We've called in chef and author Elizabeth Karmel to answer these frequently asked turkey questions for Thanksgiving. "Even if you make the turkey every year, you need a refresher before Turkey Day," Karmel says. "I supervised the Butterball Turkey Talk-Line early in my career and we found that since most people only cook a turkey once a year, they need help remembering how to cook it. "
1. What if you don't have enough drippings for the gravy?
I have a great gravy trick I learned from my mother, and I use it every single year:
a. Take all of the giblets and the neck (you'll find them packed inside the turkey), toss them with olive oil and salt, chop up some onions, celery, and carrots and roast them at high heat (400 degrees F), to caramelize and intensify their flavors.
b. Put everything into a sauce pan with a couple cups of chicken broth and then, while you're working through the rest of the menu, simmer it for several hours until it reduces.
c. Add white wine for depth of flavor, and whisk in to create a light turkey gravy. If you prefer your gravy on the chunky side, strip the meat off the neck, chop up the giblets and add this to the gravy.
Cranberry sauce is the most ubiquitous Thanksgiving condiment -- perhaps even more so than gravy. Whether it's conditioning or tradition (or force feeding from our parents at a young age), it seems to go perfectly with everything on a late November plate. And though a glob of it straight out of a can is hilarious to look at, it pales in comparison to homemade cranberry sauce, which happens to be ridiculously easy to make.
The joys of a holiday meal with family and friends can be less than abundant if you're the one putting the meal on the table. But don't worry -- your loved ones are forgiving, and most any culinary crisis can be patched over. Here's our quick fix guide to the most common emergencies. The Pilgrims had the Wampanoag to help them through the first Thanksgiving; you have us.
The Turkey Is Still Frozen
Give it a bath. You can safely speed up thawing by soaking the wrapped turkey in a sink full of cold water. Change the water every half hour or so. If you're starting with a rock-hard bird, you'll need thirty minutes per pound, so give yourself some time.
I Don't Know If the Turkey Is Done
If you don't own an instant-read thermometer, now is a good time to pick one up. It's really the only foolproof method for checking doneness. The thickest part of the thigh should be at least 170 degrees F, the breast 160. If you have to improvise, try slipping a knife deep into the thigh; the juices should run clear.
The Turkey Is Unevenly Cooked
If the breast is ready but the dark meat still undercooked (it happens to the best of us), slice the legs off and give them some extra time in the oven, preferably in a small roasting pan.
The Slashfood team is heading out for our own Thanksgiving celebrations. There's still time to get your feast prepared. Read on for a host of last-minute turkey day ideas.
Have you brined that bird yet? There's still time to ensure it's juicy and delicious, just follow our brining guide and follow this easy turkey brine recipe. Whether you've been cooking Thanksgiving dinner for 20 years or this is your first time, sometimes things can go wrong. For quick solutions to common turkey blunders, Turkey Help to the rescue.
Need some conversation starters for the table? Take our Thanksgiving Trivia quiz and find out when the first Thanksgiving dinner was celebrated
Thanksgiving leftovers might arguably be the best part of the holiday, check out these delicious recipes for the turkey, cranberries, bread, and mashed potatoes. Last but not least, don't forget to help those who are less fortunate -- find your nearest Food Bank and give back this holiday.
Alabama-born LeNell Smothers defines herself first and foremost as a bartender, but she's been called many things -- most recently, the proprietress of LeNell's liquor store. She's owned her own whiskey label, called Red Hook Rye, and has been recognized by her home state as an honorary Colonel. Other interests include gin, sin and men.
I've been a bit in my own isolated world lately trying to unpack into a new home in a foreign land. When a friend in New York told me on the phone that he's busy making plans to serve 18 people for Thanksgiving this week, I gasped. How could I forget that this week is Thanksgiving?
Casa Cóctel's kitchen is still a work in progress, so we won't have a full-on Thanksgiving dinner in Mexico this year. We are still waiting for the arrival of the wine and spirit collection and the newly restored vintage Faema espresso machine. With all that in my mind, I decided to just make it all easier with a Kentucky Joe, a tasty dessert drink made with bourbon and coffee liqueur.
As it gets ready to host the 2014 soccer World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games, Rio de Janeiro is cleaning up its beaches by forbidding the sale of coconuts.
The city decreed that coconut husks, tossed aside on beaches by locals and tourists alike, are a nasty eyesore and as of Dec. 1, sale of the fruit is banned on the sand, AFP reports.
"Go on Ipanema beach at the end of the day and you'll see a mountain of coconuts that people have left on the sand. What attracts rats most to the beach are coconut husks," Jovanildo Savastano, the official in charge of the beaches, told AFP.
He said up to 30 tons of empty coconut shells are found each day.
Celebrity chefs -- they're just like us. Only with mega book deals, product lines, TV shows, a slew of sous chefs and a staff to clean up after them. Still, when it comes to food, most of 'em have a down home and humble favorite that defines the holiday. Over the next few weeks, we'll share must-have festive fare from Rachael Ray, Bobby Flay, John Besh, Michael Symon and many more.
In this Slashfood exclusive, Chef Marcus Samuelsson explains why bad red wine is essential to his holiday happiness.
Buy Marcus Samuelsson's "New American Table" and read more about Glüewhein and Glogg.
