Archive for the ‘Cooking with the Seasons’ Category

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More Cold Weather Comfort

Wednesday, February 20th, 2013

Bitter cold, gray skies, gusting winds, snow, slush, sleet, ice: winter can be a lot to contend with.  One of the best antidotes is food that is warming and indulgent, something that makes us feel satisfied and cared for, soothed and nourished.  In two words, comfort food.  It’s almost a cliché, but one that continues to appeal to us, especially when the chilly world of winter makes a warm kitchen such a nice place to be.

Comfort food means different things to different people.  For some it’s simple scrambled eggs or a grilled cheese sandwich, for others it’s take-out Chinese or fried chicken or a stew that simmers away all afternoon on the stove.  Mac and cheese, chocolate pudding, meatloaf, dumplings, warm oatmeal cookies . . . the list could go on and on.  What everyone’s favorite comfort foods probably have in common is that they make us feel at home no matter where we eat them.

Here at MTG we have a good list of favorites, honed by years of weathering Ohio winters.  Soups could be at the head of our list: Classic Minestrone, Egg Drop Soup, Chicken Soup with Rice, and Cheddar and Beer Soup are just a few. For something heartier, there is always stew, from a simple Country Beef Stew or Chicken Stew with Mushrooms made in our slow cooker to labors of love like Pork Cassoulet or Beef Bourguignon.  And, of course, there’s nothing like a spicy pot of Texas Three Pepper and Beef Chili or Chicken and White Bean Chili or Vegetarian Black Bean Chili to warm us up on a freezing February night.

Also on our list of comfort food cravings are the close cousins of soups and stews, braises.  From Brisket of Beef to Sauerbraten to Braised Winter Vegetables with Butter and Herbs, there’s something inviting about the tender texture of braised foods sauced with savory braising liquid that makes a soul-satisfying dish.  The creamy mouthfeel and chewy texture of risottos sound especially good right now, too.  We like to make Wild Mushroom Risotto or Spinach Risotto with Chicken and Goat Cheese for a warming and indulgent supper.

Last but not least on our comfort food menu are the dishes we remember (or would like to remember) from childhood: pot pies, simple roast chicken, mashed potatoes, shepherd’s pies, and our version of a sloppy joe, the Sloppy Louie. They are quintessential kid food—simple, filling, stick-to-your-ribs stuff, good for warding off the chill of winter and chock full of nostalgic flavors.  Whatever your culinary yearnings this winter, we hope you find a nourishing dish to fill the bill.  You can find a great deal on our most popular stocks (good for making many of our winter favorites), plus more comfort food recipes at our Sauce Specials page.

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Posted in Cooking with the Seasons

Those Chilly Days Call for Bone-Warming Gourmet Soups

Wednesday, February 13th, 2013

Cold weather can chill us to the bones, and nothing hits the spot better than a steaming pot of homemade soup. Gourmet soups provide the perfect respite from brisk winter winds. Pre-made or condensed, canned soups just don’t do the trick. Fortunately, preparing a comforting winter soup on your own isn’t as difficult as you may imagine. With the right base, you can easily prepare gourmet soups at home.

High-quality ingredients are vital for any recipe, but are especially important when it comes to gourmet soup. As a soup simmers, the ingredients mingle and new flavors come to light. An impeccable base stock has the ability transform an average soup into a gourmet meal on its own.  On the other hand, salty bouillon has the potential to ruin an otherwise amazing recipe.  More Than Gourmet’s pantry offers stocks and sauces crafted in the French tradition that highlight unique flavors and bring an overall depth to your gourmet soup recipe. For added richness and a velvety texture, you may even wish to add some demi-glace in place of some of the stock. The substitution of demi-glace reduces the need for cream or added fat while giving your gourmet soups an indescribable richness and quality.

