Thursday, October 30, 2008

Entire Thanksgiving dinner in one post

Ingredients for turkey:

One 12 to 15 pound turkey (*gluten free)
1 Tablespoon BBQ sauce (your favorite)
1 Tablespoon Italian salad dressing
1 Tablespoon honey
Salt & Pepper

Ingredients for gravy:

turkey drippings
1 teaspoon cornstarch
2 Tablespoons water
salt to taste
pepper to taste

Ingredients for mashed potatoes:

6 to 12 potatoes (I like to use red potato)
Water
Butter
Salt and pepper to taste
Milk

Vegetables

Any kind you like (steamed is best)

Ingredients for stuffing:

1 to 2 sticks butter (1/2 to 1 cup)
4 to 6 large sticks of celery, chopped
1 large onion (I use red onion), chopped
1/2 cup parsley, chopped
One or two 8-ounce can water chestnuts, chopped
3-5 green apples, chopped in cubes
Lots of pepper
Lots of garlic
Salt to taste
Lots of Italian seasoning (oregano, basil, thyme)
1 small loaf of gluten free bread (I use a Raisin Bread)

Ingredients for Sweet Potato

1/2 or 1 sweet potato per guest
butter

And this is how you make it all...

*Make sure the turkey you buy was not treated with additives or injected with gravy making ingredients or juices. Read all the ingredients before buying your turkey. Stay away from "modified food starch, etc."
Turkey:
Completely thaw the turkey as per its wrapper instructions. Wash with water (no soap for you novices) and clean the turkey. If you are inclined, you can boil the innards to chop and add to you dressing. Pat dry with a clean towel or paper towels.

Stuffing: In a large skillet pan, melt the butter. Add celery, onion, parsley, and seasonings ... saute. When onions are clear add water chestnuts and apples. Simmer on low heat while you toast the bread. Cut the bread into cubes and place on a cookie sheet. Brown in oven at broil until crispy brown. Take bread and place in a large bowl, then pour mixture from pan over bread and stir until well mixed together. Save the left-over butter residue in the bottom of the saute pan. Set aside to cool a bit.

Turkey: Take your turkey and place on a turkey rack in a big roasting pan. Stuff dressing into the turkey cavity, both front and back (neck and you know what). Skew together to close opening. Mix together BBQ sauce, Italian dressing, honey, salt and pepper and some of the butter residue from your stuffing saute. Should be a liquid paste consistency. Rub all over the turkey. This is a great way to seal in the moisture and flavor of the turkey and it comes out a lovely rich brown color.

Place in oven at 325 degrees for about 20 minutes per pound or until your meat thermometer registers 180 degrees. Put about a cup of water in the bottom of the pan so that the drippings from your turkey don't burn up, (you may have to add water occasionally to the bottom of the roasting pan. Baste you turkey occasionally with the drippings from the bottom of the pan or with butter and seasonings.

Gravy: After you remove the turkey from the oven, pour all the drippings into a sauce pan. Add some gluten-free broth if you do not have enough drippings. Mix corn starch with water and stir well until all the corn starch is dissolved. Bring drippings to a gentle boil and stir in corn starch mixture. Mix in well and remove from heat (you do not want to over cook your gravy). Gravy should thicken. You may need to add more corn starch. Let the burner cool down and then gently simmer the gravy. Add salt and pepper to taste. Note: Some turkey's you buy now have a gravy mix with them this mixture has wheat flour in it.

Mashed potatoes: Place in large pot and boil potatoes in water. Make sure water covers all the potato. Boiling at a medium heat will take longer, but you are less likely to have a mess from the water boiling over. This should take any where from 45 minutes to 1 hour depending on how much potatoes you cook. Potatoes are done when you can easily stick a knife through them. I leave the peels on the red potatoes, but you can either remove them before or after you cook them. Drain water from the potatoes and place in a mixer bowl. Add butter, salt, pepper and a little bit of milk (room temperature, not cold) and beat until smooth, adding milk for smoothness.

Sweet potato: These can be cooked many ways. My mother likes them baked with brown sugar. My husband just likes them baked plain (wrap in foil, throw in oven last hour of the turkey cooking), and I don't like them at all.

You found this recipe on 1st Traveler's Choice Internet Cookbook.

Virtual Cities

Tips for Gravy

For making gravy, use arrowroot starch; it thickens better than wheat flour, anyway. I like to add a dash of dry sherry, brandy, or wine as well.

As an all-around basic flour substitute, I keep a bag of Pamela's Ultimate Baking Mix in the fridge, and use it to thicken soup and chili, to coat and dredge pan fried cakes, and honestly, it works as a one to one sub in almost every baking recipe I've converted.

Dinner Rolls

Ingredients

4 tablespoons shortening
3 tablespoons honey
2 eggs
1 packet yeast (about 1 T)
1 cup sour cream
1/2 cup potato starch
1 cup cornstarch
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 tablespoon baking powder
2 teaspoons xanthan gum
3/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 teaspoon vinegar

Directions

1 Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
2 Combine all ingredients.
3 Mix well to remove all lumps.
4 The dough will be quite wet.
5 Wet hands to handle dough.
6 (Re-wet hands as needed.) Take about 1/4 cup of dough and shape into a ball.
7 Drop into greased baking tin.
8 (I use muffin or popover tins.).
9 Repeat until all dough is used.
10 Bake 18-20 minutes, until toothpick inserted in middle tests clean.
11(Maybe it's my oven, but mine bake in 14 minutes.).