Creel Turkey Chronicles: Part One. The Creel family is doing our own turkey at home this year. Our usual ritual is to travel to Ann Creels house, bringing along only our weary selves and our two dogs, crashing at their house and eating all their food. At best, I manage to muster a casserole or something to contribute to the immeasurable and delectable amounts of food my amazing Mother-in-law always prepares. This year, were staying in Birmingham for Thanksgiving, and I decided its time to be a real grown-up and try to do my own turkey. I heard a piece on NPR last Friday featuring a Real Life, Bona-Fide French chef, who shared his turkey-prep strategy (I almost wrecked my car while concentrating, trying to pick out the English from his very thick French accent): Zee secret is, you boil zee turkey the night before, in a very rich brine, for forty-five minutes to an hour. Zen, you soak zee turkey in zis brine overnight, and roast it the following day. Honestly, friend, you cannot mess it up. If an upscale French chef tells me I CANNOT MESS IT UP, then hey, I am THERE. So, I got Stephen involved - who loves to cook, but only if it is a Very Difficult and Precise Task, featuring an overly complex recipe, or some other such endeavor that takes all day, requires multiple shopping trips and extensive culinary skill, as if its just not worth it otherwise. (His favorite character from The Lord of the Rings is Samwise Gamgee, because he likes remaining cheerful and faithful in the face of unachievable quests wrought with unattainable challenges.) He gets out my stock pot and measures it to make sure a turkey will fit in it for the pre-boiling. After Stephens careful measurements, which he then spot-checks on my arm (if the turkey measures from that freckle on your forearm to the end of your middle finger, itll fit), we all load into the car to get the Organic Turkey from Organic Harvest in Hoover. Because of the aforementioned size limitation, we have to settle for a free-range, never-ever-ever-fed-antibiotics, extra-specially pampered turkey that happens to be All Natural instead of Organic. (The Organic Turkeys were 14-18 pounds and failed the Freckle-to-Middle-Finger Size test.) Whatever. Itll be delicious and still set us back $30 for a 12-pound turkey. Its in our freezer now, and Part Two will be thawing it, which I plan to begin tomorrow. Shopping for the stuff to go along with it has already landed me a list that fills an 8 1/2 x 11 piece of notebook paper. Ill share the full menu tomorrow, but the brine will include dark beer, veggie broth, chicken broth, and some other stuff I havent thought up yet.
Posted on: Sun, 23 Nov 2014 18:07:26 +0000
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