I'm going to ramble for a bit about the turkey itself before I get into the cooking and Thanksgiving merriment because it felt like a big deal for me to buy a turkey. If you already know my philosophy or don't care to read it you may want to skip ahead to the pictures. It all started when I read The Ethics of What We Eat. The book examines why our food choices matter. For ourselves, the environment, and the animals we're eating. It's not super preachy, but it does give lots of reasons for eating less meat or not eating meat at all. Factory farming, human health, sustainability, etc. Since then, Kevin and I have been on the vegetarian spectrum. I call it a spectrum because we've swung from eating no meat at all to eating some meat to throwing our meat eating standards out the window at some points (like when we went to Tunisia...it would be impossible and silly to try to be a vegetarian there. I believe in cultural exceptions). The main point is we think more about how much meat we eat and where it comes from. Where we are right now is cooking almost exclusively vegetarian at home and only ordering meat dishes out when it has been sourced from a place we feel okay about. And things foraged (like razor clams), fished, or hunted are always okay.
So. This turkey. It was a Heidi's Hen purchased from our local Bill the Butcher. Yes, I did spend more than I'd like to say on it. But I'm okay with that being a once a year thing. And between the full meal for eight, week of leftover turkey sandwiches, and turkey noodle soup we got out of it I think she was worth it. If meat is cheap, there's a reason. And that reason means I don't want to buy it and eat it no matter how much money I'll save. Because when it comes down to it, what we eat is one of the most important things we do economically and personally. I think that's worth the money. Okay, rant over.
I have watched my mother prepare a turkey many a year, and even participated in that turkey making. However, since we haven't been back home for Thanksgiving since moving to Washington, it had been awhile. And this year we were all on our own. And we took a chance with cookware, but more about that later. We started the night before by unwrapping our turkey and letting it sit out naked in the fridge to dry out. I had read about this trick on several blogs and Kevin confirmed that they used to do this when he worked in a kitchen. It helps the skin get nice and crispy and brown. The next day, we patted it dry even more with paper towel and gave the skin a salt rub.
Then, it was time to put our new cookware to the test. We had recently acquired the most fantastic Le Creuset oval French oven via friend Sarah. Her grandmother had quite a substantial collection of Le Creuset cookware, which was recently passed on to Sarah. This particular piece was a bit overkill for Sarah's liking, so she passed it on to us. I know, right?!? Thanks Sarah and family!
As soon as I saw it, I got it in my head that it's purpose in life was to roast my Thanksgiving turkey. When I shared this excitedly with others, I was met with some skepticism. People told me that I should abandon that idea and get a cheap foil roasting pan instead (which we don't own). The main reasons were focused on the skin not crisping and the meat becoming poached rather than roasted from the steam. The general idea was that high sides and lid were not good for turkey roasting. I did some searching online for others who had used a Le Creuset this way, and found some of these concerns confirmed. But, then I also found a few blogs that described this as the French way of cooking most poultry. Kevin and I discussed it, and decided to go for it, using this recipe for potted chicken as a guide.
As the recipe suggests, we started on the stovetop to get the browned and crispy skin that others had warned about. We started where most good recipes start: a stick of butter. Have I mentioned we're nowhere close to vegan? Butter = yum.
We browned the turkey on both sides in the melted butter, adding more butter before flipping it. Flipping a sizzling, whole, eleven pound turkey is terrifying by the way.
After browning both sides, we took it out of the pan and set it aside. It looked like this. Nice and brown and ready to eat on the outside. Except entirely raw on the inside, so be sue to resist the urge to snack yet at this point.
Next, we added some rough chopped carrots, celery, pearl onions, garlic, and rosemary to the pan. And more butter because why not. I also pitched a few veggies and herbs into the turkey cavity, too, for good measure. Pitched is not an expression here. The turkey went back in the pan on top of the veggies and the whole shabang went into the oven with the lid on for the first bit.
This is where things got a bit fly-by-the-seat-of-our-pants. Mostly because we weren't sure how long it would take to cook in the french oven. In a roasting pan, our turkey should have taken about four hours. But I had read that time would be shorter using this potted turkey method. I just wasn't sure how much shorter. What we did know is that we needed to flip it again at some point, take the lid off at the end to give it a final brown, and make sure the internal temperature reached 165.
At around the two hour mark we pulled it out, and spooned over some of the juices. At this point it smelled amazing. And looked amazing. And was nearly at 165.
At this point we were still hours away from dinner time and didn't want the turkey to be overcooked or dry. We decided to flip it and checked it again after about 30 minutes. Then, we temp-ed it again and were at 165. So, we took the lid off and gave it another 30 minutes to brown. Here's what she looked like!
Our turkey was most certainly done. Because we were still a bit far from dinner time, I pulled it out of the oven, replaced the lid securely, and let her sit on the warm oven to keep warm. I had read in my online research that the turkey will stay very warm this way if you leave the lid on the hot pan. And indeed it did. She was still steaming hot and at 165 by the time we were ready to eat.
In the end, the turkey being done early turned out to be a great thing because it opened up the oven completely for more rolls, yams, and stuffing. Overall, it was so much fun to cook our first Thanksgiving meal together and share a wonderful evening with friends. Here's a snippet of how we spent our post-pie evening:
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