This year, I took the home made stuffing up a notch and started with home made bread. We made a couple loaves, starting a few nights before Thanksgiving. The bread was nothing out of the ordinary, just simple white bread.
The night before, we cubed it so it could dry out just a little. I've made the same stuffing for years and mine actually calls for soft bread cubes, but I don't like them pillow soft, so cubing them and leaving them in a loosely covered bowl over night is usually perfect. When you're ready to stuff the turkey, melt 3/4 cup butter and soften 2 sliced celery stalks and a chopped medium onion. As soon as this starts cooking on the stove, Shawn already starts to inhale deeply. The smell is amazing. To the 9 cups of cubed bread, add approx 2 teaspoons of ground sage, mix it around real good, then toss in the butter, celery and onion mixture. Just stir it until it's all coated real good and start shoving inside that beautiful bird. This recipe can be used inside any bird, turkey, chicken or even Cornish hens. Because it's such a basic stuffing, no sausage or berries, etc., it's very versatile.
This is before we tied up the legs, but I wanted you to be able to see the stuffing inside. This bird was so big that all the stuffing fit inside, but normally I have some left over. Anything that doesn't fit inside, just put in an oven safe casserole dish, cover it and place in the refrigerator. After the turkey comes out of the oven and is resting, I can usually bake the left over stuffing and rolls at the same time so everything is nice and hot for dinner.
Unfortunately, since we were juggling so much with company coming in, turkey coming out and a hundred other fun kitchen things, I didn't get a picture of the finished bird. I didn't do anything special seasoning this years turkey. It was a simple butter and salt and pepper bird, but I've done quite a few variations from herbs to brine to pumpkin pie spice rubbed, which was amazing. We did expect a bigger crowd this year, hence the large bird, and since some of the family doesn't care too much for out-of-the-box ideas, I just stayed with simple. The flavor of the turkey and stuffing is going to be fantastic no matter what you do.
This picture was actually taken the next day during our day of watching movies, cleaning up and pigging out on left overs. I don't do black Friday shopping. I do sweats, movies and enjoy my husband. My sister does the sweet potato casserole every year and if she were to ever decide not to bring it, I'd be lost. It's the sweet that cuts through the savory on the plate. It's almost a dessert in itself. So this was almost all of our meal. Not pictured is the cranberry sauce and the rolls. Why didn't I show the rolls? Because that's tomorrow's blog. The rolls were so amazing and so easy that I'm going to share that entire recipe with you.
We also took the turkey carcass, some celery and a few other vegetable odds and ends, put it in a large stock pot, covered it with water and simmered it very slowly for hours. It was at least 3 hours, but I can't say for sure because I went more by eye than time. This yielded 5 quarts of amazing home made turkey stock. On Saturday, with 4 cups of that turkey stock, we made a mashed potato topped turkey pot pie. It's another one of my traditional after Thanksgiving meals, though normally with pie crust. This year I decided to try it with the mashed potatoes. It was good, but I think I missed the pie crust on top of this.
It was still a great comfort food kind of evening and with the temperatures beginning to drop, I don't complain at all about the oven being on.
Tune in tomorrow when I share the best roll recipe you've ever seen, and who I copied the recipe from!
Chat soon and I hope you enjoyed your Thanksgiving!
Penni
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