A Turkey Tutorial

With Thanksgiving a couple of days away, I thought I'd send along some turkey directions. My sister just made her first turkey for an event her church group hosted at a retirement home, and wanted step-by-step directions on what to do. It's no Butterball Talk-Line, but she told me it made the process really easy. AND, once you know how to make a turkey, you basically know how to make a roast chicken (you'd just need to shorten the cooking time).

If you're making a turkey this year, good luck and have fun. If not, I hope you'll try it (or a roast chicken) in the future, and let me know how it turns out! Happy Thanksgiving!

A Turkey Tutorial:

First, make sure your turkey is defrosted. If you get your turkey a few days before Thanksgiving, you'll want to leave it in the packaging and in the fridge until the day of - that's the best way to defrost. However, if you don't plan ahead and get your turkey a day before or the day of (too scary), you'll want to defrost it in water in the sink. Place the turkey in the sink, cover it with cold water, and let it sit for 20 minutes. Drain the water, and do it again and again and again until the turkey is defrosted.

Plan backwards from the time you need the turkey to be ready. See the grid below to plan:









So if you have a 22 pound turkey and you're not stuffing it, you'll need 4 - 4 1/2 hours for it to cook, and you'll want to leave a little time for the juices to settle. If you need to have it ready to eat by 5 pm, plan on taking it out of the oven at 4:30 - so plan on putting it in the oven at about 11:30 to be sure it's done in time.

Preheat the oven to 450, and then drop it to 350 when you put the turkey in. That makes for a nice brown skin.

To prep the turkey, first you'll need to take out the gizzards. These will be in a little plastic bag in the cavity of the bird. They might have also put the neck in the little hole on the other end of the turkey instead of with the other (smaller) gizzards (there should be a flap of skin covering the hole). If you want to use these to make a stock later (which is also really easy), put them in a ziploc and put them in the freezer. You might also find some twine in a little plastic baggie on the outside of the turkey wrapper - this is to make a little carrying case for the turkey, so you can transfer it to the serving plate from the pan. Keep that for later.

Get your roasting pan ready. If you have a pan with a rack, it would be a good idea to brush down the rack with some olive oil, so the skin doesn't stick. If you don't have a roasting pan, and are using a foil pan, put it on a baking sheet so that it's stable (the foil pan isn't stable enough on it's own).

At about 15 minutes before you need to put the turkey in the oven, get it out of the fridge (or water, if you're doing it that way and really let it drain). Take some paper towels and pat the skin dry. This will help you get a nice crispy skin (the more water on the bird, the less crispy it gets). Once the turkey is nice and dry, put it on the pan or rack, with the legs pointing up - that's breast side up. You'll want to take that twine that came with the bird and wrap it under and around the bird so that it forms a little carrier at this point - test it out to make sure it works. As well, if you have kitchen twine, wrap the legs together - that way, the inside will cook evenly (instead of letting all the heat out of the gaping hole) - if you're stuffing the turkey, stuff it before tying its legs together.

If you're stuffing the bird, you'll do it at this point. Make sure your stuffing is COOKED and COOLED. Putting uncooked stuffing in a turkey will make the stuffing cook, but it will also make the stuffing expand and you might end up with an exploding turkey. Putting warm stuffing in a turkey will just breed bacteria. Your best bet is to make your stuffing the day before, and to leave it in the fridge until you're ready to use it.

When you're stuffing your turkey, you want to make sure that whatever spoon you're putting inside the bird isn't touching your "clean" stuffing - that is, the stuffing that you'll serve alongside the turkey. So, use one spoon to move some stuffing into your "dirty" bowl, and then use another spoon to move it from a "dirty" bowl into the turkey. That way, you don't contaminate your "clean" stuffing.

Once that's all done, take some olive oil and brush it on the bird with a pastry brush. That will ensure a crispy skin. Try to get under the bird as well. Remember that anything that touches the bird should not be put back into an original container - so pour some olive oil into a small bowl and use that. Then, put some salt and whatever other seasoning you're using in a bowl. Take a half a lemon and mush it around in the spice mixture, and then use that to rub the bird. You want to get as much of the bird with this rub as possible, so keep putting the lemon back in the mixture until it's all covered. It doesn't have to be thick, but you want to make sure it's covered.

Then the turkey goes in the oven. Remember that it's preheated to 450, and you should drop it to 350 when you put the turkey in. You'll want to keep it uncovered until you get a nice brown skin. Once it's nice and brown, baste it, and then cover it with foil. That will make sure that all the moisture stays in. I usually baste every 20 minutes to half an hour, and just start at the top and let the liquid run down.

When you've got about a half hour to go, stick a meat thermometer in one of the thighs (that's the darkest part of the meat, which takes the longest to cook) and see what the temperature is. Make sure the thermometer doesn't touch the bone, as that will throw things off. The thigh should be around 180 - and that's when you'll want to take the turkey out, get it nice and covered, and let it sit to juice up some more.

And that's it! Easy, right?

For a roast chicken, you probably wouldn't stuff it, but you'd do everything else the same. Your roasting time would be cut to about 1-2 hours.

Pro Pastry Class - Weekend 2

A few photos of this week's pastry creations (the ones I actually worked on)...

Chocolate Angel Food Cake with raspberries and creme brulee topping (and yes, I got to use a flame thrower to toast the top of the cake)

Chocolate peanut butter cups, which were so easy to make, it's not worth it to buy Reese's anymore.

Pecan pie, which I normally don't care for, but Mary's is so not sugary sweet that I actually like it a lot.

Salmon en croute, which is a large piece of salmon dressed up in (homemade - not store bought!)puff pastry and baked, and which is absolutely delicious.

