Thanksgiving

I know this is late, but better late than never. I didn't take any pictures of our Thanksgiving day feast, which is too bad because we had enough food to feed more than 12 people and we had 6 adults and 3 kids. This year we spent Thanksgiving at our house, with no family except my brother (Jesse) and brother-in-law (BJ). We also had my friend Holly and her family over at the last minute since their guests bailed on them the last minute, and it was so nice to catch up and hang out. I was in charge of the turkey, stuffing, and cranberry sauce. The turkey was AWESOME, the stuffing nothing special, and the cranberry sauce was amazing. Two out of three ain't bad. :) One word for making the most delicious turkey I've ever had--brine! I'll post the recipe at the end of this post. BJ made the most decadent mashed potatoes I have ever had, and come to find out after a few helpings that this was because of liberal amounts of sour cream and cream cheese added to them. My brother Jesse made us chocolate mousse for dessert which was stunning. I am still eating those left overs every day (he made a LOT of mousse). Holly brought a corn bread... something. It was super moist corn bread with actual corn in it, so you had to scoop it out with a spoon. I don' know what it was, all I know is that it was fantastic! So much good food! Then for dessert we had some friends from our ward over who all brought like 3 pies a piece, and I made pie, and we just had a pie smorgasbord! I don't know how many more descriptive words I can use for our dinner. I wish I had taken pictures. Oh well. Bottom line is that we had LOTS of good food, we stuffed ourselves, we had good company, and I wish to repeat the experience soon. :)

Brined Turkey--guaranteed to be the most moist turkey you've ever had. Seriously!

Start with one turkey completely thawed. Plan ahead! Your turkey must soak in the brine for one hour per lb of turkey, so a 20 lb turkey needs to be in there about 20 hours, but don't go over on your time! It's better to have it in there less time needed than more because funny things can start happening to your meat.

Take out giblets, neck and thermometer from the meat and rinse. Have either a large clean bucket or a cooler on hand to put your turkey in. You need something that will make it so the brine either covers or nearly covers the bird. If your bird isn't mostly covered with liquid at the end, you need a smaller container!

We used the following brine recipe but this website has lots of different brine ideas as well as some more information about brining.:

• 1 gallon cold ice water
• 2 quarts apple juice
• 2 quarts orange juice
• 2 cup salt (3 cups Kosher or coarse salt)
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 10 whole cloves
• 1 tablespoon ground nutmeg

Preparation:

Pour apple and orange juice into a large pot over a medium heat. Add salt, brown sugar, cloves and nutmeg. Simmer for 15 minutes until salt and sugar are completely dissolved. Remove from heat and allow to cool. Add cold ice water.

Add all of liquid to turkey container and place in a cool place (needs to remain at about 40 degrees F the entire time) until ready to cook. We put our turkey in a cooler and then stuck the cooler outside for the night. It worked perfectly.

When ready to cook, turn your oven to 500 degrees (no, I'm not exaggerating). Rinse turkey thoroughly, inside and out, so no salt brine is left on bird, pat dry. Place on roasting pan with rack (we bought two disposable ones at the store, one with a built in rack and then stacked the pans for better stability). Take tin foil shiny side up and cover the breast of the turkey to make a breast plate or shield for the breast meat. Once shaped, remove and spray with cooking spray on the inside and set aside to use later.

Take about 1/2 to 1 stick of softened butter and massage it into the skin of the turkey. Really work it in there because this makes the skin crispy. Season as desired. Place turkey on the pan, breast side up. Put in the oven for 30 minutes on the LOWEST RACK (so it won't start to burn). Once bird is nice and brown, remove from the oven and turn temperature down to 350 degrees. Replace the breast shield on your bird greased side down and insert digital thermometer into the thigh if you have one. Return turkey to the oven and cook 2-21/2 hours or until the breast meat reads 161 degrees and the thigh around 175 degrees. Remove from oven, cover completely and let rest for at least 30 minutes! Temperature will raise another 5 degrees, so no worries about it being under cooked. Then carve and eat! Seriously, this is the best turkey I've ever had, and I'm not the hugest fan of turkey!