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Remember the turkey breast dish that I made a couple of weeks ago?  The original recipe called for a boneless breast, but since I could not find one, I bought a bone-in one and boned it out myself/  I used the bones to make the slow-cooker turkey stock.  Anyhoo, I had plenty of leftover turkey meat, as well as some of the fresh green beans that i served with it.  So I made soup!

The *recipe* I used is very loosely based on Alton Brown’s Bird To The Last Drop, mostly in that I used Old Bay seasoning and thyme to season it, as he does.  But I didn’t have a turkey carcass, as I’d already used what bones I had for the slow-cooker stock.  I also prefer noodles to rice in my soups.

So basically, what I did was dump the stock into a large pot.  The stock was very highly concentrated to the point that it was thick and gelatinous.  I had cooked it down like that on purpose, to save space in the fridge/freezer.  After it was done cooking in the slow cooker, I strained it into a pot on the stove and boiled it down that way.

So naturally, I had to add water, enough to make about four quarts of broth.  Brought it to a boil and threw in a bag of egg noodles.  When the noodles were nearly cooked, in went the leftover green beans and a package of mixed frozen veggies, along with the Old Bay seasoning and thyme.  When it came back to a boil, in went the leftover diced turkey.  Bring back to a boil, and simmer until it’s all nice and hot.  Season with salt and pepper to taste.  Nomnomnom…

Exact amounts are not important, use what you have.  The way I did it, it made a LOT.  But remember, NOTHING was wasted, not even the turkey breast bones.  And it’s good for the soul, especially on a rainy icky day like today…much better than medical treatments for depression!

Enjoy!

This recipe is from the booklet pictured here, that came with the Rival Crock-Pot BBQ Pit.  This link goes to someone else’s blog with a review of this appliance, where you can get an idea of what it’s like.  I’m not sure if Rival is making these any longer, as they no longer seem to have it on their official website.  But you may still be able to find one at a local store or online; I did see some a while back for sale, used, on sites like eBay and Amazon.  It would be too mbad if they quit making these, as I really enjoy mine.

If you do pick one up used, it may or may not come with this booklet.  But I have a .pdf version of it, available for anyone who wants it to download.

I made this turkey recipe tonight.  It was excellent, but here are a few notes about it…

At least where I shop, a whole boneless turkey breast is hard to find.  I ended up buying a bone-in one, and boning it out myself.  It’s not that hard if you have a decent boning knife.  And then you end up with the bones, which of course should be used to make slow-cooker turkey stock.  You can then use this stock to make a soup from any leftover turkey, throwing in some rice or noodles, and some veggies (good ones are carrots, celery, green beans, peas; a bag of mixed frozen veggies of these varieties is perfect here!)

You COULD cook it bone-in if you are lazy, but keep in mind that it will add another hour or more to the cooking time.  Also, you need to brine it ahead of time, and you might not have a pot that will fit in your fridge, and hold the turkey and the brine.  You could do as I’ve done for whole Thanksgiving turkeys, and brine it in a large picnic cooler with plenty of ice.  But my large cooler is in our Public Storage unit, and I didn’t feel like going out there to get it.  So I boned it out and used the bones to make the stock.

The breast I got weighed about 6 1/2 pounds, which is way bigger than what the recipe calls for.  Boning it out took off about a pound.  I did not increase the glaze recipe at all, it was more than enough as is…but it will take about an hour longer to cook as the recipe calls for.

I also suggest that you remove the skin before cooking this.  If you were doing this in a real BBQ or in the oven, the skin would be nice and crisp.  But in any kind of slow-cooker, even this BBQ Pit thingy, there’s a lot of moisture, which causes poultry skin to be icky and gummy.  So peel off the skin and throw it into the stockpot, along with those bones!

The BBQ Pit booklet recommends that you pour some kind of liquid into the well in the crockery insert.  Plain water will pretty much just keep the fat that drips down from the meat from smoking and burning.  But beer, wine, stock or broth, fruit juice, etc, will also infuse some flavor into the meat as it cooks.  I like to pour a bottle of beer into the well; this time, I used a bottle of Samuel Adams Cranberry Lambic that I had sitting around.  It’s not my favorite beer to drink; it came in an assortment package that I had bought over the winter.  But for a recipe like this, which uses cranberries already, it does add a nice flavor.

Okay, so here is the recipe…to lazy to type it out, so I screen-capped it from the book.

