Well, the day is about to roll around again, and looking over my ruminations (love that word!) that last Thanksgiving, I meandered a bit and wrote an awful lot of stuff about kids coming over here to celebrate and what happened and stuff that maybe no one really gives a myow about and so this year, I’m just going to give you some hints about turkey and dressing and such that mama passed on to me while she prepared for all these people last year. This year, everyone is working hard on Thursday, the 28th, or sniffling with a cold, or just plain too tired to do the thing. Italians, after all, don’t celebrate Turkey Day, so we’ll just segue subtly into December.
BUT…that said, here’s what mama says makes a perfect bird:
Buy a good bird from your favorite bird purveyor.
Do not stuff the turkey the night before as bacteria can form, even in the fridge.
Do stuff the bird right before roasting, and rub the outside with lots of salt and pepper. Have melted butter or olive oil handy with which to baste the bird—every 30 minutes or so. Mama’s mama draped a cloth saturated in melted butter over the breast of the bird to help baste naturally, but mama prefers to spoon the basting liquid over the bird herself.
Pre-heat the oven to 400 F/205 C, and cook the bird for 20 minutes, then lower the heat to 325 F or 165 C, place a thick, folded “tent” of foil over the breast of the turkey, slosh in a half bottle of white wine, and roast at 12-15 minutes to the pound in a low oven—325 F or 165 C. The turkey will continue to cook after you remove it from the oven, so do not overcook and have that dry, awful meat that gives Thanksgiving turkey a bad name! (I’ll eat any turkey, dry or not, but I love the moist turkey mama makes—that is, if she doesn’t give it away to all those no-good kids and grandkids!).
Continue to add turkey or chicken broth to the pan as the wine evaporates, because those juices are going to be your perfect gravy!
Mama’s mama bought some extra turkey parts to make her broth for basting—cover the parts with water (and the neck, if your butcher included it), add a chopped onion, a carrot and some celery and simmer for 30 minutes. Strain and use for the pan juice as the turkey roasts, reserving about 2 cups for the eventual gravy.
Remove the foil in the last 30 minutes and sprinkle the turkey with sweet paprika to give it a beautiful golden brown skin.
Remove the turkey from the roasting pan and let it stand, covered with loose foil, for 20 minutes before serving.
Place the pan on the stove and bring the juices to a simmer, adding broth to make a rich sauce. In a separate pan, melt 3 tablespoons of butter and add 3 spoons of flour, blending well to make a roux. Add this to the gravy pan and stir with a whisk to smooth the gravy.
Voilá!!!! Perfect turkey. And I’m watching really closely next time mama cooks that big, dumb bird to make sure she puts that wishbone aside for me.
To wish for another turkey, for example…
I’m crossin’ my paws for that wishbone!
And don’t miss mama’s cornbread dressing recipe in the next blog; I sneak into the kitchen and steal bites before they stuff it all in the bird!
Mama serves hot pepper jelly with her turkey, along with fresh cranberry sauce. I’m not so big on sweets, so I push mine aside…
It sounds furry jummy !
We don’t eat much Turkey here in Sweden and we don’t celebrate Thanksgiving.
But we eat ghoose.
Mama cooks goose, too, and in the old days, she used to go to Chinatown to pick one out, but lately, she’s lost her courage for that–it’s hard to reconcile wanting roast goose and watching them fly across the sky. But that’s just mama right now. Maybe because the world is so full of violence…
But she also LOVES Swedish writers!!!!! Hey, Jo Nesbo is hardly a pacifist! So she’s torn….