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All Thanksgiving
From Recipes
Posted by Nick Kindelsperger, November 26, 2007 at 4:00 PM
Oh, who am I kidding. I was really just taking a break last Friday before settling down and inventing ways to eat all of the food. I mean, half the fun of Thanksgiving are the mounds of leftovers Ziplocked-up in the fridge. At first, the meals just looked like facsimiles of the main event. There were many overstuffed plates of turkey, mashed potatoes, and broccoli. Lunch became a routine of sandwich preparation. But as I was getting down to the dregs, I had to start thinking of creative variations.
That’s when I dug out the cranberry sauce. It was the perfect accompaniment to the big turk, but I was having a hard time figuring out what to do with the little that was left. By the third day, a salad sounded like a godsend, and I tossed some greens with a little white meat, some goat cheese, and crumbled bacon. And that's when I thought of the dressing. A little of that cranberry sauce whisked with olive oil and all the disparate items were tied together. Not exactly revolutionary, but tasty nonetheless.
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From Recipes
Posted by Zach Brooks, November 23, 2007 at 12:00 PM
For sandwich lovers all around the country, Friday is pretty much our Super Bowl. Starting late on Thursday night and continuing until the Thanksgiving meal is exhausted, amateur sandwich chefs will engage in a ritual that is as American as Thanksgiving itself—the transformation of Thanksgiving leftovers into a very serious sandwich. My concoction is pretty standard (roll, turkey, stuffing, and cranberry sauce), so I decided to turn to Serious Eats' contributors for some day-after-Thanksgiving, sandwich-making inspiration.
The answers run the gamut and should provide you with more than enough ideas for your pile of leftovers. Not surprisingly, every sandwich contained turkey, and all but two called for cranberry sauce of some kind. Cheese showed up on three sandwiches (brie being the most popular), and mayo is the clear condiment of choice, appearing four times (five if you count aioli), beating out mustard (one sandwich) and butter (two sandwiches). And bacon shows its almighty power in appearing twice, despite the fact that it requires you to cook more food, thereby totally defeating the purpose of the day after Thanksgiving, "leftovers" sandwich (but undoubtedly making it more delicious).
A list of Serious Thanksgiving Sandwiches, courtesy of the Serious Eats Team, after the jump.
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From Recipes
Posted by The Serious Eats Team, November 23, 2007 at 11:00 AM
Editor's note: A couple of weeks ago I saw the fine writer Sara Roahen give a talk at the Southern Foodways Symposium on boudin, the pork, liver, and rice sausage most often found in the Louisiana countryside. She was smart, articulate, funny, and self-deprecating, so when she was finished I asked if she would like to contribute to Serious Eats. In honor of Thanksgiving, here's Sara's take on turkey gumbo. We hope you'll be hearing more from Sara on Serious Eats in the coming months. Her book, Gumbo Tales, is coming out in February, and we will definitely be giving it away. It's a terrific book. —Ed
Words and Recipes by Sara Roahen | Last Thanksgiving, which arrived a long month and a half after my reluctant departure from New Orleans, I resolved to kick my homesickness (I had lived in New Orleans for seven years) by injecting a new tradition into my Wisconsin family’s holiday feasting: turkey bone gumbo. I imported andouille from Jacob’s World Famous Andouille & Sausage in La Place, Louisiana, and I used Louisiana bay leaves, which are fresher and mellower than the ones sold in small jars in most grocery store spice aisles. I also made a potato salad with green onion mayonnaise from Chef Paul Prudhomme’s Louisiana Kitchen, which my husband, Matt, and I like to eat in our gumbo. Many Louisianians approve of this pairing, and so did many in our Wisconsin crowd. So much so that this year, even though my Thanksgiving visit came two weeks early, we held our second-annual Roahen turkey bone gumbo dinner. Thirty people attended. Only one complained openly about my liberal use of cayenne.
Though this year we roasted a turkey so that we would have a carcass so that we could have gumbo again, usually turkey bone gumbo is something of an afterthought: what one cooks in order to make good use of the entire Thanksgiving bird once it has become carnage. The same method could be—and is in Louisiana—applied to any fowl or game. One of the most exhilarating gumbos I’ve tasted came from the pot of my friend and food enthusiast Brooks Hamaker, a Louisiana native. If ever I doubted his claims of being a huntsman, he earned my respect with the feather that I pulled from my teeth while enjoying his deep, dark Mardi Gras duck gumbo one year.
