The Cost of a Thanksgiving Turkey

I get email from Farmie Market. Never bought anything from them, but I poke around their site once in awhile. The last time I looked at the site the were advertising nitrate free bacon. I sent in an inquiry to see if it was actually nitrate free (most things labeled nitrate free or no nitrates added have nitrates in the form of celery salt). The reply indicated that this bacon was in fact nitrate free. The ingredient list was pork, water, sea salt and brown sugar. The downside to this bacon was that it priced out at $18 a pound. A little to steep for me. I'd post a link to the bacon but it is currently sold out so the price wasn't too steep for everyone.

Yesterday, I got an email from Farmie Market outlining the true cost of raising a pastured turkey. Here it is.

It basically says that a farmer has $53 plus labor into a farm raised turkey. These turkeys are selling for $6.25 a pound and are delivered frozen. At that price, and 18 pound turkey costs $112. That just seems excessive to me. While it is true that meat labeling has become increasingly deceptive - organic, natural, and humane all have USDA definitions that don't necessarily match Webster's - The Co Op is selling  Local, Natural, Pasture Raised turkeys from Misty Knolls at $2.99 a pound. If you want to add organic from Jaindl it is $4.99 a pound. Comparing these farms isn't apples to apples especially with vague definitions of "pastured." Certainly a farmer needs to make a profit, but the price of a turkey breaking $100 just seems high. Although they must not be too high for everyone. They sold out last year. 

Thanksgiving 2012 Post Game Wrap Up

Hope you had a good Thanksgiving. The meal went off without a hitch with the exception that I forgot to buy some half and half for the coffee after dinner. My bad. I am afraid I am going to have to change my tune. For years I had thought that cooking the bird outside opened up the kitchen and made life easier. Turns out, it doesn't. This was the first time I cooked the turkey inside (been doing it annually since 2001) and the time I spent babysitting fires and watching oil heat up became free time.

And I need to go get some Jacques Pepin books. That steam/roast method from the Times worked out very well. I always knew that guy could cook, but damn that guy can cook. I butter basted the bird instead of using his glaze. I wasn't sure all the guests would go for the glaze. Pretty sure I'd like it but I wasn't just cooking for myself. I thought the turkey needed some salt but it was pretty moist and tasty. I was even asked, "How did you get it so moist?" Next time (if the bird is thawed), I'll salt it a day or two in advance and then cook it using this steam/roast method.

Thanksgiving Prep Continues

Got the gluten free cheesecake cooling on the counter.

Turkey appears to be thawed. Not 100% sure though. At the very least, it is not soaking in water right now. The bird fits in the canner so I think steaming/roasting is the way I'm going. Don't think I am going to go with Jacques glaze. I'd like it but I'm not sure how it would play to the crowd. Think I'm going to sharpen knives while I waste time in front of the TV. Got a good game plan for tomorrow. I think it will just be a steady pace of things to do instead of a full-on panic attack. I'm still in the "not a big deal" mode. Hopefully that feeling will still be here this time tomorrow night.

Thanksgiving Indecision

I want to cook the bird inside this year and not worry about hot or cold spots in the smoker. I was torn between a combination braise/roast and salting followed by traditional roasting. Then the Times published Jacques Pepin's steam/roast technique. I've got to pick soon.

Needle in a haystack

This year, three of the Thanksgiving guests fall into the gluten sensitive category. One has celiac so there is no wiggle room there. The other two are restricting gluten as part of a separate medical issue. Not the end of the world if they eat gluten, but they are doing their best to avoid it. Throw in two vegetarians and 25% of the guests have dietary restrictions.

I've been careful with gluten in the past. And typically the only items served at the sit down meal with gluten are the stuffing and gravy. This year, I'm trying to go gluten free for the gravy and use sweet rice flour as the thickener. I'd like to make it on Wednesday, and then if it sucks, I have time to fall back to the old version. But to use sweet rice flour, I had to find it first. So I headed to the Asian Supermarket on Central. I hadn't been in awhile and it just isn't as nice as when it opened. The produce is definitely hit or miss. But there are certainly some gems in the store.

I roamed all the aisles looking for sweet rice flour and looked in the aisle with the "Flour" label and the rice section twice. Found sweet rice, but no sweet rice flour. Then I asked a man stocking shelves. Without missing a beat, or looking up, he told me to go to Aisle 5. I looked up the whole aisle twice, making 3 scans up the aisle. Here a shot of less than a quarter of one side of the aisle.

I didn't know if I was looking for a box or a bag or sack...no idea. I was about to bail and hope to find the flour in a health food store later in the week. As I turned to head toward the entrance, my eye caught the words "sweet rice." I couldn't believe it. There it was. It's those little white boxes which are ironically the size of a small box of rice.

