Sprout & Pea

I love any excuse to have all of my friends over for a big meal and Thanks­giv­ing is just about the per­fect excuse!  Sun­day night, we hosted a pre-​​Thanksgiving potluck at our place and boy did our tal­ented friends deliver!  We had every­thing from quinoa to red beet salad with cit­rus and nuts to veg­gie potato pan­cakes to bacon wrapped dates to pineap­ple apple pud­ding to fried choco­late chip cookie dough.  That’s right, I said fried choco­late chip cookie dough.

These are just a few of the things cooked up on top of all of the tra­di­tional turkey day dishes.  I han­dled the turkey (my first ever!) and cran­berry sauce and made some mashed pota­toes with greek yogurt and some roasted fen­nel and baby yel­low car­rots.  I’m still wait­ing on our friends to send me their recipes (ahem) but for now, here is how I made my turkey.  Also, be sure to check out this sweet lit­tle Thanks­giv­ing post from The Sweet Beet.  Happy Thanks­giv­ing everybody!

The key to a good turkey is buy­ing a fresh, organic bird (I got this 9 lb free range, hor­mone free turkey at Whole foods for $18) and brin­ing! For this, I placed the turkey in a large zip lock bag (you’ll need a brin­ing bag for larger turkeys) with 16 cups of ice water, 1 1/​4 cups of kosher salt, and 1/​2 cup of brown sugar. I got this ratio from What’s Gabby Cook­ing. You should let the turkey sit in the brine in your refrig­er­a­tor overnight for about 12 hours. Let the turkey sit out for about an hour so so it returns to room tem­per­a­ture before cook­ing. Here is what I used for the sea­son­ing:
5 cloves gar­lic minced
1 large shal­lot minced
1 tbsp fresh rose­mary
1 tbsp fresh thyme
1 tbsp fresh lemon basil
2 large sprin­kles of sea salt
sprin­kle of black pep­per
Extra Vir­gin Olive Oil (enough to cover the herbs)

I used some fresh chopped root veg­eta­bles (red pota­toes, parsnips, car­rots, cel­ery, white onions) sprin­kled with salt and pep­per and driz­zled with olive oil to coat the bot­tom of the pan. Once you remove the turkey from the brine, pour the sea­son­ing all over it, mak­ing sure to get it under the skin as well. Place the turkey on top of the veg­gies in your pan, pour in a cup of veg­etable broth and a cup of water and cook at 375 degrees for about 3 hours (this is for a 9 lb turkey). Check cook­ing times for your bird size and always use a meat ther­mome­ter. When it’s done cook­ing, it should read 165 degrees faren­height in the inner­most part of the thigh. Another good way to know when it’s done is when the juices start to run clear.