It’s amazing how much meat falls off the most meticulously carved turkey carcass after two hours in a simmering stock pot. And the stock produced is so flavorful that turkey bone gumbo requires little more than a robust roux, some seasoning vegetables, and ample salt and pepper. I like to brighten it up with filé powder and lemon juice just before serving, though both additions are optional.
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From Recipes
Posted by Erin Zimmer, November 23, 2007 at 10:00 AM
Although this Brit comfort food is typically made with minced lamb, it's a dish that rolls with the punches. When replaced with ground beef, it's cottage pie. In New Zealand, spuds are the key ingredient so it becomes the potato pie. In our red-white-and-blue nation, we've got one with corn called the cowboy pie. (Yee-haw) The meat-hating crowd does a vegetarian shepherdess pie. And the Midwest? They've got one, too, with cream of mushroom soup and green beans.
So along comes Thanksgiving with all its leftovers: a perfect chance for a seasonal shepherd's pie. Emeril has a fussied-up version and Martha does a more basic one. Either way, the bottom line is to throw leftovers (turkey, green beans, cornbread, stuffing, and cranberries) into a casserole dish. Bake at 400°F for about 30 minutes, until bubbling. For fun, throw the sweet potatoes into a pastry bag, and as if they were icing, dress the dish with some frilly designs.
From Recipes
Posted by Robyn Lee, November 23, 2007 at 9:00 AM
Photograph from brooklyn on Flickr
It's the day after Thanksgiving, but the holiday isn't over yet. Surely you didn't forget about that pile of leftovers in your fridge. You know, the one with all the turkey. And mashed potatoes. And cranberry sauce. Etc.
You could eat the leftovers just the way they are and bore yourself to death, or you can give them new life as ingredients in different recipes. Here's a selection of recipes that will turn some (or all) of your leftovers into something tasty instead of something you'll forget in the fridge and rediscover a month later, topped with a layer of mold.
Have any ideas of your own? Contribute them to the "What do you do with your turkey leftovers?" Talk topic!
From Recipes
Posted by Erin Zimmer, November 22, 2007 at 6:00 PM
Everyone loves an excuse to eat muffins, and the cleverest among us know it's all about the tops. So on Black Friday morning, when you're full but the extra cranberry sauce is staring you in the face, consider that excuse enough. They're leftover-efficient, so basically you're doing something good for the environment. Pat yourself on the back and bake these oaty cranberry guys, which come from chef Michael Harr of Butterfield 9 in Washington, D.C. Harr realizes that the gang won't quite be ready for Thanksgiving sandwiches this early and that these are just what the tummy ordered.
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From Required Eating
Posted by Ed Levine, November 22, 2007 at 9:30 AM
You already know a little bit about what I'm doing for Thanksgiving, thanks to my post here yesterday, but I thought I'd ask the Serious Eats staff here in the office what they were doing and what they were thankful for.
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From Required Eating
Posted by Alaina Browne, November 21, 2007 at 5:30 PM
If you don't have time to make your own stuffing, check out the winners of our store-bought stuffing mix showdown.
Don't know what wine to pair with the big meal? Dr. Vino's Thanksgiving wine recommendations.
In case of emergency: holiday helplines.
If you are gravy-challenged, Serious Eaters' have lots of advice.
How to carve a turkey.
How to keep everything hot while you carve your turkey.
Advice for the day after: Freezing leftover turkey, what to do with leftover turkey
From Required Eating
Posted by Alaina Browne, November 21, 2007 at 4:30 PM
For last minute help and advice preparing your Thanksgiving feast, there are a number of helplines set-up to answer your questions. Or, ask your fellow Serious Eaters!
Butterball Turkey Talk Line
Phone: 800-288-8372
Website: butterball.com
Cooking advice 9 a.m.-9 p.m. EST today; 7 a.m.-7 p.m. EST Thanksgiving day.
USDA Meat and Poultry Hot Line
Phone: 888-674-6854 or 800-256-7072 for hearing impaired
Website: fsis.usda.gov
Open 10 a.m.-4 p.m. EST today and 8 a.m.-2 p.m. EST Thanksgiving day.