Our family recipes offer a reservoir of ideas for wintry soups. Staples such as chicken noodle and beef and barley receive gourmet updates from the inclusion of French sauce tradition. International flavors also make an appearance here and there for cooks in search of something new. Some soups are packed with fresh vegetables, and others are simple affairs that may be prepared quickly on a cold night after work.

Whether you want to make a creamy bisque or a hearty chili, our stocks and sauces provide assistance for the home cook in search of a bone-warming meal on a chilly day. Like our recipes, our stocks and sauces are available to suit nearly any dietary lifestyle. Vegans, vegetarians, and omnivores alike can enjoy gourmet soups without the added effort of preparing one’s own broth from scratch.

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Posted in Cooking with the Seasons

Cold Weather Comfort

Friday, February 1st, 2013

When I think of comfort food, I think of mac and cheese, warm tomato soup, mashed potatoes, chocolate pudding, meatloaf, chicken pot pie, and oatmeal cookies (warm from the oven).  Perhaps most of all I think of shredded beef.  There’s something about its rich, meaty flavor, the way it’s tender and chewy all at once, and the savory braising juices that come with it that put shredded beef at the top of my comfort food list.   I love the aroma of beef and wine and spices and onion that float through the house as the beef simmers away a winter afternoon on the stove.

Shredded beef is relatively easy to make.  It’s a simple braise: just sear a beef roast, then simmer it slowly in beef stock and wine with a mixture of aromatic vegetables (like garlic and onion) and some spices.  The key is beginning with quality ingredients, good stock, of course, and the right type of roast.  The best cuts of beef for braising are chuck or round roasts.  Cooking with moist heat at a moderate temperature tenderizes these tougher—and more flavorful—cuts of meat by gradually melting their connective tissues.

It’s also important to keep the braising liquid just at a simmer as the beef cooks.  If the liquid boils, the meat gets tough, so I check the beef periodically to make sure there are just a few bubbles rising slowly to the surface of the liquid, and adding more stock as needed to keep a cup or so of liquid in the pot.  After the beef is done and has cooled to room temperature, it can be easily shredded by hand and is then recombined with the delicious braising liquid.  It’s that simple.

The result is savory, moist, tender beef that is tremendously versatile (if you don’t eat it all standing over the cooking pot, fork in hand).  Shredded beef makes great sandwiches, especially a Philly-style cheese steak sandwich.  It’s also great added to soups or salads.  I think shredded beef fulfills is true comfort-food destiny, however, when combined with other comfort foods.  Think shredded beef over noodles, gnocchi, rice, or steaming mashed potatoes, sauced with a spoonful of the braising juices.  It’s terrific stirred into mac and cheese before baking, or even just spooned over warm buttered toast.  Best of all, you can store your shredded beef in the frig and use it a little at a time when you need a tasty comfort food pick-me-up on a long winter day.

Here’s our recipe: Shredded Beef.  Enjoy!

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Posted in Cooking with the Seasons, Tips and Techniques

Impromptu

Friday, January 18th, 2013

It was getting late in the afternoon, and I needed a sauce for a weekend dinner—something delicious that wasn’t too much trouble to make, something with just a few ingredients I already had on hand, but good enough to dress up the plain baked chicken I was serving.  I thought back to a wonderful sauce I learned to make early in cooking school.  It was a simple cream sauce made with shrimp shells, shallots, wine, stock, and cream, a classic reduction sauce, luxuriously creamy and filled with flavor from concentrating the ingredients as the sauce cooked.  It occurred to me that I could use this basic technique, plus ingredients from my frig and pantry, to make a perfect sauce for my chicken.

Starting a with some roasted garlic cloves I had on hand, I chopped them roughly and then mashed them with the blade of my chef’s knife.  I melted some butter in a saucepan, added the garlic along with a couple of sprigs of fresh rosemary, and cooked them together for a few minutes to create the beginning of the flavor base for my sauce.  I poured in some white wine, turned the heat up, and let the wine boil until it was reduced by about three-fourths.  Next I added a generous pour of cream and some MTG roasted chicken glace (Glace de Poulet Gold) for a nice, deep chicken flavor.

