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Search For Perfect Thanksgiving Bird Ends Here: Turkey In A Sac With Bread Stuffing
posted Monday, 10 October 2005
Your Search For The Perfect Thanksgiving Bird Ends Here: Turkey In A Sac With Bread Stuffing
Turkey In A Sac With Bread Stuffing - The History & Overview, Part I
This recipe originally came from “Dining With David Wade”. It has been adapted and altered by Tabacco. I have worked on it for the last 35 years. About 25 years ago I stopped experimenting with the basic recipe. About 3 years ago I added the finishing touch – brining. This recipe is now perfect – I guarantee it. However, my stuffing is very inconsistent. That part of the recipe is still in the experimental stage. So for the present you will have to supply your own stuffing recipe.
Evolution of a Recipe
What is the bacon for? Taste? Maintain juiciness? Both? In an effort to maintain juiciness, this cook has sacrificed browning.
Around 1970 I remember preparing this recipe and having to put it back in the oven because it was undercooked. I did this several years because I neglected one fact in Wade’s original recipe: my turkey is always stuffed; Wade’s was not. Therefore my bird would not be properly roasted using Wade’s timing rule. I added 1/2-hour roasting time and increased oven temperature 25 degrees. Once I got past that hurdle, the undercooked bird has never again been a problem.
I lost my original copy of “Dining With David Wade” and did it from memory. My memory wasn’t always perfect, even then. I forgot to set the spices in warm water for 15 minutes. I began setting them in the peanut oil instead. Around 1990, I found another copy of the book in a Broadway bookstore in New York City. When I realized my oversight, I used the water just as Wade’s recipe directed. The taste was not as good. Don’t ask me why. So I went back to my “improvement” which was the result of a faulty memory, not a stroke of genius.
Once I discovered brining, my turkey went from spectacular to sublime. Two years ago, after preparing the turkey, I prepared to cut a slice for myself, in the privacy of the kitchen with the electric knife, just to make sure it was OK. The knife made the turkey meat quiver like Jell-O. I forgot about sampling, and announced to my guests, “Dinner is served”.
Most cooks baste their turkey to death. This opening and closing of the oven door increases the cooking time and dries out the bird; but it does insure a crisp, brown skin. That’s why most white meat is served swimming in gravy. If it weren’t camouflaged that way, you would be dining on compacted sawdust. I haven’t made turkey gravy in 25 years except for the obligatory turkey hash after the 3rd day.
If you do nothing else in the kitchen, brine your poultry! I mean henceforth and forever more, whether you roast a turkey or chicken, whether you fry, smoke or whatever. Brine!
Turkey In A Sac will brown & be juicy,
especially the white meat.
The Basics
Brining
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brining
In cooking, brining is a process similar to marination in which meat is soaked in a salt solution (the brine) before cooking.
Brining makes cooked meat moister by hydrating the cells of its muscle tissue before cooking, via the process of osmosis, and by allowing the cells to hold on to the water while they are cooked, via the process of denaturation. The brine surrounding the cells has a higher concentration of salt than the fluid within the cells, but the cell fluid has a higher concentration of other solutes. This leads salt ions to enter the cell via diffusion. The increased salinity of the cell fluid causes the cell to absorb water from the brine via osmosis. The salt introduced into the cell also denatures its proteins. The proteins coagulate, forming a matrix, which traps water molecules and holds them during cooking. This prevents the meat from drying out, or dehydrating. {Did you get all that?}
In many foods the additional salt is also desirable as a preservative. Note that kosher meats are salted during the process of koshering so they should not be brined.
Procedure Basics
1- Brine the turkey
2- Rest spices in peanut oil
3- Prepare bread stuffing
4- Pour off peanut oil, after spices settle to bottom, into large supermarket brown paper bags (2) double-bagged
5- Oil/spice turkey inside and out
6- Stuff the turkey
7- Place turkey inside doubled bags
8- Twist open end and tie with thick twine, also dredged in peanut oil
9- Roast @350 degrees inside the prepared double bags, 10 minutes per pound + 30 minutes for the stuffing
10- Cut the bag off the turkey
11- Separate the turkey drippings from the oil with a gravy separator
12- Serve and try not to smile too much at the shock and awe of your guests and family when they taste how juicy your turkey is without the necessity of oceans of gravy
The Recipe will be published tomorrow to facilitate printing only the recipe, if needed.
