If you have waited until the last minute for your Thanksgiving meal…You need to get moving now! If you haven’t bought your turkey you need to get right away and get it thawing under cold running water. If you don’t have a big sink you can put the turkey in a cooler outside preferably on a table and run cold water from your garden hose.

A refrigerator thawed turkey takes approx 1 day for every 4lbs! So I hope you bought yours over the weekend! By water thawing you can cut that down to approx 30 min per lb.

So a 12lbs turkey will still take 6 hrs!

If you have waited this long make sure you get organized. Know your recipes of what you would like to make and have a shopping list! Get your shopping done all at once. If you want to cut time down you can fix up store bought items.

Mashed Potatoes

You can add some flair to store bought potatoes by adding ingredients

• Horseradish and Cheddar
• Bacon and your favorite cheese
• Roast garlic and Parmesan
• Sour cream and chives or other fresh chopped herbs

Cranberry Sauce

You can put your own spin on canned whole cranberry sauce by warming it with a few added ingredients.

• Orange juice, orange zest
• Ruby port wine and vanilla
• Dried Cherries and brandy
• Raspberry preserves

Gravy

I like to use turkey or chicken broth thickend with some roux made from flour and butter. Toss in some onion, celery, carrot, herbs etc. I let it cook on low in my crockpot overnight so it is ready. When my turkey is done I finish it with the pan juices.

Pumpkin Pie

An easy way to dress up a store bought pie is a quick drizzle of carmel sauce and some toasted nuts!

Rolls

If you are baking store bought rolls or brown and serve you can kick them up by brushing with some beaten egg and adding poppy seeds or Parmesan or asiago cheese. Even all ready cooked rolls can be given some spark by brushing with some melted butter with garlic and basil in it.

Side Dishes

Lots of side dishes can be mixed together ahead and baked in a casserole dish the next day so I recommend them to make things easy as possible.

Turkey So many different ways to do a turkey I am not going to attempt to cover all of them. If you want super moist pull apart breast meat roast your turkey breast side down in an oven bag. It won’t be the prettiest but the bag holds all the juices around the bird so the breast meat is always cooking in all that flavorful juice!

Enjoy your Thanksgiving with family and friends!

Regards,

Jake On Food

• 6 oz cream cheese
• 3/4 powdered sugar
• 1/2 cup peanut butter
• 2 TBSP milk
• 1 container whipped topping
• Graham cracker pie shell

Combine cream cheese and powdered sugar and mix.  Add peanut butter and milk and mix.  Fold in whipped topping reserving some for the top.  Put in a graham cracker pie shell and chill.

The Apple pie, the taste of Americana, not just a dessert.  Part of who we are and a taste of being every fall.  Sometimes it’s a full weekend day experience with a trip to pick your own favorites at the Orchard complete with warm cider and fattening tasty donuts.

Fall the leaves change, football, tailgates, chili, and apple pie…Oh Boy!

My thoughts on making the BEST APPLE PIE EVER!

Many of us have our favorites….I have made many of great apple pies,  but none touch my Grandma’s!  Let’s not forget it’s the love, care and attention to detail that makes such morsels special.

How to make a better crust:

My first preference is to us a blend of fats.  I like 1/2 lard and half salted butter myself, I think it is the richest and most flavorful, but play with it!  Nothing says you only have to use shortening.

The next thing is to keep all ingerdients cold!!!  I would challenge myself to make the flakiest crust possible…nothing wrong with a mealy one…just liked the challenge.  I would cut up my cold fats into big butter pat size pieces and toss with a little flour and chill them in the refridgerator.  Then I put everything together fat, flour, salt ( you need to make sure you add enough if you want a buttery flavor ) and ice cold water.  Bring it all together as quick as possible then wrap in plastic wrap and chill 30-60 min before rolling it out.

• MY PIE DOUGH RECIPE
• 2 lbs Pastry flour ( all-pupose will work as well)
• 10 oz lard
• 10 oz butter (salted prefered)
• 1 1/3 cup ice cold water
• salt added to taste

Makes plenty of dough for 1 double crust pie or 2 streusel topped pies.  You can always alter this to make your own pies unique…who says you can’t add a little cinnamon or sugar to the crust???

APPLES!!!!

Golden Delicious and Granny Smith are two of the most common with year around availability.

I love the tart Nortern Spy!  A mix of sweet and tart apples is always the best way to go.

Tart Apples:  Idared.  Sweet&Tart:  Jonathon, Winesap, Johnygold.  Sweet:  Braeburn, Fuji, Rome Beauty, Empire

McIntosh and Cortland get mushy when cooked so I would only use them in combination with other apples that keep some texture.

I always prefer smaller apples, they have more flavor.  A dry growing season equals smaller more flavorful apples and a rainy growing season makes for larger more watered down in flavor apples.

I used to always make my pies the traditional way toss apples with sugar and cinnamon, nutmeg etc. and bake. ( I always liked to add a few generous pats of butter as well )  Then I learned the……………..

SECRET TO MILE HIGH APPLE PIE!!!

You have to pre-cook the apples or in the case of mile high apple pie pre shrink them!  I love this technique and use it every time now.  I cook the apples in a large pan with butter, sugar, and spices and cook about 15-20 minutes or untill just tender.  It’s great for many reasons, first you cook the apples down so you get more flavor, second you can taste them and adjust the amount of sugar, spices, salt, etc.   My final reason for loving this technique is it works great for making a pie with Splenda!  My Dad is diabetic and I use this technique. I was able to cook the apples and keep adding Splenda until it was sweet enough for my taste and made an excellent pie.  Some downside to this technique is the time cooking the apples and cooling them somewhat before filling and baking, but boy it makes for a great pie!  A big thank you to Cook’s Illustrated for this technique!

Hopefully you can use my thoughts on Apple Pie to make yours the very best one around!!!