The trick to good gravy has a lot to do with forethought and advanced planning.  In my Preparing Awesome Turkey entry from yesterday, I laid out how to brine and season the turkey, which in the end all works toward making good gravy.  Gravy is only as good as the meat juices left in the bottom of the tray once the turkey is cooked.  Adding the bacon on top of the turkey adds to the flavour of the gravy.

How to make great gravy

When starting to prepare a large meal like Thanksgiving, you will accrue a lot of helpful items that will aid you in making great gravy. A good idea is to have a small container handy while you are doing the prep of any vegetables.  If you have any peeled potato, yam or carrot skins, put them in the container.  Some extra broccoli or cauliflower ends? Leftover garlic?  Throw them in too.  You don’t need to put all your skins in there, just a handful of each as you go along, then compost the rest if you have that option.  As I mentioned in the turkey recipe, when you remove the neck and organs from the turkey, don’t throw them out, put them in your collected container.  If you’re doing your prep the day before, close up the container and put it in the fridge for the next day.

The next morning after you’ve prepped the turkey and got it into the oven, pull out your collection of scraps and put them in a small sauce pot.  Add water so the ingredients are submerged.  I had some celery and fresh parsley that I cut up and tossed into the mix as well.  Turn onto low and leave it.  We have a warming area on our stove, which worked well for simmering the ingredients.  Essentially you are cooking a broth for use later with the gravy.

The next step is to collect the boiling water from the mashed potatoes.  Instead of pouring this valuable asset down the sink, collect it into a large bowl.  If you’re boiling stuff like turnip or peas on the stove, collect the water in this bowl too.  The water has the flavour of the vegetables in it, making it a worthy addition to the gravy.

Once the turkey is done and removed from the roasting pan, you are ready to make some gravy.  Remove any meat or stuffing that might have fallen into the pan during cooking, leaving just the juices from the turkey.  Strain the liquid broth from the sauce pot into the roasting pan and discard the neck, organs and vegetables at this point.  At this point you’ll want to judge how much gravy you need to make.  If you need to make it stretch, add some of the boiled water into the mix, though don’t add too much.  Put the roasting pan on a large stove element(or 2, depending on the size of your roasting pan) and bring the liquid to a boil.

In a small mug or container, add 3 tbsp of corn starch or flour.  Add in some water from our boiled water bowl to fill the mug, then stir to mix together until the corn starch or flour is absorbed into the water.  Corn starch/flour is what will thicken the gravy.

Once the liquid is boiling, add in a bit of the corn starch mixture, making sure to mix it in as you add it.  Using a fork or whisk, keep stirring the gravy until begins to thicken.  Once you have some thickened gravy do a taste test.  If it tastes weak, add a few teaspoons of salt.  Typically you want the gravy to have a pleasant salty flavour.  Add some fresh ground pepper as well to taste.  Once you’re satisfied with the taste, it’s ready to serve.

How to thaw a turkey

The first place you’ll want to start is with thawing the bird if it is frozen.  Given these turkeys are frozen solid you’ll want to pull out the turkey 2 days in advance of when you want to cook it.  The first day I set it out on the counter in a roasting pan and let it thaw out, without removing the plastic packaging.  At night I then put it in the fridge until morning.  The next morning take it out of the fridge and remove the plastic packaging, as well as the innards from the bird, which with mine had the neck in the rear cavity, then the rest of it in a wax paper package stored in the neck area.  Do not throw these parts out, they are used to help make the gravy.  Put them in a small container in the fridge for later. You’ll want to clean and sanitize a wash tub, or the kitchen sink and allow the turkey to soak until it is thawed.  You’ll want to check periodically that the water is still cold during this process, as you don’t want the turkey to get too warm.  Check the inside and outside to see if it’s still frozen.  If it’s all thawed, then you can commence with the next stage of preparation.

Brining a turkey

If you’re not familiar with brining, it is essentially the process of infusing flavour into a food item, and in our case a turkey.  You’ll want to do this process the night before the turkey is to be cooked, 10 – 12 hours for brining is ideal.

To brine a turkey you will require either a large stock pot, a food grade bucket or a brining bag.  It is important to have the right equipment for this step, as you don’t want the brine to leak, or to contaminate the turkey.  Another option is if you have a large cooler that will work as well, dependent on the size of your turkey.  Also to brine you will need to have a fresh turkey, not a kosher or pre-basted turkey like a Butterball.

