splatter, that's normal.  Take your time and don't get in a rush.  If the oil start to rise too much, pull the turkey back out a little until it calms.  After a few minutes, the turkey will be submerged.  Keep an eye on the temperature, you want the oil to stay between 325 and 350.  Cook the turkey for 4 - 4 1/2 minutes per pound.  Mine was 13 pounds and I cooked it for about 50 minutes.  Once it's finished, remove from the oil and let drain in a pan or tray with some paper towels to catch the oil.  Let it sit for at least 15 minutes before carving.

Now on to the pie.  Normally I make these pecan pies from my mother's recipe a few times a year.  I buy store bought pie crusts and have at it.  This year, Jolie made her "from scratch" home made pie crust.  That crust is so flaky and terrific.  Anyways, I was kind of worn out from doing the turkey and dressing so I asked her if she would mind handling the pie.  She graciously obliged :D

So, that's about it.  The turkey was PHENOMENAL.  There wasn't any left, all of it was eaten.  Although I botched the chicken stock for the cornbread dressing and had to re-create it, you'd never know.  It was as good as ever.  The pecan pie was delicious, as well.  Sorry for the long post, but I hope you all enjoyed it!

Stuffed Peppers, Third Attempt

I feel like I owe an apology to Gina at skinnytaste.com. I tried her recipe for turkey stuffed peppers, using ground beef instead of ground turkey, and was pretty unenthused by the result. This was my post about it. I didn’t think the flavor was good enough, and the texture put me off, as well. I pretty much decided to go back to the first recipe that I’d tried, which I wrote about here, even though it was much more fattening.

But I decided recently to give Gina’s recipe another chance, this time with ground turkey, as she intended. Other changes:

• My cilantro was pureed and in a tube in the fridge, not cut up freshly on my cutting board. I think this led to me using a lot more of it.
• Instead of 1/4 cup of tomato sauce in the meat mixture, I used closer to a half cup. And I used leftover homemade pizza sauce instead of tomato sauce from a can. It was richer, sweeter, and spicier than plain old tomato sauce.
• I used fresh, homegrown garlic, rather than stuff from a jar.
• My cooked rice was fresh, hot, and fluffy, rather than cold and clumpy and straight from the fridge.
• I put a little bit more pizza sauce on top of the stuffed peppers before cheesing them up and baking them. Not a ton, maybe about a spoonful.

So, other than the meat change, not huge changes.

But the end result was SO MUCH BETTER.

For one thing, they were juicier. I’m not sure why. And the texture of the cooked meat was much less off-putting. I’m not sure if it was because it was turkey and not beef, or if I had cooked the beef a little long, or if it had something to do with the hot, fluffy rice and extra tomato sauce, but it was a definite improvement.

I’m pleased by the change because the texture is what I disliked the most last time. Now I feel like I can make this again.

As for the taste, I remember thinking it was bland last time. I didn’t get that sense this time at all. I’m not sure if it was using (probably) more cilantro, or using fresh garlic, or using the homemade pizza sauce and more of it.

Whatever the difference was, it was a good one.

So Gina at SkinnyTaste, I am sorry. Your recipe is damn good.

Stuffed Peppers, Second Attempt

I posted a while back about making stuffed peppers. I had done so after encountering so many different recipes with different methods that I finally just threw up my hands and selected one that had a pretty good rating. I liked it a lot. Like, a lot a lot. Very yummy. But there are two main disadvantages to that recipe. First, it kept the peppers whole, not halving them, and the result seems like far too much food for one person. Also, it involved putting the beef in the peppers to cook meatloaf-style, and while that is yummy, it also doesn’t give you the chance to drain out the fat.

After this first attempt, I thought I’d put another recipe to the test. This recipe was supposed to be a lot healthier. I’m down for that.

First, mince an onion.

Also chop up a tablespoon of cilantro. Interestingly, I happened to have some.

And here’s my lazy version of minced garlic. I’m sure it would have been better fresh. It’s just hard to have fresh garlic on hand when you’re only cooking for two. Mine always gets rubbery and grows shoots.

When you’re done prepping, drop the onion, garlic, and cilantro in a hot skillet with some olive oil.

Cook it up for a few.

After a few minutes, add ground beef. Should have been ground turkey, according to the recipe, and that would have made it healthier, but try convincing my husband that turkey > beef. Also, that’s just what I had. I really should start making that substitution here and there.

Season with salt, pepper, garlic powder, and cumin, and keep browning the meat.

Drain off any excess fat, if you’re using beef, and add just a little tomato sauce. I think my camera got a little too close – I steamed up the lens a bit.

And then add a little bit of chicken broth.

And then just simmer for a while.

Meanwhile, prep your peppers. I used three each of red and green, but of course that’s personal preference. Just remove the stems and scoop out the seeds and membranes.