Empire Kosher Poultry Consumer Hotline
Phone: 800-367-4734
Website:www.empirekosher.com
King Arthur Flour Co.'s Baker's Hotline
Phone: 802-649-3717
Website: www.kingarthurflour.com
or e-mail questions to bakers@kingarthurflour.com
From Recipes
Posted by Nick Kindelsperger, November 21, 2007 at 4:00 PM
I was searching for one last Thanksgiving trick. I flipped through my copy of the Silver Palate, hoping to find some deah simple preparation for carrots, one that would fit nicely on an already overflowing table. I’d already made glazed carrots before, but this one only called for a few key spices. I was intrigued.
It was advertised as Ginger Candied Carrots, which sounded like a perfect match for all the other sweet sides. But what ended up on my plate was less candied and more earthy. That certainly came from the caraway seeds, which made this dish kind of nutty, and overwhelmed every other ingredient. It was a really interesting dish, but alas, not much of an All-American Thanksgiving side. Oh well, I’m already going to toss some carrots in with my mashed potatoes. Other than that, it’s all about the turkey. Good luck everyone!
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From Required Eating
Posted by Matthew Amster-Burton, November 21, 2007 at 3:15 PM
"Giving your children the right amount of the heart-healthy oils is just as important as keeping them from eating lard." —Missy Chase
Lapine, from 'The Sneaky Chef'
That's funny, because in preparation for Thanksgiving, I just sent my wife and daughter to pick up some leaf lard. We buy our lard from a local farm, Skagit River Ranch. It's certified organic and, if you care about this sort of thing, loaded with the exact same monounsaturated fat found in Lapine's beloved olive and canola oils. More important, Skagit's lard is of superb quality, elevates every food it touches, and is essential to the centerpiece of our Thanksgiving table: Cornish pasties.
Why pasties? My wife, Laurie, traces her roots to Penzance, Cornwall—known for its pirates and pasties. And pasties are very much in the spirit of Thanksgiving: comforting, starchy, nap-inducing.
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From Required Eating
Posted by Ed Levine, November 21, 2007 at 3:00 PM
A piece on the op-ed page of the New York Times suggests that for health reasons we all switch the Thanksgiving meal to breakfast. Jennifer Ackerman writes:
So here is my proposal for revamping our holiday tradition: Invite the relatives for a morning feast of turkey frittata or wild turkey hash on English muffins, topped with poached eggs and hollandaise sauce.
Ackerman even claims there is historical precedence for an early bird Thanksgiving.
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From Required Eating
Posted by Alaina Browne, November 21, 2007 at 2:00 PM
These days there are more online videos demonstrating how to carve a turkey than you can shake a stick at. I got to know the San Francisco Chronicle's Olivia Wu a bit when I attended Taste3 earlier this year, so I'm favorably biased toward her demonstration (above) of how to properly check the temperature of your turkey, and two different carving techniques. Wu's technique is similar to what today's New York Times calls the butcher's method.
From Slice
Posted by Adam Kuban, November 21, 2007 at 1:30 PM
Heh. Had you there for a minute, eh? Because, given the Oreo Dessert Pizza, the Crispy Melt, and all that, this Thanksgiving Feast Pizza mocked up by The Onion is not entirely implausible.
From Ed Levine Eats
Posted by Ed Levine, November 21, 2007 at 7:56 AM
Although I'm usually the alpha cook in our kitchen, the battle for kitchen hegemony in our house on Thanksgiving can get a little dicey. Are we the exception or the rule on Turkey Day? Does everyone have issues with kitchen control on Thanksgiving? Serious Eaters want to know.
Let me set the scene for you. Usually my wonderful wife, Vicky, happily lets me take control of the cooking. She doesn't care about food as much as I do, and I have ceded control to her on virtually every other aspect of our home life.
On Thanksgiving this year at our house we are going to be thirteen. Every one of those thirteen with the exception of our son and me are my wife's birth family. So because the guest list is comprised of her family, Vicky decided a few years ago she wanted a power-sharing arrangement in our Thanksgiving kitchen. Our first negotiations were freighted affairs, complete with raised voices and hurt feelings, probably not dissimilar to what is going on in Pakistan with Bhutto and Musharraf.