If you need some sweet rice flour, I can help you out a bit. It's in aisle 5, on the left.

Et tu, Misty Knolls

I ordered the turkey from Misty Knolls this year. Picked it up this afternoon. While it certainly wasn't bowling ball frozen like a Butterball, it was frozen. So much for salting it tonight. Once again, I am glad I picked up the turkey early. At least there is something I can do about it. Picking it up like that on Wednesday afternoon would have sucked. At least when you buy a bowling bowl frozen turkey, you know you have a frozen turkey.

Just finished the 4th batch of stock in the pressure cooker. First up was chicken stock, then a turkey stock, then some vegetable stock and now some more chicken stock. All the stocks are pretty damn good. The vegetable stock is the best vegetable stock I have ever made.

House is mostly clean and I'm still in the blissful "this is no big deal" mode. I haven't updated my spreadsheet this year and I've been kind of winging the holiday prep/shopping. I've got to update the sheet. Without the order of my spreadsheets this is getting too close to anarchy.

Charcutepalooza

Projects 11 & 12 and Thanksgiving Wrap-up

Project 11 was a dry cure and I went with a Tuscan Salami recipe. After the salami had lost just over 30% of its starting weight, I put them into vacuum bag, sealed them and put them in the fridge. Then I traveled for work. About a week before Thanksgiving, I opened some of the vacuum bags and tasted. It was good, but a little more drying would help. So I wrapped the salami in parchment paper and put them back in the fridge. A week in the fridge improved them significantly. I sliced a few of them up for a Thanksgiving appetizer. I plan to bring a bunch to the curling club on Monday night.

The final Charcutpalooza project was to celebrate the skills learned at a meal. I thought Thanksgiving would be the perfect opportunity to share some of the Charcutepalooza experience. The goal was to have at least 3 Charcutepalooza inspired items at a meal. The first at Thanksgiving was the salami. The second was the grilled vegetable and goat cheese terrine. I did my best to slice it so it looked pretty. It tasted better than it looked. I will chalk this up to being one of those "now that you have done it once, the next time will be better" experiences. Now I know what to expect.

Next up was the turkey. After the dry rub and rinsing, I smoked the turkey. This is that offset smoker that recently made the trip from my sister-in-laws house to mine. Behind it are the trusty Webers. That 18" one on the left has been with me since 1997. The 22" on the right was a father's day gift 6 years ago.

If I had to guess, the turkey wasn't fully thawed. I thought it was but I don't think so. The bird went into the smoker before 11 AM. By 3:30 (the time I was hoping to take it off to rest), the temperature of the thigh was 120 degrees. I took it from the smoker and went to the oven and named the process smo-roasting. While it came out late, the turkey looked pretty and tasted pretty good too. And through the power of beer, wine and some North Carolina moonshine my brother brought, I was the only one that cared about the delay with dinner.

The fourth and final Charcutepalooza inspired dish was the string beans. I cooked up some homemade pancetta. I added some garlic and a dash of vinegar to the pan and the reheated the blanched beans. It came out pretty good. Not too many beans were left and that pancetta is delicious.

All in all, it was a good Thanksgiving.

And last night there were leftovers. This is one of my favorite sandwiches. You've got good bread, turkey, stuffing and gravy in there. Something about bread in bread is delicious. While I was taking this picture I was asked, "Daddy, why are you taking pictures of your dinner?" Probably because I'm a little crazy.

Thanksgiving prep continues

Had a busy, but reasonably paced day. I'm typing at 9:50 and haven't really done any work for a few hours. That is light years ahead of last year. All that is left on today's list is to make a schedule for tomorrow. I started making up an ideal timeline. You have to be flexible with it, but it gives you a good idea of when the gravy needs to get made in relation to when the potatoes needs to get boiled. This year, there is no fried turkey. Not because William Shatner made it seem like I was risking my life, but because what you get in relation to the cost doesn't seem worth it. I mean frying makes a good turkey, but is it worth $30 or more of oil? This year I answered I went with "No." There will be one, larger smoked turkey this year. Thanksgiving gets easier if the turkey is cooked outside. It frees up the whole kitchen. I think I might have said this already...anyhow, here's how the day went.

Got the kids off to school, came home and got going with the final shopping. Got home a little after 9 and put the sweet potatoes into the oven, started making applesauce from frozen apples we picked in September, made a roux for the gravy, and blanched some string beans for the vegetable.

Sweet potatoes ready for baking.

The frozen apples go into a pot and thaw/cook slowly for the next 90 minutes or so.

