American Thanksgiving is around the corner. Are you ready? I am beginning to prepare for next week already. Focus (remember when we did these?): all things Thanksgiving. Food and recipes, decor, prep, travel, bitching about family. My free turkey in the freezer. I think I will spatchcock it and cook it on the traeger. The new recipe this year on the menu is pumpkin brulee. We will also have stuffin muffins, company potatoes, asparagus, cranberry sauce with the ridges, pumpkin cheesecake, and Caribbean fudge pie. What are all you idiots getting into next week? Happy early Thanksgiving!
I have a small test turkey brining right now. I spatchcocked it, and am now soaking it, and will dry it off and apply a nice rub tomorrow. It'll cook on the Yoder tomorrow for dinner, and then be used for turkey soup. Making a soup out of a smoked turkey is amazing... it just adds so much more flavour. I've also got a frozen spiral cut ham thawing out in the beer fridge right now in prep for later this week. That, too, will be smoked, and a cranberry orange glaze will be applied. That's a test run for closer to Christmas, and will be served with scalloped potatoes.
We're traveling for the first time in several years, back home to spend it with my Mom. The kid and I are taking our dirtbikes and hopefully riding friend's tracks Friday and Saturday. I think Friday or Saturday is the first day they're slaughtering hogs on the farm, hopefully I can avoid getting pressed into helping. I just want to eat with my mom, and go do fun stuff with my best friends I don't get to see enough, not get back into farming.
Grandson is staying in LA this year so we're grabbing an early dinner with the in-laws and then not a Got-Damn thing. Other than my memorial trip to Oregon in Sept, this is my first four day break since I've gone back to work.
For the second year, we're having dinner here at our house and my wife's parents and brother will be coming. My wife wants to give her mom a break, even though last year she went and made a huge dinner for the rest of the family a couple of days later.
Ooh, that reminds me, i have some plum orange spice (the plum tastes like cranberry) jam in the fridge that I made with a friend. I should incorporate that into dinner somehow, or breakfast that morning.
Starting Friday, I'll be basically cooking for a week straight. I was contacted about catering for an event on Saturday, so I'll be doing all the work for that on Friday/Saturday including 6 briskets and 7 pans of mac & cheese. Then Monday I will be smoking 13 turkeys for people that ordered them this year so they don't have to do the cooking themselves. Then Tuesday I'll actually start working on all of the usual stuff that I make for my family's Thanksgiving dinner that we host at my house. So come NEXT Friday, I will in the mood to just get blind stinking drunk and eat nothing but leftovers.
When you smoke the turkeys for other people... do they get them days before and just reheat them on the day of?
Yeah. We smoke them, break them down into parts (usually keep the breast whole, then separate the drumsticks, thighs, and whole wing), then vacuum seal them to keep them from drying out as much as possible. It's then up to them how they want to reheat and serve.
Interesting. I'm thinking I could do something similar for Xmas... pre-smoke the turkey, slice it all up, vacuum seal the pieces parts, then heat it up via sous vide day of... just cut the bag and dump onto a platter. That would eliminate a ton of work/mess right at dinner, and probably not impact quality one little bit.
I actually do this for my personal turkey that I use for my family dinner. Smoke it on Monday, portion it out, then Thursday, I throw it in the sous vide to bring it back up to temp, then I take it out of the bag, dry out the skin, give it a quick spray with some duck fat and pop it under the broiler for a few minutes to crisp up the skin then cut and serve. I've been doing it that way for a couple of years now and nobody can tell the difference.
I feel very confident that there's already a weed strain out there called McStuffin Man, but if there ISN'T... I need someone to get on that.