I'm still a month behind on these posts...sorry!
So my thoughtful sister-in-law Melanie took a picture of my 1st Thanksgiving bird. I've been married to Scott 10 years and this was the 1st year I had the pleasure of hosting Thanksgiving. It was so fun! There was so much yummy food and his most of his family attended.
Anyway back to the bird...I am one of those people who when given an assignment (or voluteer), puts way more work into something than needed. It's a bad thing sometimes. So for Thanksgiving I volunteered to make the turkey and the stuffing. And since everyone told me it was such a wonderfully yummy bird I thought I'd share my recipe and method.
PREPARING THE TURKEY...I researched for about a week on the best way to prepare a turkey. I finally decided after viewing Alton Brown's video (foodnetwork.com), that brining was the way to go. So....Scott's brother Eric brought me the free 21lb. bird the day before Thanksgiving. I spent the rest of that day thawing that sucker out in my kitchen sink, replacing the cold water every 30 minutes for 10 hours. I didn't want to chance anyone getting sick! After the turkey was thawed, I brined it. The brine was made up of 8 cans of vegetable stock, whole allspice berries, candied ginger, brown sugar & salt. I think I'm forgetting another spice. Anyway you boil all that and then let it cool and you've got your brine. So I put the brine and a ton of ice in a huge 10-15 gallon bucket and then put in the bird. The whole thing was submerged. Half way through you're supposed to flip the bird over in the brine. Oh and you're also supposed to set the bucket in a cool place which happened to be outside. So at 2am on Thanksgiving morning I woke up and went outside in the freezing AZ cold and flipped the cold wet turkey over. The next day I pulled the bird out of the bucket, patted it dry and rubbed canola oil all over the top of the bird. I then put my fancy new internal thermometer into the deepest part of it's breast.
COOKING THE TURKEY...Next (and this was probably pretty important) was how to cook it. Alton Brown, who in my opinion is pretty darn smart when it comes to cooking, said that you never want to cook the bird first and then brown at the end. All the yummy bird juices and fat from the skin will just melt during cooking and slide down the bird to the bottom of the pan. Instead he suggests putting the bird in a 500 degree oven uncovered for 30 minutes. This browns the bird first. Then you cover the breast with foil and cook the rest of the bird at 350 until it reaches an internal temp of 165. So there you go! It came out great and was very juicy. That's what the brining thing is all about. Infusing flavor into the bird and creating a moist, juicy turkey that won't dry out. Supposedly the leftovers are still just as juicy and tasty the next day but we didn't have any leftovers!
That's the end of this long story/lesson about a Thanksgiving bird.
My brother Sean and his family stayed with us Christmas week. Angell (pictured to the left with her baby) and I went to the park in Verrado with our kids and it was so fun. As you can see from some of these pictures, Arizona has not really experienced Autumn yet and it's almost January. Such is life in the desert. Back to the park though. The kids loved it. Their cousin Anika slept most of the time but eventually woke up and played some. There were some girls at the park that wanted to play "monster" with the kids. Whenever it was Kaycie's turn, she'd stick her arms straight out in front of her like a zombie and shout "arrr" like a pirate. It was pretty funny. It was also pretty cold that day since the wind decided to pay us a visit.
