GardenFork – Eclectic DIY

Tag: turkey

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
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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
Another use for leftover turkey or chicken

Continuing on my new plan to cook from what is in the fridge, Tony ( mr kim chi maker ) came over for lunch and we had this leftover turkey from one of our turkey injection tests. We also had some bread from the weekend and cheddar cheese.

We tore the meat into pieces, and grilled them in a little oil and sprinkled some dried thyme on them.

When making grilled sandwiches, i don’t oil the bread, i pour some oil into the pan and swirl the bread into the oil, kinda spreading the oil around the whole piece of bread. I also don’t use a lot, maybe a teaspoon per side.I use a thick bottom pan or a cast iron pan/griddle

We also made a simple salad of greens and apples. yum.

A real decadent treat is to grill your sandwiches in olive oil. I also like to spread brown or deli mustard any grilled sandwich. Batampte is a big favorite of mine.

Batampte is a favorite of mine, hard to find outside of NYC

From a few things in the fridge we have a great lunch. What do you put together from your fridge? let us know below.

January 11, 2010
How to carve a turkey and how to make gravy

We had dinner at Chris and Cheryl’s house on Thanksgiving. Amazing food made by amazing people. All we had to do is show up. Nice.

December 21, 2006