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From Recipes
Posted by Erin Zimmer, November 20, 2007 at 4:00 PM
Whip out the butane torch, kids. This Pumpkin Pie Brûlée, also from friend Brendan Cox of D.C.'s Circle Bistro, is super simple and just needs that hand-held ignition and flame tip (also good for destroying small patches of weeds and for high-tech lightage of birthday candles). Grandma Mildred may call it untraditional, but again, we say: Bring on the pyromaniac urges.
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From Recipes
Posted by Erin Zimmer, November 20, 2007 at 3:00 PM
We’ve done sweet potato spoon bread and Japanese sweet potatoes with scallion butter, but not a sweet potato trifle yet. The traditionally Brit dessert with a kick could be considered "fusion" since it combines Union Jack with the American harvest. As long as we don’t start giving you sweet potato spotted dick and sweet potato bangers and mash, we think the combo is safe.
This recipe was created by Washington, D.C., chef Brendan Cox of Circle Bistro, who even adds an expected s’mores twist for a little campfire fun at the end. Also, on the topic of trifle—we were pretty impressed when this commenter 'fessed up on our "10 Steps to Getting a Thanksgiving Invitation," admitting that she tragically dropped her hazelnut torte (with hand-peeled hazelnuts even), and when it broke into “about 60 chunks,” presto-chango transformed it into a trifle but “told no one.” Good strategy. We like.
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From Required Eating
Posted by Wan Yan Ling, November 20, 2007 at 12:55 PM
The Grocery Ninja leaves no aisle unexplored, no jar unopened, no produce untasted. Creep along with her below, and read her past market missions here.
There have been "countdown to Thanksgiving" notices everywhere for the past month, so it's safe to say anyone planning on hosting a gathering would have handled all the logistics by now—ordering the turkey, coordinating the sides, outsourcing the labor, etc. But what about the procrastinators among us? The ones who have left everything just this side of too late and are quickly realizing that a clean kitchen and peace of mind are what we would truly be thankful for?
It may be too late to order the organic, pasture-raised heirloom turkey, but it's not too late to dig out (beg, borrow, or steal) the biggest pot in your kitchen and get some curry going.
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From Required Eating
Not really. An ounce of white meat has four fewer calories than the same amount of dark meat, but dark meat has more nutrients. There was no mention of the hidden health benefits of crisp turkey skin.
From Required Eating
Posted by Jamie Forrest, November 20, 2007 at 10:00 AM
OK, so you read my post last week about crafting an American cheese plate for Thanksgiving, and you said to yourself, "I would love to eat that, but my family won't touch it unless it comes wrapped in individual plastic sheets." Well then maybe it's time to go plan B and make a bacon-covered artisanal cheeseball. This has got to be literally the cheesiest appetizer you could possibly serve to your guests, and yet how could anyone complain about something that combines cheese and bacon?
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From Ed Levine Eats
Posted by Ed Levine, November 20, 2007 at 7:22 AM
In 1981 Calvin Trillin wrote a hilarious piece for the New Yorker openly campaigning for spaghetti carbonara to replace roast turkey as our national Thanksgiving dish. In 1995 he wrote a follow-up to that story suggesting that a case for deep-fried turkey could be made. Neither campaign managed to gain much traction, but I must admit that as I dragged my 16-pound turkey home from my local supermarket last night (the bus never came, so I ended up walking half a mile with that damned bird), I started thinking about alternatives that would be easier on my back and balky hamstring.
New Yorkers might make a case for brisket or pot roast with potato latkes, which is what we serve the Levine family for Hanukkah. But that is a fairly radical suggestion—not as radical as Trillin's spaghetti carbonara, but fairly extreme all the same. Plus, brisket and latkes might give Thanksgiving a regional and religious skew the rest of the country might not find so appealing.
So I have a better idea, one I believe the whole country could get behind.
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From Recipes
Posted by Jenn Smith, November 19, 2007 at 6:45 PM
I've always been a stuffing purist; until this weekend I'd never eaten stuffing made from a mix. But when I noticed Canterbury Organics' stuffing mixes on the shelves of Whole Foods last week, branded in muted oranges and browns like a feature in a lifestyle magazine and promising to "delight the palate," I was curious. It looked as though it might taste good.