After whisking until the glace dissolved, I adjusted the heat so the so the sauce was just at a simmer, and let it cook until it reduced and thickened a bit.  (These types of sauces are best left a little more liquid and less thick.  If cream is reduced too much, it gets thick and gloppy and eventually breaks.)  Then I strained the sauce to remove the rosemary and large chunks of garlic, returned the sauce to the pan, and seasoned it in the classic French way with salt, pepper, nutmeg and cayenne (just a whisper of the last two—they enhance flavor in a magically subtle way).

I ladled that sauce over slices of baked chicken that I had fanned across warm plates and garnished it all with sprigs of fresh rosemary.  My guests were very happy and so was I.  The best part of the experience, besides eating the chicken, was revisiting the technique for making that sauce.  It could be varied almost endlessly, with different aromatics substituted for the garlic (raw shallots, or onion), different herbs substituted for the rosemary, and different glaces substituted for the Glace de Poulet (shellfish, beef, or vegetable), to make the perfect sauce for many dishes.

Even though the spirit of moderation suggests that I can’t have a rich cream sauce for dinner every night, it’s great to have this sauce in my repertoire for the occasional treat on a busy weekend.  Here’s the recipe: Rosemary Garlic Cream Sauce.

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Posted in Cooking with the Seasons, Tips and Techniques

Tips for Tasty Winter Stews

Thursday, January 3rd, 2013

Stew is classic winter food—warm, flavorful, stick-to-your-ribs stuff. Tender chunks of meat and/or veggies suspended in a thick, savory broth: it doesn’t get better than that when the mercury falls below freezing outside and the snow is coming down.  Whether you like to carefully follow a recipe or improvise with what you have on hand, here are some tips for making the perfect tasty and warming stew.

1.  As Julia Child said, “The better the meat, the better the stew.”  The best cuts of meat for stews are actually the tougher ones.  Food writer Todd Coleman explained it perfectly in Saveur:

The most exercised parts of the animal—the shoulder, neck, and legs—have the thickest muscle fibers and the most connective tissue holding the muscle, fat, and bone together. Cuts that come from these parts are tougher than those from the less exercised parts on the back, which are used for sautéing or grilling. In the making of a stew, however, tough is good. For one thing, well-exercised meat is more flavorful. Also, connective tissue contains a lot of collagen, which, when simmered in liquid, imparts a luscious texture to foods. Nowhere on the animal—be it a cow, a pig, or a sheep—is there more connective tissue than in the shoulder (called the chuck in beef and lamb); it also contains plenty of fat. The key is slow and moist cooking, so that the connective tissue has time to soften. Shoulder can be bought as roasts, as steaks, and in chunks, which butchers often label, aptly, stew meat.

2. Most stew recipes call for browning the meat.  Make sure the meat is dry before going into the pan, and brown it in fat with a high smoke point, like canola or grapeseed oil instead of butter or extra-virgin olive oil, so the fat doesn’t burn and give an off flavor to the stew.  Don’t crowd the pot when browning the meat; cook it in batches if necessary.  Overcrowding causes the meat to steam instead of  browning properly.

3. Add just enough liquid to cover the meat and/or vegetables in the pot.  Add more, if necessary, as the stew cooks.   Keep the liquid at a bare simmer throughout cooking time (boiling toughens meat).  As the stew thickens, you may need less heat to keep it just at a simmer, so reduce the heat as needed.

4.  To make the stew an even heartier meal, served it ladled over mashed potatoes or sweet potatoes, polenta, or rice.  To dress things up a bit, garnish the stew with chopped fresh herbs, toasted buttered bread crumbs, or some grated cheese.

5. Stew is usually better the day after it is made; the flavors blend deliciously as it sits.

6. Stew freezes quite well, so make extra!  You can also freeze it in individual portions if you like for a quick heat-and-eat meal.

