GardenFork – Eclectic DIY

Tag: thanksgiving

Easy Leftover Turkey Soup Recipe – GF Video
After making a deep fried turkey, make this easy leftover turkey soup recipe the next day. Watch our video to learn how.

My turkey soup recipe, A few thoughts:
- Use what you got, in other words, if you don’t have carrots, use potatoes.
- Celery and Onion are key, and you should keep celery in the fridge anyway.
- This cooks down in about an hour.
I can’t say I invented this Thanksgiving leftovers recipe, but it seemed like an obvious thing to do the day after the big holiday meal. But you can do this anytime you deep fry a turkey, and I think we all should cook turkey a lot more. Its a huge amount of food for the price of a turkey. BTW, you can also roast a turkey in the oven, if that’s your thing. We did a video about that here.

One GF fan suggested cooking down the soup in one of those pasta pots that have a strainer insert. You could cook the vegetables in the pot, then put in the strainer and add in the turkey parts. That way you could pull out all the bones at once, then separate the meat, and boom you are done.

It helps to use an oversized pasta pot for this turkey soup recipe. The pot I used had turkey and stock up to the rim and it made it easy to spill. I have about 3 pasta pots in the basement, but I blanked on that when cooking this. Note to self.

Keep in mind that if you put in a lot of celery, that flavor will be more pronounced after a night in the fridge. The second time we heated up the soup for dinner, you could really taste the celery above the carrots. But I love celery so that was ok with me.

The videos I talked about this video: How To Deep Fry A Turkey Build a DIY Mini Greenhouse
November 29, 2016
Deep Fried Turkey Recipe The Easy Way – GF Video
Here is my deep fried turkey recipe, its not rocket science, and you will be amazed at how great turkey can taste. Deep frying is the best way to cook turkey, I think. I’ve had way too many dry Thanksgiving dinners, where the only moist thing is the gravy. With this, you don’t need gravy. Watch our video and get the recipe below.

How to deep fry turkey – gear you need:

There is some equipment needed to deep fry turkey, but once you have it, you will have it for years.
This post covers the basics of how to deep fry turkey. We show you some more tips in our follow up video here.

How much oil to use in a turkey deep fryer?

It depends on the turkey, but with a 14 lb bird, approx 3.5 gallons of vegetable oil usually works for me when using a 30 quart pot. Check the instructions that come with your turkey fryer pot. As you fry the bird, the level of the oil may drop a bit, that is OK. The legs may stick out a bit – I fry with the legs pointing up – that is ok too.

You will heat up the oil to 350F, turn off the burner, and then lower the turkey into the fryer. Fire up the burner again, you’ll notice the temperature will drop quite a bit. The last time I did it, the temp dropped to 200F. The ideal is to keep the oil temp at or near 350F, but that doesn’t always happen. If you are deep frying in cold weather or the wind is blowing, the fryer may not get back to 350F after putting in the turkey. I keep the cover on the pot when initially heating the oil up to 350F, and keep the cover off when the turkey is in the pot. But if its cold outside, you might try keeping the cover on while frying, but you have to keep constant watch on it, to make sure it does not boil over.

How long does it take to deep fry a turkey?
Usually its 4-5 minutes per pound. What is more important to done-ness is temperature of the meat. I use a digital thermoter, and stick it in the thigh. You can pull out the turkey at 145F, I usually pull it at 150F or so. Its an inexact science at best. I've had turkey at 170F that was fine. Let the turkey rest 20 minutes on a baking tray before carving.
Important deep fried turkey recipe safety tips:
- Turn off the burner when putting the bird in the pot and when removing it. I don't think you need a ladder - derrick rig.
- You do need to use common sense.
- Wear silicon oven gloves or welding gloves.
- Turkey must be fully defrosted! Any water or ice in the turkey can cause the oil to boil over the pot.
- Lower the turkey very slowly into the hot oil, take 30 seconds at least.
Deep Fried Turkey Recipe

Cuisine: American

Author: Eric Rochow

Prep time: 45 mins

Cook time: 30 mins

Total time: 1 hour 15 mins

Serves: 1 Turkey

Deep Fried Turkey is the best way to cook a turkey, I think. Watch our how to video that accompanies this recipe.
Ingredients

1 fresh or defrosted turkey 12-15 lbs is best

3 gallons vegetable oil - buy what's on sale

1/2 cup Dry Rub spice mix - if you like to spice your turkey

1/4 cup table salt - if you want to dry bring the turkey
Instructions

Defrost your turkey fully. This will take several days, or buy a fresh turkey.

If you want a dry rub or brine, apply the dry rub or salt the day before cooking to the turkey. You can put the dry rub under the skin if you want. Keep the turkey in the fridge overnight.

hours before dinner time, assemble deep fryer burner rig. Put on fry pot and add vegetable oil.

Light burner using long butane lighter.

Heat oil to 350F. This can take 30-45 minutes.

Place turkey legs up on the poultry rack that comes with the fryer pot.

Use the grab hook to slowly lower the turkey into the deep fryer.