T.A.B.A.C.C.O. (Truth About Business And Congressional Crimes Organization)
Turkey In A Sac With Bread Stuffing - The History & Overview, Part I
This recipe originally came from “Dining With David Wade”. It has been adapted and altered by Tabacco. I have worked on it for the last 35 years. About 25 years ago I stopped experimenting with the basic recipe. About 3 years ago I added the finishing touch – brining. This recipe is now perfect – I guarantee it. However, my stuffing is very inconsistent. That part of the recipe is still in the experimental stage. So for the present you will have to supply your own stuffing recipe.
Evolution of a Recipe
What is the bacon for? Taste? Maintain juiciness? Both? In an effort to maintain juiciness, this cook has sacrificed browning.Around 1970 I remember preparing this recipe and having to put it back in the oven because it was undercooked. I did this several years because I neglected one fact in Wade’s original recipe: my turkey is always stuffed; Wade’s was not. Therefore my bird would not be properly roasted using Wade’s timing rule. I added 1/2-hour roasting time and increased oven temperature 25 degrees. Once I got past that hurdle, the undercooked bird has never again been a problem.
I lost my original copy of “Dining With David Wade” and did it from memory. My memory wasn’t always perfect, even then. I forgot to set the spices in warm water for 15 minutes. I began setting them in the peanut oil instead. Around 1990, I found another copy of the book in a Broadway bookstore in New York City. When I realized my oversight, I used the water just as Wade’s recipe directed. The taste was not as good. Don’t ask me why. So I went back to my “improvement” which was the result of a faulty memory, not a stroke of genius.
Once I discovered brining, my turkey went from spectacular to sublime. Two years ago, after preparing the turkey, I prepared to cut a slice for myself, in the privacy of the kitchen with the electric knife, just to make sure it was OK. The knife made the turkey meat quiver like Jell-O. I forgot about sampling, and announced to my guests, “Dinner is served”.
Most cooks baste their turkey to death. This opening and closing of the oven door increases the cooking time and dries out the bird; but it does insure a crisp, brown skin. That’s why most white meat is served swimming in gravy. If it weren’t camouflaged that way, you would be dining on compacted sawdust. I haven’t made turkey gravy in 25 years except for the obligatory turkey hash after the 3rd day.
If you do nothing else in the kitchen, brine your poultry! I mean henceforth and forever more, whether you roast a turkey or chicken, whether you fry, smoke or whatever. Brine!
Turkey In A Sac will brown & be juicy,
especially the white meat.
The Basics
Brining
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brining
In cooking, brining is a process similar to marination in which meat is soaked in a salt solution (the brine) before cooking.
Brining makes cooked meat moister by hydrating the cells of its muscle tissue before cooking, via the process of osmosis, and by allowing the cells to hold on to the water while they are cooked, via the process of denaturation. The brine surrounding the cells has a higher concentration of salt than the fluid within the cells, but the cell fluid has a higher concentration of other solutes. This leads salt ions to enter the cell via diffusion. The increased salinity of the cell fluid causes the cell to absorb water from the brine via osmosis. The salt introduced into the cell also denatures its proteins. The proteins coagulate, forming a matrix, which traps water molecules and holds them during cooking. This prevents the meat from drying out, or dehydrating. {Did you get all that?}
In many foods the additional salt is also desirable as a preservative. Note that kosher meats are salted during the process of koshering so they should not be brined.
Procedure Basics
1- Brine the turkey
2- Rest spices in peanut oil
3- Prepare bread stuffing
4- Pour off peanut oil, after spices settle to bottom, into large supermarket brown paper bags (2) double-bagged
5- Oil/spice turkey inside and out
6- Stuff the turkey
7- Place turkey inside doubled bags
8- Twist open end and tie with thick twine, also dredged in peanut oil
9- Roast @350 degrees inside the prepared double bags, 10 minutes per pound + 30 minutes for the stuffing
10- Cut the bag off the turkey
11- Separate the turkey drippings from the oil with a gravy separator
12- Serve and try not to smile too much at the shock and awe of your guests and family when they taste how juicy your turkey is without the necessity of oceans of gravy
The Recipe will be published tomorrow to facilitate printing only the recipe, if needed.
T.A.B.A.C.C.O. (Truth About Business And Congressional Crimes Organization)
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