To see our delicious collection of MTG stew recipes go to http://bit.ly/Xo4Bxb.

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Posted in Cooking with the Seasons, Tips and Techniques

Home for the Holidays

Friday, December 14th, 2012

Here we are, smack dab in the middle of the holiday season.  Thanksgiving turkey and autumn vegetables are behind us.  In front of many of us is the next holiday feast—whether it be Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, New Year’s Eve, New Year’s Day, or the annual holiday dinner party—also known as The Big Meal.  What to serve?

It’s a festive occasion and we need a festive menu, filled with wonderful tasting food, but not overwhelming for the cook.  We need a substantial centerpiece for the meal, something with a little gravitas, plus side dishes that will do it justice and a starter that won’t leave everyone too full to appreciate it.  All these requirements and constraints can be enough to cause even the most experienced cook to pause a moment and rack his or her brain.

At MTG we love the holidays, so much so that we even have an entire section of our recipe collection devoted to festive recipes just right for culinary celebrations: “Home for the Holidays.”   When it comes to The Big Meal, we have a few ideas for you.

First, the problem of the starter.  In our experience, putting out a spread of great hors d’oeuvres before The Big Meal can sometimes lead to everyone enjoying the appetizers so much that they end up almost full before the meal begins.  There’s (almost) nothing worse than spending lots of time in the kitchen preparing a spectacular centerpiece for your dinner and then having everyone gather around the table and look sadly down at their plates, not able to eat more than a few bites of your labor of love.  Our answer: soup.

Elegantly served in small bowls or coffee cups, soup makes the perfect appetizer.  It’s flavorful, warming, and relatively simple to prepare, and it can be made a day or two ahead (or a couple of weeks ahead and frozen).  There is a nearly endless variety of soups to choose from.  Here are few of our favorite soups that would work well to start a holiday meal: Shrimp Bisque with Sherry, Roasted Red Pepper Soup, Creamy Tomato Soup with Orzo, Savory Pear Soup with Gorgonzola and Walnuts, Wild Mushroom Bisque, and Velvet Carrot and Ginger Soup.

For the main course, we sometimes go all out and make a deliciously complex and impressive dish like Garlic and Mustard Crusted Standing Rib Roast Au Jus, Rosemary and Garlic Rubbed Pork Loin with Apple Pecan Stuffing, or Herb Crusted Leg of Lamb with Red Wine Sauce.  Other times we make a simpler roast like beef tenderloin and serve it with a terrific sauce, although it’s hard to choose which one to make from a selection that includes Dried Cherry Cognac Glace, Madeira and Stilton Sauce, Sauce Merlot, Wild Mushroom Sauce, Bordelaise Sauce, Sauce Chasseur, or a simple, classic Au Jus.  Any of these can make your roast into a masterpiece.

For side dishes, we want some choices that are flavorful and interesting but won’t overshadow that masterpiece.  For a starch, Yukon Gold Garlic Smashed Potatoes, Wild Rice with Walnuts, Rosemary Roasted Potatoes, and Maggie’s Rice Pilaf with Butternut Squash, Pine Nuts, and Dried Cherries are great options.  For a veggie, we make Julia’s Carrots over and over, and we also recommend Butternut Squash Gratin, Kale with Caramelized Shallots, Root Vegetable Sauté, and Braised Red Cabbage with Apples.

Finally, there’s dessert.  We discovered the perfect sauce to drizzle over a flourless chocolate cake or scoops of vanilla or coffee ice cream, or a simple apple or pear tart: duck fat caramel sauce.  It has a deep, sweet caramel flavor that is accented beautifully by a hint of rich, savory goodness from a spoonful of duck fat swirled into the warm sauce. It can be made in advance and gently reheated to embellish your dessert, making a lovely finish for a special dinner.

May your Big Meal be a grand success, and best wishes from MTG for holidays filled with warmth, laughter, and plenty of good food.