Re-light the burner and heat the oil back to 350F.

Cook the turkey until the thigh temperature reaches at least 145F

Turn off burner and remove the turkey using the grab tool.

Rest on a baking sheet for 20 minutes before carving.
3.5.3208
November 11, 2015
Thanksgiving Emergencies, Eggs, & Cameras – GF Radio 361

How to defrost a turkey? Rick and Eric tell you how to do this. Based on the info from the epic how to defrost meat quickly video, the Thanksgiving experts save the holidays. Or at least we think we do.

And we talk about the new news that its OK to eat eggs again. We’ve been eating eggs anyway. They are healthy. Here the NY Times Well column says so. This moves into how we both have cut down on sugar consumption, and just how much sugar is in processed foods like soda. Rick gives us this article on how sugar may shorten your life.

Thanksgiving emergencies are solved by the experts, or at least solved by the GardenFork crew here.

Here are two GardenFork Salad Videos for you:

Dandelion Greens Salad Recipe Video Salad Lyonaise – Greens with a Poached Egg Recipe Video

Here is the beginning of the show in a transcript:

It’s a wet and rainy day here in Margaritaville North.

Today we’re going to talk about eggs, Rick ‘s trip to Florida and some camera camera tips. And We answer some Thanksgiving emergency questions
I read this great article from my the New York Times about Eggs. For those of us of a certain generation, it was most drilled into our heads that eggs were unhealthy, and they would cause heart attacks and now they’re finding that you know it’s okay to eat eggs, that’s great.

And the American Heart Association has looked at clinical studies, they no longer condemn eggs in its guidelines. It recommends people limit themselves to consume a single egg that has two hundred milligrams, as well as a mix of saturated, unsaturated fats, including the monounsaturated kind found in olive oil. Olive oil is good for you, right, and eggs are good for you. I love eggs we keep a dozen eggs boiled a hard-boiled in the refrigerator and I will add them to salads and all kinds of side dishes . From a Doctor who is who is from the Harvard school of Public health, “Eggs are particularly good replacement for less health healthful fare like processed meats and refined carbohydrates. So instead of maybe that processed meat like hams or hot dogs or refined carbohydrates, which is sounds like white bread. The study suggested for most people starting your day with a breakfast of scrambled eggs will have a better impact on your overall cholesterol profile than a bagel or a bowl of sugary cereal.

Do you know that drinking a twenty ounces of Bob regular soda not diet soda, but sugared soda a day will reduce you lifespan by age four to six years. It wouldn’t surprise me. It shortens the telomeres I’ve got a study here. I’ll send it to you and put the link in the show notes, telomeres are the part of the reproductive part of cells that determine how long cells live, and it turns out, looks like all of the sugar in the that soda is actually aging the cells. Not that the fake sugar is any better.
We have just about given up all of the other guy sodas and and regular sodas of all that stuff. It’s its water, tea, coffee and more coffee. I’ve been having oatmeal for breakfast. I love bagels and live in bagel Central, of course.
We have eggs for dinner also we have a salad every night, I will throw a poached egg in the salad or a hard boiled eggs. We have several salad recipes and i will put them in the show notes.

Let us know your thoughts in the comments below, thx!

November 26, 2014
How To Make Gravy – GF Video

Easy how to make gravy recipe for turkey or chicken, for Thanksgiving or Christmas, or just dinner. Really good gravy is not hard to make, watch our gravy video to learn the steps. Chef Erica Wides joins Eric and walks us through the steps, and we learn some cool stuff about deglazing the pan and all.

How To Make Gravy – the basics

Here are the key steps to making great tasting gravy:

• Have some extra good chicken or turkey stock on hand. Store bought is ok, but buy the good stuff

• A quality white wine, bourbon, whiskey or hard cider will release unique flavor compounds

• When adding the alcohol to the pan, turn off the burner to prevent the alcohol from turning into flame.

• After adding the flour, bring the gravy to a boil so the starch molecules do their thing and thicken the sauce.

• The gravy will thicken more as it cools

In this how to make gravy video, we talk about Thanksgiving and Christmas and Holiday Cooking, you can apply this gravy recipe to all sorts of foods. If you roast meat in the oven, you can use the pan drippings and this gravy recipe to make a super cool tasting gravy to go with your meat. In other words, this is not just for the holidays and turkey.

And again, this proves to me that you do not have to have fancy equipment or foods to make a great tasting meal. I used store bought chicken, added some celery, carrot, and onion to make what is called a mirepoix, but is, in my mind, a bunch of vegetables underneath a chicken. But these vegetables are key to how to make gravy that tastes wow. Celery is one of those low key vegetables that is a secret flavor source for so many stocks.

We have a number of Thanksgiving recipe videos here for you, check them out and let us know your suggestions and comments below, always good to hear from you.

November 29, 2013
Deep Fry Turkey How To GF Video
Learn how to deep fry turkey in this GardenFork.TV cooking video. We received a bunch of requests to make a video about how to make deep fried turkey, so just in time for Thanksgiving, here is the our simple method for deep frying turkey. We bought our Turkey Deep Fryer Kit on Amazon here
.