I had an open can of diced tomatoes from another dish in the fridge, so I added a bunch of those to the meat mixture. Go me.

Finally, add in some cold, clumpy, cooked rice. I suppose it could be hot, fresh rice, but that’s not what I had.

Stir it up until it’s nice and hot.

Fill the pepper halves with the mixture (be careful – it’s hot!) and place in a casserole dish.

Add some more chicken broth to the bottom to keep them all moist.

Grate some cheddar cheese.

And sprinkle it on top of your peppers. Then notice that you were supposed to wait until after baking them. Ah well. I like to live on the wild side.

Cover with foil and bake at 400 degrees for 35 minutes.

Voila!

Here are my thoughts.

Appearance: way better than the last time. The peppers were firm, not droopy, despite the chicken broth that they’d cooked in, and the cheese looked a lot better than the crusty tomato sauce. And having them in halves just looked better than stuffing them whole, as well.

Taste: Meh. I think the person who wrote the recipe deliberately didn’t top with tomato sauce, but I think this was a mistake. I topped all of my leftovers with tomato sauce and that made them way better. The beef mixture was good, but just not great. I know the original recipe called for turkey and that changing it to beef and then critiquing isn’t fair, but I have to say that neither the taste nor texture really did it for me. I think I’m a fan of the meatloaf-texture, as apposed to the taco meat texture, and the flavor was just plain missing something.

Not opposed to trying again, but definitely topped with sauce. And maybe I’ll stuff it with raw meat and bake longer. Okay, maybe I’ll just combine this recipe with the other one. *sigh* Why is this so difficult?

Oh, but by the way, I love stuffed peppers now. How did I make it so long without ever having them before?

Thick and Creamy Turkey Soup

One of the best things about cooking Thanksgiving dinner is the potential for creativity with the leftovers.

One of the worse things about cooking Thanksgiving dinner is not having any energy to be creative with the leftovers.

I made this soup with the leftover turkey last year, and it was so damn good I couldn’t wait to make it again this year. But when I was done cooking Thanksgiving dinner, I couldn’t bring myself to do it.

So I did the first step and then froze everything. It was pretty simple: boil the turkey carcass for a while. Then keep the broth, pulling any meat off the bones and keeping that, too. And obviously, toss the bones.

When you’re ready to actually make the soup, thaw all that broth.

Might take a while. Prep your veggies in the meantime.

Dice everything up nicely.

You’re going to sauté the veggies in some a lot of butter

I chopped the butter up a bit before plopping it in the pot.

When the veggies are soft, add in a cup of flour.

The flour combines with the butter and the moisture from the veggies to make a thick paste.

You’ll thin it out a bit by adding some of the broth.

Let it simmer for a few minutes, getting really thick, before adding a few cups of half-and-half, a cup of uncooked rice, salt, pepper, and bouillon, along with the rest of the broth and a bunch of that reserved turkey.

And that’s that. Let it simmer for a while and you’ve got yourself a thick, creamy turkey soup.

So yummy. Good thing this makes a ton, since I’m going to be eating it for a while. If you’d like to make it, too, here’s the original recipe.

Thanksgiving Post #1: Turkey

I’ve got to say that the recent spike in views on this blog between Thanksgiving and today make me really happy because it means that people actually check this silly thing. It also makes me aware that I’ve been slacking on posting. I’m going to blame it on tryptophan.

I did cook a lot of food, and I took a ridiculous number of pictures. I’ve decided to split up the meal into a couple different posts, but I’m going to start my Thanksgiving posts with the post important one: the turkey!

Last year was my first year roasting a turkey. Feeling intimidated, I pretty much did exactly what I had grown up watching my mom and her sister do in our kitchen every year, though I turned to a recipe to give me specific ingredient amounts and step by step instructions. In searching for that recipe, I found a lot of recipes for brine. It looked scary and intimidating, so I didn’t give much thought to it and I certainly didn’t attempt it.

This year, I gave it a second glance. More brine recipes kept popping up, and when I started reading reviews, it became clear that brining a turkey is something that people generally try out of curiosity and then repeat every year because it’s so delicious. I was curious about this secret cooking method that everyone seemed to swear by.

The brine I selected (because someone pointed to it and said “Do this one”) had some ingredients I wasn’t familiar with. Like chopped candied ginger. I read that crystallized ginger could also be used. Same thing? Probably. Not sure. I’m a wannabe foodie, so I don’t have to know these things.

I’d never seen it before and expected it to be rock hard, but it was soft and was easy to chop up. I also used black peppercorns and whole allspice (which I hope is the same thing as “allspice berries,” which is what the recipe said to use).

Dump them in a large pot with a gallon of vegetable broth.

