Today we celebrated our traditionally very relaxed Thanksgiving with the
added bonus of the second night of Hanukkah once all the dishes were
cleared away.
With the predicted bad weather for the week I was especially thankful we weren't traveling anywhere farther than the dining room. It turned out the storm only dumped rain on us and today was sunny and clear, but I'm still glad that I didn't do any driving. Instead we had Meryl over. She brought wine and chocolate while we proved the rest.
The turkey was brined this year and was scrumptious. Don't let the dark skin fool you, it was moist and flavorful. Well worth the extra steps and the sharp words I had with the bird on Tuesday. The turkey wasn't thawing on schedule, so I had to speed things along with cold water on Tuesady so I could mess around with it on Wednesday. The cold water worked and it was perfect by Wednesday evening.
I plopped the thawed and rinsed turkey into a bag with the brine mix which was then put in a large pot with ice. The whole works out then went into the garage that was at about 45 degrees. Todat at about 11am I rinsed the bird and soaked it about half an hour to clear out the excess salt. The turkey went in at 2 and by 5:15 or so was done. A little earlier than I planned, so I had a bit of a scramble to get the biscuits, taters, and such done on time. It all hit the table at about the same time and was very good.
After the main course we had our chocolate course, Meryl's big contribution to the dinner. it made a nice transition between dinner and dessert. And oh yes we did have dessert, pumpkin pie and apple tarte tatin aka apple tarty thingy.
Happy Thanksgivukkah!
1 comment:
The turkey looks wonderful. Brining really makes a difference.
I'm a big fan of cold water thawing, given that I often forget to take something out for dinner. Granted, I'm generally throwing a pork chop or chicken breast into a bowl of water to thaw, not a whole turkey, but it is amazing how quickly they come to room temp.
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