Our final spread on Sunday afternoon. In addition to some of the items I made, there's also lemon meringue tarts, caramelized apple pie, three differerent chocolate cakes, a lemon chiffon cake, tiramisu, and a few other items.

Pro Pastry Class

I don't have a ton of time to write, but I wanted to tease you with this photo of a couple of the baguettes I and my classmates made at my Pro Pastry class this weekend (I think mine is the one on the right, but I'm not completely sure - it could also not be in this picture at all, but on a different table entirely. However, I did make one!). I'm having such a good time, and learning a ton!

For instance, did you know that the reason you should always use unsalted butter in baking is because every butter company salts their butter differently, so you lose control over the amount of salt you include. If you use unsalted butter and then add in salt yourself, you regain that control.

AND, I'm sure many of you know you should always use large eggs in baking, but did you know why? The thing to think about here is the whites of the egg - that's what adds liquid to your recipe, and most recipes are made specifically for large eggs. So if you use a medium egg, you end up with a drier batter. If you use a jumbo egg, you end up with a wet batter.

I also learned that I touch my pie dough too much (which melts the butter and makes for a less-than-flaky crust), so that's something to work on. But I also learned that I knead bread dough especially well (our instructor, Mary, actually made all the other students watch my technique) and whip a good pastry cream.

I have also taken on a quasi-mentoring roll for my class partner, who has hardly baked before and tends to approach baking as you'd approach regular cooking (that is, with non-exact measurements and a "that's good enough" attitude (seriously - she actually said that a few times), which is not acceptable). So I've stepped in to try to help a little, and she seems to appreciate that. There may be an opportunity for me to work as a TA in one of Mary's future classes (all of our current TAs are old students of hers, and Mary mentioned it as a general point of discussion) so I think it's a good sign that I'm already doing that with my own partner.

Mary is great - very down-to-earth and extremely knowledgeable. She trained with Nancy Silverton (an amazing baker) and worked at Wolfgang Puck's Spago for 20 years. She said she likes teaching better than anything she's done in the past, which is evident in the way she works with all of us. We're all at different experience levels, and she's put everyone at ease and made sure we're comfortable asking questions and making mistakes that we can learn from.

The weekend was a little nuts - we started with a Friday evening class from 6-9:30, then had class from 9-5 on Saturday, and then were supposed to go from 9 to 4:30 on Sunday, but Mary could tell we were all just exhausted (she did a demonstration of how to make the layers for a chocolate chiffon cake, and everyone just sat there and stared at her, instead of getting up and looking in bowls and asking questions), so she let us stop at 3:45 and do a little shopping in the store attached to the kitchen.

Our homework this week is to use her recipe and demonstration to create our own chocolate chiffon cake layers. We'll bring them in on Friday to have them assessed, and she'll be able to tell us what we did wrong or right. We'll then use those layers for the cake we'll be decorating sometime over next weekend.

It's hard work, but it's so much fun, and so interesting - and it's made me even more confident about my decision to make a career out of this.

School Update

Quick note about culinary school...I'm in! My registration appointment is December 1 at 8am - a very early time on the very first day! So it's looking good!

Thanks to all for your continued support and interest. I'll be sure to let you know which classes I sign up for! Oh the options...4-hour baking lab...2-hour lecture on the history of food...horray!

Support Systems

I've really been amazed at the amount of support people have been giving me when I tell them about my future culinary-related goals. Everyone, almost without fail, has said that my plans make perfect sense for my personality, my passion, and my values. I've heard a lot of compliments about my skills in the kitchen, along with "well, you like to make sure people are happy and satisfied, so now you can do that with food'. A few (perhaps more business-savvy) people have noted that I'm organized, plan well, and have developed good marketing and promotional skills at PubCo to draw on for a new business venture. If you know me, you know I love being complimented - so I love hearing all this!

The support is coming in more tangible ways as well. My sister has come with me to do some bakery research, and sends articles and links to other bakeries we should visit. One friend is brainstorming bakery names, another offers advice as a business owner herself, other friends take photos (and videos during cooking classes - ugh), and still others have offered to assist with marketing, wrapping, and even delivering my baked goods. Even my parents, who I thought might be a little nervous for my and Mountain Man's future, have been exceptionally supportive - buying a book on Lebanese baked goods for me, helping me figure out recipes, and offering suggestions and ideas for my potential future bakery.

I do have one person to win over. Already risk-averse, my mother-in-law seems quite concerned that I will ruin us with my new endeavor. OK, that may be a bit dramatic, but at dinner yesterday, she spent more than a few minutes telling me about bakeries and restaurants she knew of that had failed and neighbors that had started a restaurant and had to work constantly to make ends meet - and even with all that hard work, that restaurant folded as well. She also let me know that she was the only person in her Bible study that brought treats from a "real" bakery - the other members of the group bring things they either make themselves or that come from Costco. She prefaced all of this by saying "I don't mean to scare you..."

The funny thing is that those stories just fueled my desire to open my bakery and do a kickass job at it. I don't do well with people telling me something will be difficult or impossible - comments like that make me want to prove them wrong. So in a weird little way, I'm getting support from my mom-in-law as well. And much of her concern is just risk-related, not me-related.

But along with wanting to prove people wrong who think things will be difficult, I also know I would be a lot more hesitant to move forward if I didn't feel that my support system really supported me. The response has been so whole-heartedly positive that it makes me more confident that I can be successful.

I heard a great quote on a random PBS show a few weeks ago that went something like "All you have to do is redefine success." I think success can certainly come with money and prestige and being able to get everything you desire. But I think that success has everything to do with working hard, planning well, getting honest and solid market feedback, taking a risk at something you love, feeling confident that you've done everything you can to be successful, and knowing that the people you love and respect are behind you.