Also add a cup of kosher salt (no idea if that’s different than regular salt, but I figured I might as well buy it since I was using so much) and a half cup of brown sugar. God, this recipe is weird. Okay, not really, if you consider what you’re making. The point of soaking the bird in such a salty, flavorful mixture is that the moisture and flavor is drawn into the bird, making for a juicy and delicious meal. Something about osmosis, I don’t know. If you care, ask my brother. He teaches this stuff to high school kids. Maybe I should go back for a refresher course.

Confession: sometimes while I’m cooking, I think about the episode of Magic Schoolbus where Miss Frizzle takes the kids on a field trip inside a bakery, where their school bus is shrunken to the size of a fly and the kids learn about the chemistry of baking a cake literally from the inside of the cake as it’s baking. Is my nerdiness showing?

Okay, brine. I brought it to a boil, and then just removed it from the stove top to cool. When it was room temperature, I put it in the fridge for about 24 hours.

The day before our feast, I unwrapped our thawed bird, removed the neck and liver, and washed the whole thing in cold water.

Mix the cold brine with a gallon of heavily iced cold water. I used a large bucket. Immerse the bird, breast down. Since you’re assuming the breast meat will naturally be the driest, you want it to be the most likely to soak up the brine.

I planned to put mine outside on the balcony, so I wrapped it up in plastic wrap to keep out bugs. And puppies.

And that’s it for the brine!

Now for the other huge thing that I did differently with my turkey. My family has always stuffed our bird. Always. But this year I read a lot of bad things about stuffing the bird, such as the fact that it provides a beautiful place to grow tons of bacteria, or that it messes up the cooking time.

Two other factors were at play, as well. First, my stuffing last year was just okay. I normally love it, so I’m not sure what I did wrong, though I suspect I just put too much inside the bird. But it just wasn’t that great. Second, this year, hubby wanted to make the version of cornbread dressing that he grew up on, a southern alternative to the stuffing of my childhood. The combination of these two things, plus all the bad stuff I’d read about stuffing the bird, led me to follow the experts’ advice and stuff the bird with “aromatics” instead of stuffing.

This involved some fresh sage and rosemary.

It also involved a sliced red apple and a half onion (also sliced).

I added a cup of water and microwaved it for about 5 minutes.

Then I realized I was supposed to have added a cinnamon stick, so I put it in after the water was hot and just let it sit there in the hot apple-onion juice for a while.

I put the sage and rosemary in the bird’s cavity first, followed by the soft apple-onion-cinnamon stick stuff, which I inserted with tongs.

Another new thing this year:

I’ve always thought that turkey took all day to cook. Then I read online that slow-and-low cooking could help the bird dry out, so rather than doing that, you should start off with very high heat and then back off for a quicker cooking period. Also, no basting, because that just keeps letting all the heat out of the oven, kind of how you’re not supposed to pick the lid off your rice while it’s steaming. I was intimidated by this change at first, but after watching videos online, I decided to try it.

What did people do without the internet?

Anyway, I coated the bird in oil and a touch of butter, then placed it uncovered in a 500 degree oven for a half hour.

For that half hour, it smelled like I was doing an oven self-clean. If my guests noticed the bad smell, they didn’t say anything, but it was embarrassing.

Then I covered the bird with a foil shield and reduced the heat to 350 degrees, cooking for another 2 1/2 hours or so. That’s when it started to smell amazing.

It turned out beautifully! Look at that turkey!

Here’s a tip: always let it sit for 20-30 minutes before you carve. I went ahead and put an uncooked casserole in the oven at this point, setting the time for a half hour. If you cut in too soon, you lose all the juices.

While I was waiting, I suctioned out the drippings and worked on my gravy. Here’s the gravy separator that I still don’t really understand.

I didn’t take pictures of the gravy-making process so I’m not going to dwell on it, but I will say this: I’m glad I read reviews about the brine before I cooked. Some people said that you couldn’t really use the drippings for gravy because it was too salty. They were right. I used the fat and a touch of that brown liquid underneath it, but it really was too salty to use very much of it.

As for the turkey, it was a hit. It was so juicy that I had a few moments of panic when I cut in and thought, “Holy crap, it’s undercooked,” before  realizing that it was just really, really juicy. Hubby announced with a mouthful of meat that he’d never had white meat that he’d enjoyed so much. I’m telling you, this was one juicy bird. And flavorful. It tasted a little different than what I was used to, but in a good way. Just yummy.

Like all the other reviewers, now that I’ve done it this way, I’m not going back.

If you want the recipe, google Alton Brown’s Good Eats Roast Turkey, or just wait for me to post it in my tastebook. He does some videos, too. One of the videos even explains the osmosis thing.

So, should my next post be about my sides or my pies? Comment and let me know what you think!