I love that I have one of those little netbooks. Rather than using up paper and ink to print recipes I find online, I can just set up the netbook in the kitchen and have the recipe right there in front of me.

Could this recipe be done in a regular slow cooker?  I haven’t tried it, but I would guess so.  You would need a larger model, at least 5 quarts, and oval shaped.  You would also need some kind of wire rack that would fit inside the cooker to put the turkey breast on.  You could also probably roast a turkey breast like this in a regular oven (follow package instructions).  But do not put the glaze on until it is almost done, because the sugars in it will cause it to burn in a regular oven if you brush it on too soon..

Anyhoo, this is great any time of year, you don’t have to wait until Thanksgiving to enjoy a turkey dinner.  This would also be good if you are doing Thanksgiving on a smaller scale, and don’t want a zillion leftovers.

Enjoy!

Here it is…our official Toikey Day menu for this year.  You can click the image to see bigger, it should open in a new tab/window.

All of the shopping is done. I hope I didn’t forget anything; I’d rather travel all the way to Texas and have dental work done, hold the Novocaine, at the best implant dentist Plano has to offer, than have to go into a supermarket in the few days that precede Toikey Day.  Seriously, that is how bad the supermarkets are in the days leading up to Thanksgiving, Sunday is really the last day to go, while it’s still reasonably sane.

First of all, if you like this menu template shown here, you can download it and other cool holiday templates for free HERE.  This includes the one I used last year.  I chose to use this one, this year, because the text that I wanted to use didn’t fit on last year’s template.  And yeah, it’s not true to color, the color cartridge in my printer is going, I need to replace it soon.

So now, let’s talk about the food.  The first course is a twist on the one from last year.  Instead of serving the Old Sturbridge Village Gourd Soup in small bowls, I’m doing a fancy restaurant thing and serving it as shots.  Only I don’t own any actual shot glasses, so old tasting glasses from the Maine Brewers Festival will have to do.  So that makes it a bit more than a shot, but who cares?

You can find the recipe for this here:  Butternut Squash Soup Shots with Candied Bacon.  It includes a recipe for the squash soup which is slightly different from the OSV one, but I’m sticking to the recipe I love best.   I just wanted the recipe for the candied bacon.  Ooooohhh….BACON!

Recipezaar is a great site, in part in that it helps take the guesswork out of reducing or increasing a recipe.  Twelve soup shots are definitely too much for the two of us.

As for the turkey, gravy and stuffing, you may be asking, “what’s a Märzen?”  Well, it’s a German/Oktoberfest style beer, and there are many to choose from, as you can see HERE.  Consult this list if you can’t find the Flying Dog beer where you are, if you want a good alternative.  I chose this one from the Flying Dog Brewery, simply because I saw it at Bert’s Better Beers on Saturday, I like the way the label looked, so I said, what the hell?  This beer has won several awards, and you can learn more about it HERE.

I got the idea to do this, from this article on HopPress.com.    Now, I like the way this Mario Rubio dude thinks!  You need at least three bottles of the Märzen of choice…the first you pop open, pour into your favorite glass, and drink while you cook.  The second bottle goes into the roasting pan with the turkey, and the third is for the gravy.  Having more than three bottles, of course, would be good, as you might want to drink them with the meal!   And, as Mario suggests, you may also want to use this same beer to moisten your stuffing.

Use your favorite turkey/gravy/stuffing recipes for this.  This year, I’m keeping it relatively simple…the roast turkey and gravy from Julia Child’s The Way To Cook, using the beer where wine or stock is called for.  For the past few years, I’ve used Alton Brown’s Good Eats Roast Turkey recipe, complete with the brine, and it’s excellent.  But Julia’s recipe is simpler, and as for brining, I’m just going to use a plain water/salt/sugar brine.  I really want the flavor of the beer to come through, and not fight with any additional brine flavorings.  Just a warning – if you buy a Kosher turkey, or a Butterball® one, do not brine it at all, these already come brined.  If you buy a cheap frozen one for 47¢ a pound (as I did, from Shaw’s), definitely brine it.  It really does make a difference!

The stuffing recipe I’m using is a very basic, New England traditional one, using Bell’s Seasoning.  You’ve probably seen the stuff in the spice section of the store, it’s the one with a picture of a turkey on the box.  See it, right over there?  The stuffing recipe is on the back of the box, but you can also find it HERE.  This makes enough to stuff a 5-pound bird, you can double or even triple it if you need more.  We don’t stuff the turkey anyway, we just bake it up in a casserole dish.  The amount given in this recipe will be plenty for the two of us.

