But this weekend, we made our very first turkey together. I've made turkeys before and Baros has helped but we had never made a turkey together just us.
So on Sunday, we made our free turkey and it was beautiful.
We also made stuffing, spinach pie and cranberry sauce. (We even made turkey broth to freeze for future soups.) It wasn't a full Thanksgiving feast. But it was pretty close! We'll be eating turkey all week! Especially since our turkey was about 15 pounds. So much happy food!
So we started cooking in the afternoon after Baros finished up with some work. Baros chopped up all the veggies for me and I went to the liquor store to grab the wine for basting!
Turkey
We made a mostly traditional turkey. We stuffed it with an onion and an apple for flavor. Then we seasoned it with rosemary, scorpion sea salt (yes! super spicy! Thanks Ang! She brought it to us from one of her trips), and black pepper. Then we added a wine bath and sliced onion on top.
 |
| Me and my turkey |
We baked it at 350° F for about 3 1/2 hours (until our turkey's temperature stick popped). We turned it once about half way through and we wound up with a beautifully juicy turkey with crisp skin.
 |
| About half way through the process |
 |
| The picture is a little dark. However, this was a perfect turkey! |
We also made a traditional stuffing. We mostly followed Mom's recipe... but I forgot the eggs.
So we used a package of unseasoned stuffing (not stovetop since we wanted low sodium), 1 pound of ground beef, 1 package of spicy sausage, diced carrot, onion and celery and wine.
I'm so happy that Baros helped me dice things. He make all the cubes pretty evenly... whereas I would've been impatient and done it less neatly.
In one pan we sautéed the onion, carrot and celery in a little olive oil.
In a wok, we cooked the beef and sausage through. Then we added it little by little to the veggie mix, alternating it with the stuffing and wine.
We tried to add the wine slowly to make sure it didn't get too hydrated. Here's where you should add at least 2 eggs.... but I forgot... and by the time I remembered it was too late! But it came out well anyway.
Once mixed well, Baros helped me put it into the baking pan to bake alongside the turkey.
Spinach Pie
Spinach Pie is one of my favorite things to eat and it's not exclusive to Thanksgiving. It's easy to make and quick too.
I cooked down 3 8oz bags of spinach, drained it and mixed it with around a half pint of ricotta cheese and 2 eggs.
Then I poured it into a pre-made pie shell and baked it for about 40 mintutes.
Cranberry Sauce
I love cranberry sauce. The stuff in the cans is AMAZING but also incredibly sweet. I put it on turkey and stuffing in large quantities so that's a lot of sugar to be taking in which is what led to me trying to make my own.
This version is (I think) my 4th version and the best one yet. It's simple and tastes tart with a hint of sweetness.
In a small pan, I started to heat the cranberries with some brown sugar. I added the zest of 4 clementines and squeezed the juice into the mix. That's it. Let the cranberries cook on a low heat until they start to pop. When all of them are open (or pop open with the help of a spatula), it's done.
I love it just like that! I made it for Thanksgiving and even my mom ate it! She turned her nose at my other cranberry sauces, so I was really impressed.
Cool and serve.
Turkey Broth
After taking all the turkey off the bones, we decided to make a delicious turkey broth for future meals. So we put the bones, some of the juice (aka Turkey wine) and onion from the pan and lots of water into a big pot. I made sure that the liquid covered all of the bones and then let it simmer for a few hours.
Then we strained the broth and threw away the bones.
The next day after refrigerating, I skimmed off the top layer of fat, and the broth was ready for soup, rice and/or freezing.
On Wednesday night, I used it to make turkey flavored wild rice! We just used the broth instead of water. No salt or seasoning required. It was delicious.
We had a lot of fun cooking in our tiny kitchen and somehow didn't make any major disasters considering our serious lack of space!
Everything came out really well and we haven't had to worry about major cooking all week.
I think the only downside is that we're getting tired of plain turkey and stuffing! This is what our menu has looked like all week!
Sunday: Turkey, Stuffing and cranberry sauce (we save the spinach pie for Monday)
Monday lunch: Turkey, Stuffing, cranberry sauce and spinach pie
Monday dinner: Turkey, Stuffing, cranberry sauce and spinach pie
Tuesday lunch: Turkey, Stuffing, cranberry sauce and spinach pie
Tuesday dinner: Pizza... I couldn't do it! I needed diversity!
Wednesday lunch: Pizza
Wednesday dinner: Turkey, Stuffing, cranberry sauce
Thursday lunch: Turkey, Stuffing, cranberry sauce and Turkey rice
Thursday dinner: Turkey tikka masala* and turkey rice
Friday lunch: Turkey tikka masala and turkey rice
Dinner Friday: Turkey soup with pasta, carrots, celery and ginger
But, big batches of food like this do lead to creativity. I wasn't feeling great on Thursday night and I didn't want to cook or really eat turkey again. But we didn't want to order out again since we'd already had pizza on Tuesday night, so Baros got creative. He used some left over tomato sauce, leftover turkey and lots of spices to create a faux tikka masala to eat over the leftover turkey rice. It was simple and delicious.
He chopped up some onions and some turkey, tossed it into a pan with the tomato sauce. He added garlic, red pepper flakes, oregano, salt, black pepper and curry and let it simmer. It was super aromatic and delicious and was a great way to use the leftovers.
Similarly on Friday Baros got to cooking with our leftovers. He used the broth we made, added turkey, pasta, fresh carrots, celery and ginger to make us an amazing turkey soup. We were really happy campers.
We finished 98% of our turkey so I'm really proud of us for getting creative with the leftovers. We didn't even have to freeze things (although... next time we will.. then we can split up the turkey days!)
