The turkey is eaten, and we are just hanging out until it is pie time.
how did everyone come out?
My 12-pound bird still had some ice in it after 3 days in the fridge, so I had to cold-water-thaw it for a few hours yesterday before putting it into the brine.
This morning I kind of combined the recipes from Alton Brown, the brine mix package, and the roaster oven instructions. I put Alton’s aromatics in the bird, rubbed it with oil, and sprinkled it with salt & pepper. Then into the roaster oven at 325. After about half an hour, the thermometer in the breast was over 200 degrees! But it wasn’t looking burned or anything (I imagine the high reading was due to the steaming) – actually nice and moist, so I let it go. After about 2-1/2 hours we had a done bird. I didn’t even feel the need to put it in the oven to brown; it wasn’t like we were making a big presentation at the table a la Norman Rockwell, as our table is kind of small and we were serving buffet style, and it was just going to be slices on a plate. I mentioned the idea from here about having the youngest male guest do the carving; in this case that was my sister’s fiance’s 17-year-old son, who bravely if a bit hesitantly tackled the job.
I asked for honest opinions on the experiment, and everyone pretty much agreed it tasted like a regular bird, but yes, it was nice and moist. One thing, when the fiance made his famous gravy from the drippings, he said he hadn’t needed to add any salt because of the salty drippings. He didn’t think it was inedible, just saltier than usual. I thought the gravy turned out just yummy. (We NEVER have gravy usually, probably because we hardly ever cook meat, but I’m considering buying a gravy boat just for Fiance’s gravy – it’s that good.)
So thanks, Rick! I think next year I’ll try making my own brine, find some interesting flavor combo.
gigi, I owe your mom many thanks for that pumpkin cheesecake recipe. It came out wonderfully, and is now going to be filed in my cheesecake binder. My small son helped by mixing the topping, so he had two pieces.
My grandmother and I ganged up on my mom to let me make the gravy, as mom doesn’t believe in a roux. And that was all of the cooking I did, as mom wanted to make her own stuffing. But it was a great dinner; I’ll just have to cook my own bird later so I can make my stuffing to go with it.
I did weasel the turkey carcass out of mom, so soup’s a comin’!
How about with apples, cranberries, and pecans? You could substitute walnuts for the pecans in this recipe from allrecipes.com’s vegetarian collection.
How was the pie, Rick? Mine sat lopsided in the oven, and kinda overran the edges onto the cookie sheet I thankfully placed under it. It was great, though!
It was good, I think I took it out of the oven probably about 5-10 minutes too soon. It wasn’t quite set, and I thought it would set up as it rested. Not quite.
Oh well, it tasted great. I will make another and bake it longer next time.
How was the stuffing, Rick? 
Very good, we all liked it a bunch. Next time I will probably add a few extra things, but it was very good.
Our turkey came out great and I wanted to tell you thanks for the tips. We had some last minute guests here from China and we shared our dinner with them to great praise all around.
Thanks again.
I wanted to thank you for this recipe. I made two pies, one for home and one for work potluck.
The work one I followed as stated and I ended up with a nice flakey top layer over the pecans. For the at home one I added a tad more flour and a about 1/4 cup more of buttermilk and got a more traditional looking Pecan pie. Both were excellent.
If I only want to make two crusts, should I use a whole egg anyway and have an extra eggy crust? Should I beat the egg and just use half of it? Or should I just make four pies?