We're now in the last push before Thanksgiving. There's no time to carefully make marzipan treats or tasty maple concoctions. But there is still the possibility of sweetness without resorting to the old-school pie baking. Simply put down the pie shell, find a pumpkin-shaped pan and whip up a delicious, show-stopping cake.
The orange squash is one of the most undervalued delicacies in the world of food. By adding it to a cake, you get all the rich and spicy flavor contrasted with vanilla or chocolate. Since this is a cake, it can be made ahead of time -- freeing up the oven for the last-minute fare -- and adds some three-dimensional whimsy to your holiday table.
"The New Thanksgiving Table: An American Celebration of Family, Friends and Food"
by Diane Morgan
Photographs by Leigh Beisch Chronicle Books -- 2009 Buy it on Amazon
Thanksgiving may be all about tradition, but that doesn't mean there isn't room for a bit of experimentation.
In Diane Morgan's follow-up to "The Thanksgiving Table," she looks to new culinary traditions on the American Thanksgiving table. While there are old favorites like deviled eggs and giblet gravy, they share the spotlight with linguiça sausage stuffing and hazelnut popovers. This is not a T-day cookbook for your stodgy grandmother.
That's actually an improvement from 2005, when CSPI found 90 percent of the ads were for junk food. Between 2005 and 2009 the industry began a self-regulatory program through the Better Business Bureau'sChildren's Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative (CFBAI), but CSPI says that self-regulation isn't working.
Mark Bittman's advice for Thanksgiving: "Just chill."
Since 1999, residents of Jamestown, R.I., have held a Thanksgiving leftovers potluck deemed the "Save the Best for Last" dinner the Saturday after Turkey Day.
Taking a clue from the Butterball Turkey talk-line, Sam Sifton will be answering reader questions until 3 p.m. Thursday.
Hold the jokes about foil-wrapped potatoes and GORP-topped pie: Kentucky's state parks last year hosted more than 11,000 celebrants for Thanksgiving dinner.
"It's a longtime tradition, and a very convenient option," parks spokesman Gil Lawson says.
Kentucky, Georgia, Alabama and Arkansas will all keep at least one of their state park restaurants open this Thanksgiving for a holiday buffet. Insiders say the low price of in-park dining will likely enhance the appeal of an already popular program this year.
Kentucky, which operates all 17 of its park restaurants on Thanksgiving Day, charges $16.95 for a meal including turkey and dressing, baked ham, candied yams, green beans, mashed potatoes with giblet gravy and pumpkin pie.
"Not everyone wants to cook," explains Tennessee State Parks' Meg Lockhart. "This is a really simple thing to do in a beautiful setting."
Whether your Thanksgiving celebration errs on the Puritanical side, with extended family and tykes on the loose, or functions as more of a boozy bacchanal, this "Southern Comfort Barn Burner" cocktail should provide ample comfort to imbibers of all sorts.
If our Thanksgiving wine pairings didn't quite satisfy your thirst, Ezra Pound Cake's simple Southern Comfort and cider concoction will certainly fit the bill. In what she dubs "the official drink of Thanksgiving 2009," Ezra spikes some classic apple cider with some Southern Comfort, seasons it with cinnamon and brightens it with fresh lemon. She summarized the elegant drink best in her blog: "The combination works because the flavors in Southern Comfort -- especially the peach, orange and cinnamon -- dance with the apple in the cider, giving you a drink that's sweet and fruity, with an undercurrent of trouble. Just like Thanksgiving." We'll drink to that!
Become a member of the Slashfood Flickr pool to get a shot at having your photos featured in Feast Your Eyes.
Speaking as a coffee person, I can tell you that buying holiday presents for beanies can be difficult -- we can be very persnickety about what we like ("Oh, gee whiz, thanks for this... tub of pre-ground snicker-doodle-flavored coffee."), and many of us have everything ("Wow, thanks... another set of No. 4 cone filters.").
Read on after the jump for some suggestions to make your French-press fanatical loved ones happy this holiday season.
The mere thought of blue cheese evokes a surge of flavor memories -- sweet caramel, piquant peppers and earthy aromas. Favorites such as Gorgonzola Piccante, Rogue River Blue, Fourme d'Ambert and Vaquero all come to mind. But Cayuga Blue from Lively Run Goat Dairy eschews the standard flavor profile of a blue cheese. Instead, it's downright subdued with an herbaceous grassy taste reminiscent of a goat's milk tomme-style cheese, similar to Twig Farm's Goat Tomme.
The blue veins interestingly seem to function as a slightly spicy "topping" to this already flavorful cheese. The delicate goat's milk comes across first before you're hit with the mild tang of blue molds. Aged for two months, the cheese develops a firm dry texture that becomes soft and velvety on the palate. Altogether, it makes for a subtle blue, toned down with a rich, creamy taste.
At the Lively Run Goat Farm in the Finger Lakes region of New York, meticulous care of the several different goat breeds (Alpine, Nubian, Saanen and South African Boer breeds, and even crossbreeds) results in the flavorful aromatic raw milk used to create the cheese. In addition to the milk from her own farm, Susanne Messmer mixes goat's milk from five other sustainable farms in the area with hers to produce Cayuga Blue.
What Can I Get You Folks? - Eating Out for Thanksgiving
In Defense of Guy Fieri
'Top Chef Vegas' - And Then There Were Five