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There are a bunch of precautions when using a deep fryer, remember, the oil is real HOT and can burn you.
- Wear long sleeves and heavy gloves
- Turn off the burner when lowering or raising the turkey
- Defrost the turkey fully
- Keep a fire extinguisher nearby
- Slowly lower the turkey into the hot oil, takes 1-2 minutes to fully immerse the turkey
- Make sure the oil temperature thermometer is not accidentally stuck in the turkey itself. You want to use the large round dial thermometer that comes with your deep fryer kit to measure the oil temperature.
- Do not let the oil go above 350F, bad things can happen, like spontaneous combustion, not a good thing.
- Follow all safety rules that come with the turkey deep fryer kit
  .
The secret to great deep fried turkey is temperature, you want cook the breast to 145F, then turn off the burner, lift out the turkey, drain and let it rest for 20 minutes. It will continue to cook a bit. I’ve found that if you cook the turkey past the 145F mark, it tastes dry and crumbly.
[box bg=”#FFCC33″ color=”#000000″]Be extremely careful when using a deep fryer! Hot oil will burn your skin. Follow all directions and precautions that come with you deep fryer.[/box]

We could go into the science of protein strands tightening up when they are heated too much, but we’ll leave that to America’s Test Kitchen. Just remember to check the temperature after about 25 minutes in the thick part of the breast.

Here is where we bought out deep fried turkey kit:
November 2, 2012
Roasting Turkey on a Charcoal Grill

oil skin with olive oil, salt & pepper if you want

Here we show you how to roast a turkey on a grill. we are using the charcoal method of cooking a turkey on a grill. the photos here will show you how to make your turkey tasted great on the grill.

add a meat thermometer

prep your charcoal burning grill, ours also has a propane lighter

light off and gray up 30 briquettes

divide, 15 per side

add a drip pan between the coals and add the grill

add the turkey (this is our T-Day bird, an heritage breed, Bourbon Red)

vents full open, top and bottom. start your timer: 1 hour intervals

relax. best of all, the turkey is out of the kitchen

every hour add 8 briquettes to each side. it usually takes 3 - 4 hours of cooking

Sydney naps in the ginger lilies near the grill, visions of turkey dance in her head. (obligatory GF dog pix)

A great bird roasted on the grill

December 24, 2011
How to cook a roast turkey or chicken GF TV

Baking a roast turkey or cooking a roast chicken is not hard. Our recipe for baking a turkey is a classic with an Eric spin on it. Mayonnaise.

GardenFork.TV Roast Turkey Recipe How-To

Buy the best turkey you can afford. The uber-organic ones are pretty pricey, I found a mid-range fresh turkey at the local chain store.

Remove the neck and giblets from the turkey, and rinse the turkey inside and out. Place on a platter in the fridge for a day. This dries out the bird, which I think is a good thing .

A few hours before roasting, turn the bird upside down in a roasting rack, and slide an ice pack under each breast. Keep the bird in the fridge until ready.

When ready to roast the turkey, preheat your oven to 425F.

Use a medium sized jar of grocery store mayonaise, 1/2 cup mustard, and a large handful of herbs all mixed together. The herbs can be thyme, parsley, rosemary, oregano, marjoram, etc.

Spread the mayonnaise-mustard-herb mixture over the skin of the bird, also coat the interior of the bird. If you like, you can also lift up the skin of the breast and slid the mix under the skin. A rubber spatula works well for this.

Put a thermometer in the thigh of the bird, and place it on a rack in the oven.

Roast at 425F for 30-45 minutes, until the skin is nicely browned, then turn down the oven temp to 325, roast for another 45-50 minutes. The USDA temp for cooked turkey is 165F. I usually pull the turkey out when it is 160F, as the temp will continue to rise.

When the bird is done, pull it out, cover it with foil and let it rest for 2o minutes, then carve. yum.

Tell us your secret to great baked turkey or chicken below:

November 21, 2011
The visual of Mike dancing : GardenFork Radio

Call our listener line: 860-740-6938 This time the Mike & Eric fishing show, Preparing for thanksgiving, Mike’s domestic car problem, using Guidestar.org to find out about nonprofits, James Lipton, and Roxbury Russet apples

November 18, 2010
Mashed Potatoes Don’t Make For Good Leftovers : GardenFork Radio

Call us: 860-740-6938 ! Thanksgiving takes over a large part of this week’s show, brining, sides, and Mike has an opinion on all of this, Eric finds the Tartine Bread book and video to be excellent, preparing for winter, plus viewer mail and listener call in line calls. Chad Robertson’s new bread book, Tartine Bread is www.tartinebread.com. His restaurant is Tartine Bakery, www.tartinebakery.com Watch the video about their new book, Tartine Bread, here

Brine Recipe: http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/2010/10/my-favorite-turkey-brine/

Mike and Eric

November 9, 2010