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Posted in Cooking with the Seasons, The Holiday Kitchen

Gourmet Meal Ideas Using Lamb Stock

Monday, December 10th, 2012

If you’re in search of gourmet meal ideas, look no further than More Than Gourmet’s lamb stock! Our Glace d’Agneau Gold is reduced 20 times to a glace. We use Madeira wine and spices to create a rich, natural lamb-flavored glace perfect for gourmet meal ideas. Our lamb stock is ideal for any lamb-based dish. It tastes amazing when used at full strength or when reconstituted for use as a stock.

Glace d’Agneau Gold is perfect for stews and soups. As the weather cools, you and your family are likely to start craving hearty, warming dishes such as these. More Than Gourmet’s recipe for lamb stew is sure to hit the spot. This recipe includes rosemary to compliment lamb and root vegetables, and tangy balsamic-glazed pearl onions are added to the mix, as well.  The flavors are rounded out and enhanced by our lamb stock, and this stew is sure to become one of your favorite gourmet meal ideas.

Our family recipes also include a few international gourmet meal ideas using lamb stock. Catalan lamb chops with apricots and sage bring a Spanish flair to your table. Cinnamon and sage enhance the hearty flavor of the lamb, and apricots add a sweet element to the dish. For a delicious, homemade Indian dish, prepare curried lamb shanks over red lentils. Glace d’Agneau Gold is added to the lentils to provide a complimentary flavor to the tender lamb shanks.

Try a lamb roast to enjoy our lamb stock in a simpler, but still delicious form. Our glace can be used at full strength for a sumptuous glaze over any cut of lamb you wish to roast. You may also use it as a base for gravy with an indescribable savory flavor. Whether you wish to cook lamb simply or like more complex dishes, More Than Gourmet’s lamb stock proves a vital ingredient for your gourmet meal ideas!

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Posted in Cooking with the Seasons, Market to Table, The Sauce Guys

Get Your (Wild) Game On

Friday, November 30th, 2012

The rich, robust flavor of venison, pheasant, or wild duck makes for a perfect rustic autumn dinner.  Fall is traditionally the time to enjoy game hunted after plentiful feeding in the spring and summer.  If you hunt, or know someone who does and is willing to share, you can look forward to many a delicious game dish this time of year.  Meat from farm-raised game animals is becoming more commonly available in many markets and grocery stores, as well, so more of us can enjoy eating game more frequently.

Whether it’s from a large game animal like deer or elk, a smaller game animal like rabbit, or a game bird like wild turkey or duck, game meat is generally more strongly flavored and leaner than that from domestic species.  The quality and flavor of the meat also tends to vary with the animal’s age (younger animals yield more tender meat), diet, and environment.  No two deer or ducks or wild boar taste exactly the same, which adds to the adventure and enjoyment of cooking and eating game.

The more tender meat from young animals is best roasted, while that from older animals is best cooked slowly at lower temperature with some moisture—braising is ideal.  To eliminate “gaminess” usually associated with older animals, by all means marinate the meat.  A good marinade will tenderize and highlight the meat’s flavor without masking it, and you can choose marinade ingredients according to your preferences.  Buttermilk or yogurt will mellow the flavor of the meat; wine will bring out the meat’s tangy flavor (and can be used in the sauce); and olive oil and brandy can enhance the meat’s natural flavors.  Marinating time depends on the size of the animal.  A small game bird may only need to be marinated 30 minutes, while a saddle of venison could need 2-3 days.

If you’re roasting game, fat must be added to keep the meat tender, succulent, and flavorful.  A traditional method called “larding” is still one of the best: before roasting, long, thin strips of pork fat or bacon are seasoned with herbs and pushed through meat with a larding needle, similar in shape to an ice pick.  Game meats can also be “barded,” covered with bacon or fatback, which will baste the meat as it roasts.  The fat is then removed a few minutes before the meat is done to allow it to brown.  Regular basting with olive oil or melted butter can also work well.