I trimmed all the end off about a pound and a half of beans. Small batches of greens were blanched in heavily salted water. The idea is not to lose the boil when adding beans. Why? Because Thomas Keller said so and while I have never eaten his food, you just got to give him the benefit of the doubt.

From the boiling water, the beans get dropped into an ice bath. The next fridge is totally going to have an ice maker.

When the apples looked done, I mashed them with a potato masher and then added some cinnamon. 

It was still a little too chunky, so I hit it with the stick blender.

While all that was going on, I was also tending to a roux for the gravy. I cook the roux until it looks like peanut butter.

The sweet potatoes got peeled and put into the stand mixer. They get mashed up with butter, salt, cream, little bit of brown sugar and some maple syrup. When they taste good, I add an egg. Then I just put the mixture in a buttered Pyrex dish to get heated tomorrow.

Once all that got cleaned up, I went over to the elementary school and ran a center in my daughter's kindergarten class. The class gets divided into four groups. The head teacher works with one group, a speech specialists works with a seconds group, a third group eats a snack and the fourth group was with me. Each station is 15 minutes long. The hour goes by pretty quick. At my station we colored pictures and made pilgrim hats. When I got back to the house, my parents had arrived. I quickly put them to work making toast for stuffing. They prepped two loaves of Mastrianni bread. That saves me a ton of time. While they did that, I sauteed some pancetta to go with the string beans and prepped all of the onions and celery to get cooked for the stuffing.

That's my new allegedly "green" non stick pan. It worked very well today. Time will tell how it holds up. I can say that new out of the box, this non stick coating is much better than a non stick Calphalon pan and another no-name brand pan were out of their boxes. Once the pancetta was crispy (it was very hard to not eat it all) and the celery and onions were cut up, it was time to go to the bus stop. My parents were done with the toasting mission and played with the kids and I cooked up the stuffing mix.

This gets mixed with sage and thyme. Tomorrow it gets combined with the bread and chicken stock. There is also a smaller vegetarian bowl of stuffing to be made. Once it was all cleaned up, my wife got home and we set out all the platters. Then we went out to dinner. A full day, but paced and never really stressful. I'm off to go make my timeline for game day tomorrow.

Happy Thanksgiving Everybody.

T-Day Prep continues

Last night I made a Charcutepalooz-ish appetizer. It is a bunch of grilled vegetables wrapped around some goat cheese. I think it will taste good. Might not end up looking pretty or slicing well, but it should taste good. First up, prep the vegetables. Sliced some eggplant, zucchini and yellow squash. The red pepper gets roasted whole. Then I made a vinaigrette with the stick blender. Stick blenders are fantastic and everyone should have one.

Lit up a chimney of coals and roasted the pepper first. Then I grilled the rest of the sliced vegetables. It was kind of chilly out last night, but surprisingly comfortable next to the grill.

I bloomed some gelatin and added that to the vinaigrette. I put it in a warm water bath so it would set up too fast.

I lined a little loaf pan with plastic wrap and started layering. Each layer got brushed with the vinaigrette.

On top of the squash, I put in the red pepper and then goat cheese. I ended up with goat cheese all over my hands so the next picture is what it looked like when I put it in the fridge.

We'll see what it looks like on Thursday. Tonight is make the gluten free cheesecake night. Seven (yes 7, VII, siete, sept) blocks of Philly cream cheese go in this bad boy. I start by preparing the crust. The gluten free crust is just pulverized gluten free cookies. Depending on the cookie, the crumbs may need a little sugar or butter. This time I went with Liz Lovely snickerdoodles I found in the health food store. They pressed together pretty well. Hopefully the cinnamon isn't overpowering. Plus, the name made me think of Liz Lemon and that show is great. Le crust:

The obscene amount of cream cheese is whipped with sugar and vanilla.

Then 4 eggs go in one at a time. After each addition, the bowl gets scrapped down to make sure everything is combined.

This is egg 3 going in...

Once the eggs are combined, some sour cream gets gently stirred in.

Here it is just before going into the oven . The foil is my work around for not having a lover walled roasting pan. If the cheesecake pan walls are lower than the roasting pan walls, stem will screw up the top of the cheesecake. I make a foil sling that keeps the steam from hitting the top of the cheesecake.

After about 1:45 in the oven, I put the broiler on for about a minute, and voila:

Only 1 small crack that no one will see. The other news from tonight, I gave the kids some of the Tuscan Salami and they inhaled it. So much for making the same thing twice. It is pretty good, but nothing like the last batch. Maybe next time...

Still in "piece of cake" mode. I'm even taking some time out to go into my daughter's kindergarten class tomorrow. I guess we'll see how confident I am at this time tomorrow.

Have you not heard?

Well uh bird bird bird. Bird is the word.is the word.