It got me thinking: Now that natural food companies are in on the packaged-food and semi-homemade trend, is there a broad enough range of mixes on the market to have a taste test? If I was going to taste one end of the packaged-stuffing spectrum, I was going to taste the full spectrum.
After the jump, the results of the Serious Eats taste test of eight packaged stuffing mixes, along with some suggestions on jazzing up your store-bought stuffing.
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From Recipes
Posted by Nick Kindelsperger, November 19, 2007 at 4:30 PM
Really good cranberry sauce isn’t such a secret. It’s basically just a simple concoction of fresh cranberries, sugar, a little salt, and water. Boil for it for a scant five minutes, let cool, and it’s ready to go. Certainly not as nostalgic as the jelly mold sold in cans but comforting in its own way. Although the method described above is tasty enough, by changing a few ingredients and popping the cork on a bottle of bubbly, a whole other dimension can be added.
It, unfortunately, does make the dish just a little un-American. I’m fairly sure the Puritans didn’t have Champagne, not to mention the Native Americans. So it seems a little tragic to add. But it’s such a perfect complement to the cranberries. If your conscience gets the better of you, then just do what we did and toss about a tablespoon of the cranberry sauce into a wine glass and top with Champagne. It’s not exactly a Thanksgiving tradition, but here's to trying to make it one.
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From Required Eating
Posted by Karen Resta, November 19, 2007 at 12:45 PM
Editor's note: While we were planning our Thanksgiving coverage, Serious Eats community member Karen Resta happened to email and offered the following essay on what the day means to her. It's a nice take on Thanksgiving as approached by three generations of American women. —Adam
I am a modern American woman and my Thanksgiving foods reflect that. The Thanksgiving foods of my mother and grandmother were also reflective of their own ways of being modern women of their times, though for each of them the approach to Thanksgiving was fearsome—for time spent in the kitchen was not pleasurable in any way either one could find.
My Grandmother's Kitchen
There was no turkey on my grandmother's Thanksgiving table regardless of the annual hype about the bird's vital importance for the day in the attractive pictures sketched in women's magazines and in the "women's pages" of the newspapers (where all news about food could be found). Instead, there was a fresh ham, glazed with brown sugar and mustard, crackling still intact—because hams were easier to procure and easier to cook. There were browned Maine cull potatoes from the neighbor's farm up the road, home-canned beans from the garden, and cornbread, which forgave a less-than-perfect baker more easily than yeast rolls would.
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From Recipes
Posted by Adam Kuban, November 19, 2007 at 12:45 PM
The following recipe was provided by Serious Eater Karen Resta, as part of her essay A Modern Woman's Thanksgiving.
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From Recipes
Posted by Adam Kuban, November 19, 2007 at 12:45 PM
The following recipe was provided by Serious Eater Karen Resta, as part of her essay A Modern Woman's Thanksgiving.
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From Required Eating
If you are skilled with knitting needles, you might want to get to work this weekend on your own Jive Turkey Hat, the perfect accessory for your Thanksgiving celebration.
From Recipes
Posted by Paul Clarke, November 16, 2007 at 6:00 PM
Let's get this weekend started right. Here's a cocktail recipe from Paul Clarke (The Cocktail Chronicles) to kick things off. Need more than one? That kinda week, eh? Here you go. Cheers!
You’ve invited the guests, selected the bird, and you’re about to raid the farmer’s markets and a battery of different stores in preparation for the big event. And what’s the first thing you're going to hand your guests when they arrive?
If your first thought is to go with what’s safe and familiar, and offer the same selection of drinks to your guests that you do every time you see them, you’re certainly not alone. At a time when the American palate is expanding and the Thanksgiving table is increasingly a mix of the traditional and the innovative, our approach to drinks is still fairly conservative. Sure, you may brighten things up by splashing cranberry or pomegranate juice into a glass of Champagne, but there’s an argument to be made for kicking off the festivities with a glass of something none of your guests have ever had before, a drink crafted especially with the flavors of the holiday in mind.
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From Required Eating
Eating turkey won't make you sleepy—that's just you being tired. Snopes addresses other Thanksgiving beliefs.