Whether you’re roasting or braising game, it’s key not to overcook it.  Use an instant-read thermometer to check the internal temperature of the meat.  Venison is cooked rare at 120-125 degrees and medium rare at 130-140 degrees.  Rabbit is done at 160 degrees, and game birds are done at 180 degrees measured at the inner thigh.  Don’t let game meats rest after cooking the way you would with domestic species.  The fat from game meat tends to congeal quickly and has an unpleasant flavor and a greasy texture.  Game should be served piping hot on a warm platter.

When you consider sauces and side dishes for your wild game dish, remember that game’s rich and distinctive flavor marries well with hearty ingredients like mushrooms, root vegetables, mustard, garlic, and red wine, and with spices and herbs like cloves, juniper berries, allspice, pepper, bay, and rosemary.  Our recipe for Pepper-Crusted Rack of Venison with Morel Sauce brings together spicy black pepper and the earthy flavor of morel mushrooms to complement juicy venison chops.

Fruit is often traditionally paired with game.  From stone fruits like cherries and plums, to berries like cranberries, currants, blackberries, and blueberries, to tree fruits like apples and pears, the sweetness and acidity of fruit brings out the natural sweetness of game and cuts its richness perfectly.  Cook our Braised Rabbit and Cherries in Beer or Venison Medallions with Cranberry Thyme Sauce for delicious examples, or try making our Seared Duck Breasts with Beaujolais Plum Sauce with wild duck for a real treat.

Whatever game you’re cooking, MTG has stocks and sauces that will enhance your dish, including our venison stock, roasted duck and chicken stock, and our SauceMaker’s Dozen “Hunt. Fish. Camp.” pack for cooks who relish the outdoors and cooking with wild game.  Here’s to a great season of hunting, cooking, and eating!

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Posted in Cooking with the Seasons, The Sauce Guys, Tips and Techniques

Vegetarian Sauce Recipes for Cool Weather Comfort Food

Tuesday, November 20th, 2012

Autumn’s cooling weather calls for warm, filling dishes. Casseroles and stews pop up frequently on weekly menus as cooks seek to stave off the cold.  A savory one-pan dish in a warm oven can fill the house with delicious aromas.  Hearty meals aren’t possible only for non-vegetarians, because everyone deserves good feelings brought on by great food. Good cooks know that great food doesn’t have to feature meat. Vegetarian sauce recipes can tie your ingredients together in meatless dishes for chilly evenings.

Nostalgic dishes like casseroles can rely on vegetarian sauce recipes as a main ingredient. Béchamel often forms the starting point for cheese-based vegetarian sauce recipes. This simple sauce is made from a roux of flour and butter combined with milk or cream and seasoned with salt, pepper, and a little nutmeg. The addition of cheese provides a creamy sauce for comfort-food classics such as macaroni and cheese or potatoes au gratin.  Replacing the milk with vegetable stock transforms the béchamel into the perfect gravy for hearty potpies. Fill a cheesy crust with your favorite mix of oven-roasted veggies for a savory treat on a brisk evening.

Tomato and pepper-based vegetarian sauce recipes are another group of meatless sauces for indulgent cold-weather meals. An Italian-style tomato sauce with a little basil and onion becomes outstanding when you prepare it with a little bit of veggie stock. Stir in a bit of cream after cooking for a smoother flavor. Enchilada sauce also benefits from the addition of a bit of stock. More Than Gourmet has an excellent recipe for enchilada sauce that calls for the smoky, spicy flavor of ancho chili peppers.

Pumpkin- and squash-based vegetarian sauce recipes give cooks the option to cook with these fall favorites. After all, pumpkins aren’t only for pie! Our recipe for pumpkin cream sauce incorporates the savory flavors of garlic and red pepper to form a delicious sauce that pairs well with noodles, cheeses, and grilled root vegetables. Celebrate the cold weather with filling dishes and delectable vegetarian sauce recipes from More Than Gourmet!