I’m tweaking it in two ways…instead of sauteeing the onions and celery in butter, I’m going to render some bacon fat, and use that, reserving the bacon.  Then when I mix it all together, I’ll add the crumbled cooked bacon.

In keeping with the beer theme, I’m going with this recipe for Roasted Garlic IPA Mashed Potatoes.  This was linked to in the article about beer and turkey that I linked to above.

For this recipe, I am choosing to go with Gritty McDuff’s 21 IPA.  IPAs (India Pal Ale) are hoppy and on the bitter side, and not to everyone’s taste, for sure.  But this recipe only uses a few spoonfuls, too much would certainly overpower the dish.  And since it only uses a few spoonfuls, guess who gets to drink the rest?

There are many great IPAs out there.  I went with Gritty’s 21 because I’d had some at both the Maine and New Hampshire Brewers Festivals, and I really liked it.  It’s a bit hard to find near where I live, but I did find it on our visit to the aforementioned Bert’s Better Beers.

The Brussels Sprouts with Sweet & Sour Bacon Dressing is a repeat from last year.  And butternut squash makes an encore appearance, in this simple Baked Butternut Squash.  Click on the links to access these recipes.  As for the rest of the menu, the cranberry sauce is out of a can, and the pumpkin pie was store-bought.  I’m just not too good at making pies!

But, speaking of pumpkins, one of the stars of the show promises to be Pugsley’s Signature Series Smashed Pumpkin Ale, a very special seasonal brew from Alan Pugsley, the brewmaster of Shipyard Brewing Company up in Portland, Maine.  I could not wait to try this once it first came out, as I LOVE pumpkin ales.  I had it for the first time, on tap at the Great Lost Bear up in Portland over Labor Day weekend, and was NOT disappointed.

This is sold in 22 ounce bottles, and has been flying off the shelves.  I had heard that Shipyard’s retail store had sold out, but on the way home from Labor Day weekend in Maine, I did find exactly two bottles in Federal Jack’s retail store, in Kennebunk.  The Shipyard store has since restocked, and so has Federal Jack’s, and you can bet I stocked up, before it’s gone for the season.  Also, I saw a decent amount of it at Bert’s Better Beers, in Hooksett, NH, the other day.

Who needs homemade pumpkin pie?  This is better!

Happy Toikey Day to all!

Now I’m probably never going to make this…but it’s a cool sight to see…Chef Paul Prudhomme showing you how to prepare a Turducken!

Now, for those of you who might not know a Turducken from an UGG Classic Short Boot, let me enlighten you.  A Turducken is a chicken, stuffed into a duck, which is then stuffed into a turkey.  It is indeed a very time-consuming process, as you’d have to bone out all three birds and all.  Most people who want to try Turducken choose to order one that someone else made, there are several websites from which you can order.  They are not cheap, however, they go for around $85 or so.

But, just for entertainment value, if you get Create TV in your area, you can see an episode of Chef Paul’s “Always Cooking”, where he will show you How To Make A Turducken.

Create TV is a digital TV channel from PBS.  It features shows about cooking, crafts, gardening, home improvement, and travel, all from the vast PBS television library.  Although it is a digital channel, you do not need to have cable to get it.  If it is available in your area, you should be able to pick it up with a digital TV, or with an older analog TV equipped with a converter box.

I know you probably aren’t ambitious enough to make a Turducken, either, but it sure is fun to watch!

Welcome to this year’s Toikey Day posts here at c-m dot net!  You know…Thanksgiving…a holiday that comes between Halloween and Christmas?  Or, as retailers may prefer to call it, the day before Black Friday?

I’m always looking for interesting things to make.  Today I came upon this recipe:  Butternut Squash Soup Shots with Candied Bacon.  Apparently, serving soups as *shots* is one of the latest fancy restaurant trends.  I can easily see doing this as a starter for our Thanksgiving dinner.

I already have a favorite recipe for butternut squash soup – the heavenly Old Sturbridge Village Gourd Soup.  But I printed out the recipe from Recipezaar, because I wanted to know how to make the candied bacon.  Yum…BACON!  Yes, I think this will be a wonderful starter for our Thanksgiving feast!

For all of my Toikey Day posts, past and present, click on category Toikey Day here or in the sidebar.