Friday, November 26, 2010

Turkey Broth

I had intended to put up a post about food safety and turkeys last weekend, but a family emergency kept me from it. By the time I could have written it, it was Thanksgiving and a little too late. I'll save it for Christmas and hope I can get it posted then.

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving. I did, but was exhausted after cooking yesterday morning. I did have it a little easier, but as a result I have a new story if I ever write a sequel to my Masters & Disasters of Cooking Cookbook. To help me out, my husband baked the turkey on Tuesday afternoon for me to carve that evening and then refrigerate until Thursday. He baked it in a Reynolds Oven Bag and it came out wonderfully. This was the first time we had used them for a turkey and I highly recommend them. He did not add any water to the bag, but when the baking was done, I got almost a liter of broth to use for my dressing. That's where the disaster began.

As I said, we baked the turkey on Tuesday, but I planned on using the broth to make the dressing on Thursday morning at my mom's. I needed something to put the broth in until then. I ended up using a 2 liter jug that had originally held tomato juice. My husband also boiled the turkey neck to get even more broth. All in all, it practically filled the jug. What I had forgotten was that when the broth gets cold, it coagulates into a solid. So, Thursday morning I had a solid bottle of turkey fat.

Hmmm, the bottle was too tall to fit into the microwave to heat it in there. I tried several ideas which I am too embarrassed to even mention here. Then, it dawned on me to run it under some hot water. Duh, why didn't I think of that first? That worked, but still not well. Eventually, I was able to get the jello-like broth out of the bottle and into a microwavable bowl and heated it up that way. Even with all the trouble, I think the dressing was the best I've ever made.

A Belated Happy Thanksgiving to all and I hope you got all of the Black Friday deals you wanted. I got one, but not the one I wanted the most.

Carol

1 comment:

Kenzie Michaels said...

Yup, hot water always does the trick:) We freeze our leftover broth in ice cream buckets and label them, so the kids don't think they're getting ice cream, LOL:)

BTW...your turkey tetrazzini recipe is still a hit with everyone! I had to remind everyone to save some for K, who was returning on Saturday night (he had to work Sat am, so went to grandma's Friday night to spend the night).