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Posted in Cooking with the Seasons, Tips and Techniques

Roasting the Bird

Saturday, November 17th, 2012

All I want for Thanksgiving is a tender, juicy, browned turkey.  Easier said than done.  There seem to be myriad ways to roast a turkey, all kinds of tricks and strategies cooks use to arrive at the ideal of a perfectly cooked bird.  It’s sometimes hard to sort the good advice from the gimmicks.  However, I’m always fine-tuning my approach, and this year I decided to consult some experts in the turkey-roasting field to see what I could glean from their collective wisdom on the subject.

My panel of experts included Melissa Clark, a food writer and columnist for the New York Times; Shirley Corriher, a “culinary food sleuth” (translated: food chemist) and writer; James Peterson, chef, cooking teacher, and cookbook author; and Molly Stevens, a food writer and cooking teacher whose book All About Roasting recently won a James Beard award.  All of them had some excellent tips to offer on roasting a turkey.  They didn’t agree on everything, but I gained some insights from each and came up with this  list of key tips:

1. Leave the turkey out of the refrigerator for 2-3 hours before cooking.  This will insure that the turkey cooks more quickly and evenly.  Roasting a cold turkey straight from the refrigerator will result in overcooking the breast in order to get the core of the bird done.

2. I groan inwardly as I write this: Don’t stuff the bird.  The cooks in my family have been stuffing-the-bird people as long as I can remember, but my four experts all agreed that it’s just not the best idea.

Stuffing a turkey creates the ideal growing conditions for unfriendly bacteria and a number of precautionary steps must be taken to avoid food-borne illness.   One of those steps is to make sure the stuffing cooks to an optimal temperature, which takes longer than it does for the breast meat to cook, resulting in overdone, dried out breast meat.  Finally, stuffing absorbs juices from the turkey that otherwise would drip down into the pan to make a flavorful gravy.

Maybe this year I’ll forego the stuffing and make dressing (stuffing cooked on its own outside the bird) instead.  Hopefully I’ll only have to weather the complaints until my family sits down and starts eating.

3. Use a roasting rack.  All my experts agreed that turkey should not sit on the bottom of the roasting pan, stewing in its own juices, which makes for a soggy bird. Most recommended setting the bird on a roasting rack in the pan, with 1-2 cups of turkey stock poured underneath to keep the juices from burning on a bare pan.

4. Start roasting at a high temperature and then lower it.  Starting out with a very hot oven, 450-475 degrees, jump starts the browning process, and then quickly lowering the temperature to a mid-range 325-350 degrees for the rest of cooking time insures even cooking.

5. Basting is good, but not essential.  Basting helps keep the breast skin from browning too much and enriches the pan drippings, but unbasted birds can be equally tasty.  Stevens says her decision whether or not to baste depends on whether the conversation is best in the living room or the kitchen.

6. Rotate!  For a small- to medium-size turkey, it’s best to start roasting breast side down.  This helps keep the breast from overcooking and lets the juices run down into the breast meat instead of running down away from it.  Most of my experts recommended rotating the bird to sit breast side up for the last hour of cooking time.  If you’re not interested in trying to flip a larger turkey, just roast it breast side up, but rotate the pan 180 degrees in the oven about halfway through cooking time.  If the breast starts getting too brown, cover it with a double layer of buttered aluminum foil for the last 45 minutes or so.

7. Rest the roasted turkey for at least 20-30minutes before carving it.  This allows the bird’s juices to be reabsorbed and distribute themselves in the meat, so all your efforts to roast the perfect turkey don’t go to waste.  If the kitchen is drafty, cover the turkey loosely with foil while it rests.

My thanks to Clark, Corriher, Peterson, and Stevens for their smarts and good advice.  I’m looking forward to this year’s feast and wish all of you a delicious, festive, and relaxing Thanksgiving.

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Posted in Cooking with the Seasons, The Holiday Kitchen, Tips and Techniques

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