I changed plans today and picked up the turkey. I thought I'd give a Fresh Market turkey a try this year. While the turkey looks great, smells great and will hopefully taste great, I am glad I got it today for two reasons. The first is a change in my pre-cooking method. I have brined birds and also skipped brining in favor of a kosher turkey (both fresh and frozen). Earlier today I remembered that last year I read about a dry rub combination of salt and sugar. You can also read about the method at the LA Times and probably a few other places as well. Takes a few days though and I would needed to start tonight to be ready for Thursday.

The second reason I'm glad I got the turkey today is that the giblets and neck were frozen solid. It took a little bit of work to get them out as well as some ice stuck to the ribs. So much for fresh. According to a Good Eats episode I saw awhile ago, fresh turkeys can be stored at temperatures below freezing. For the center of the turkey to be this solid, this turkey had to be frozen solid. I dodged a bullet here. I doubt the center would have completely thawed in the cold storage at the store by Wednesday and if I had first seen this ice at 9 AM Thursday morning, I would have freaked. Shame on you, Fresh Market. I think I'm going to call and complain tomorrow.

Back to more fun Thanksgiving stuff. Based on some of the discussion over at the Hunger Artist, I stuck to the ratios per 1000 grams of turkey - 14 grams of salt and 7 grams of sugar. The sticker on the turkey said 19.25 pounds. I weighed what I took out of the turkey: giblets, neck, some fat, plastic pop up timer, plastic thing holding the legs and some ice. This brought my weight down to 18 pounds or about 8200 grams. So I weighed out 115 grams (8.2x14) of salt. There was some discussion on fine salt versus kosher salt. I split the difference and used half kosher and half fine sea salt. Then I added 57 grams of sugar (8.2*7). Here's the bird washed and dried.

I covered it inside and out with the salt/sugar mixture.

This turkey wasn't going to fit in any bag I had, so I covered my new super awesome huge stainless steel bowl with plastic wrap. Put the turkey in the bowl and finish the see through mummification with a little more wrap. That should do it. 

If I have some time tomorrow, I might make something charcutepalooza-ish. Most of the Thanksgiving shopping is done. House is mostly clean. Very much on pace. Still in "piece of cake" mode.

Thanksgiving Weekend Wrap Up

On the plus side, I was able to bounce back from falling behind in my Wednesday prep and put out a pretty good meal. I ended up skipping the Tuscan salami. I think it came out just so-so. And certainly not being above average is disappointing. Perhaps the larger ones requiring a longer hang-time will fair better. I'll try them this week. But here are my two favorite things from the weekend.

The first was a story told to me by by sister-in-law Lisa. My 7-year old niece Abby was riding in the backseat next to her 3-year old brother Ryan. Abby says, "Ryan, next week is Thanksgiving! And we get to go Allison and Casey's house. Do you know what my favorite part of Thanksgiving is?" At this point Lisa said she really started listening because she wanted to hear this..."Allison and Casey's other grandma is there. And do you know what she brings? She makes cookies in the shape of everyone's name. So I'm going to get an A and you're going to get an R!" As fate would have it, an A (there are a total of 4 A cookies made) and the R were on top of the separate container holding the letter cookies.

That is the expanding tradition of Grandma Cookies. One cookie is baked in the first letter of everyone in attendance. It originally started out as just the kids years ago when I was a kid, but now the kids from back then have kids of their own. And it just kept growing...Besides the letters, the traditional cookie shapes are moons, stars, circles and the shapes from a deck of cards. I could eat them all.

My second favorite thing about this years Thanksgiving was a new guest. This was the 10th Thanksgiving we have thrown here. There are some that have made a few, some that have moved onto other venues and a handful that have been to them all. My brother-in-law's brother Tony came  this year. Their parents recently moved to Florida and he was left without his annual place to go. I'm glad he came, but I am happier that he felt comfortable enough to stay after his brother and family left to get kids to bed. That's nice. Unfortunately, Tony cleaned up at the post-dinner poker game that has kind of become a new tradition. Next year is my year, I feel it.

Finished Pancetta Slab

Thanksgiving weekend was a blur. The meal didn't come off exactly as I had planned. The food was decent (scallops wrapped in homemade bacon were fantastic), but some the turkey was refusing to cook in the smoker. Also, at about 4 in the afternoon, it became clear that the kitchen refrigerator was not keeping anything cold. These two glitches threw my timing on everything off and in my own personal chaos, I didn't take any food pictures. I'll try to get it right next year.

The pancetta I hang last week finished drying over the Thanksgiving weekend. Here is a shot of the cleaned up slab. I squared up the edges to make it look nicer. I'm keeping the trimmings. The pretty piece will be split between co-workers Gina and Mike for their holiday cooking.