I was working with a 20lb turkey, so I was able to fit mine into a large stock pot.  Put the turkey into your container, then measure out the water you are adding.  Add 1/4 cup of salt per litre, or for our American friends, 1 cup per gallon.  All told my stockpot took roughly 13 litres of water to submerge my turkey, so I added a little over 3 cups of salt to the mixture.

turkey in brine

Brine mixture

• 1/2 cup chicken soup stock powder
• 1 cup sugar
• 5 cloves of mashed garlic
• 3 tbsp chopped fresh parsley

This is where you can get a little creative with adding additional ingredients to flavour the brine.  I kept mine relatively simple, but as you can see there are tonnes of brine recipes.  Throw all the ingredients in and stir them around.

Once prepared you need to find a cold place to store it overnight.  In the fridge is ideal, but if you don’t have the room you could try to putting it outside overnight if it’s cool outside.  If it’s below freezing I wouldn’t advise that though, so check the weather.  Otherwise, maybe consider using the cooler I mentioned earlier with some ice added in to keep things cool.  I have a cold room in my house, so I threw a bunch of ice cubes in with the mix, then places it in there for the night.

Prepping the turkey for cooking

Remove the turkey from the brine and discard the water.  In the sink you will want to rinse the turkey off using cold water, then pat dry using paper towels. At this point I stuffed the bird using the instructions from my sourdough bread and rice stuffing.

Get some butter or margarine and put some in its own bowl.  Using paper towel, rub the margarine onto the body of the turkey, inside and out, getting the legs and wings as well.

turkey ready for the oven

Turkey seasoning rub recipe

• 1 tbsp ground mustard
• 1 tbsp paprika
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp pepper
• 1 tsp onion powder
• 1 tsp garlic powder
• 2 tbsp chopped fresh parsley
• 8 strips of bacon

Combine all the ingredients except the bacon, then rub all over the bird.  Place the turkey breast side up in your roasting pan  Once the rub is applied you can add the piece de resistance, some bacon.  Lay the strips across the top of the bird to cover the skin. Wrap the wings in tinfoil as they are prone to burning during the cooking process.  You will also want to put tinfoil over top of the turkey while cooking, or just use the roaster lid should you have one at your disposal.  The bird is now ready for the oven.

Cooking the turkey

Heat the oven to 325ºF and cook for 20 minutes per pound of turkey.  Since mine was 20 pounds x 20 minutes = 400 minutes.  400 divided by 60 minutes = roughly 6.5 hours cooking time.  I would check the turkey about every 40 minutes and baste the turkey using a handy turkey baster. I also sprinkled some fresh ground pepper and salt on the turkey a couple times as the basting rubbed of some of the seasoning.  For the last half hour, remove the covering tinfoil to allow the turkey skin to brown up a bit.

The final product

While it was a lot of work, this produced possibly the best turkey I’ve ever had.  It has so much juice and flavour that you could easily enjoy the taste without gravy, though with the awesome gravy this bad boy produced, why would you want to do that?:)

If you like to know how I made the gravy, read my post on how to make great gravy for tips.

Crush The Cook

This year I seized the opportunity to cook Thanksgiving dinner, as my parents are in the process of selling their house, and this year we purchased a home of our own, enabling us to properly host the event.  For years I’ve watched, helped and generally learned many tips and tricks that go into making a large Turkey dinner.  My goal with this meal is to apply everything I’ve learned over the years into one super fantastic meal.  I’m going for the traditional Thanksgiving meal with my own spin on things.

I intend on sharing my recipes and process in a series of blog posts that will follow.  Obviously my blog has been long neglected, so I’m looking at this as a means to get me back into the swing of food blogging again.  Hope you all enjoy.

The event last year was awesome. For $20 you get a whole rack of ribs and a side. There were 9 different trailers setup serving their spin on rib delicious-ness. Everyone has a different preferrence. There is even a trailer from Paris called Camp 31. They make badass ribs. But given I can get Camp 31 goodness any day of the week, I didn’t bother with them. I think I got either Billy Bones or Bibbs BBQ ribs last year. I also got some potato side and corn on the cob. We bumped into a group of friends who unbeknownst to us were also checking out the ribliciousness. Corina’s sister had the kids with them, so they packed it in early and we hung out with our friends the rest of the night. We ended up having some drinks and all eating Elephant ears loaded up with ice cream, whip cream and chocolate sauce. It was truly an evening of gorging to remember. This last weekend we went to a party and mentioned how we were going to Ribfest again to the friends who had attended last year and instantly anything that might have been planned for Friday was put on the backburner. Ribfest obviously takes precedence. I definitely like the idea of this being an annual occurance, because Ribfest is just that damn good.

I think my anticipation of Ribfest is almost bordering on the excitement I have in the leadup to Thanksgiving. And I love turkey. Not quite as excited, but up there. But that does remind me that turkey time is rapidly approaching. I think I want to see if I can manage 3 turkey dinners this time around. That would be ace. Gosh darn I’m hungry right now.