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Welcome to the second issue of Chef Wannabee's
SmartKitchen. I've received lots of
positive feedback from readers about our first issue and I hope to hear more
from you about our future issues. I want
to keep the good cooking and kitchen information coming your way! My goal is to publish this newsletter twice a
month.
If you've visited my business website, Your Smart Kitchen lately, you probably noticed some changes. Yes, we've decorated for the holidays. My wife, Sandy, who is the product manager for Your Smart Kitchen,
populated the site's homepage with all sorts of holiday cooking products. She also refreshed the gifts page with
holiday gift suggestions. Swing by and
take a look.
In addition to preparing the website for the upcoming
holiday season, Sandy and I have been busy planning, cooking, and hosting our
recent Moroccan-themed fundraising dinner. I wrote all about it and posted the recipes on my blog, www.chefwannabee.com.
This issue of Chef Wannabee's SmartKitchen has a
Thanksgiving theme. Both my blog and my
business focus on enabling everyday people to cook great food. We do this by sharing recipes, cooking tips,
and selling quality kitchenwares at reasonable prices. I hope some of the information in this issue
will help you to cook mouth wattering, homemade food this Thanksgiving without becoming
overwhelmed by the work.
If you're interested in buying any cooking supplies for
Thanksgiving, I suggest ordering soon so your items arrive before it's time to
start cooking. Some of the things we
sell that would be especially useful at Thanksgiving include: meat
thermometers, claypot turkey roasters, non-stick roasting pans, curved chef's
forks, immersion blenders, and a wide assortment of forged steel chef and carving knifes.
And lastly be sure to share this newsletter with your friends.
Sincerely,
Terry Retter
Editor, Chef Wannabee's SmartKitchen
chef@yoursmartkitchen.com
Planning Ahead for a Stress-free, Homemade Thanksgiving Dinner
By Megan F. Just,
for YourSmartKitchen
Thanksgiving needn't be a dreadful day of high-stress and
chaos with avalanche-effect cooking disasters followed by hours toiling through
a shoulder-high pile of dirty dishes. On the other hand, it needn't be a meal of canned cranberry sauce, boxed
stuffing, and freeze-dried mashed potato flakes either. It is possible to strike a balance.
You don't have to sacrifice good, homemade food to have your
house in order on Thanksgiving Day. All
it takes is a little planning and organization, especially if you are hosting a
large gathering. Right now is the right
time to start. Here's how.
- Decide
what is going to be on your menu. Think about everything, including drinks you'd like to offer and include things like
apple cider and coffee.
- Decide
what recipes you're going to use for each item you'll be cooking. Make a gigantic grocery list with every
single thing you're going to need for the recipes as well as things you'll
be serving, but not cooking.
- Do
your grocery shopping early to avoid pre-Thanksgiving craziness. Buy everything that you can, saving only
the perishables to buy later.
- Scan
through your menu and make a list of the items that can be made weeks or
days in advance. For example, you
don't have to make an entire carrot cake three weeks ahead and freeze it. You can instead make some of the parts
ahead of time so that the day before Thanksgiving, you can whip up a fresh
cake in minutes. Decide when you
are going to make which items (or parts of items) and make a schedule for
yourself.
- Read
every recipe from top to bottom so you don't get caught by unexpected
surprises like beans that need to be pre-soaked for 24 hours or cookie
dough that needs to be refrigerated overnight.
- Right
before Thanksgiving, brave the crowds at the grocery store to pick up
those perishables and any items you've forgotten.
- Think
about Thanksgiving Day and make sure the logistics work. If you'd planned to bake your pumpkin
pie, turkey, and yams all on the same day, you could be in trouble if you
just have one oven. I find that if I write the sequence of steps the problems pop up quickly. Stick to your
preparation schedule and by the time you reach Thanksgiving Day you should
be on cruise control!
I created a sample Thanksgiving plan focusing on steps #4
and #7. You'll notice that most of the
labor is done before the day of the big meal. I chose the very most basic, traditional Thanksgiving foods for this
sample plan.
The Basic Thanksgiving Dinner:
Oven-roasted turkey
Bread stuffing
Turkey gravy
Cranberry sauce
Mashed potatoes
Steamed green beans
Refrigerator rolls
Pumpkin pie
I'm not including the recipes here since most people have
their own family recipes for these things. (Let
me know if you need suggestions and I will include them in the next
newsletter.) There are also thousands of recipe variations available
commonly in
cookbooks and all over the Internet. The
schedule below is to help you plan ahead for a similar meal.
Weeks before:
- Prepare
the piecrust for the pumpkin pie. Roll the crust to the diameter needed for your pie pan. Place the circle of rolled dough between
sheets of waxed paper and wrap in tin foil or place in an airtight
container. Freeze.
- Roast
the pumpkin for the pumpkin pie. Puree desired amount. Freeze.
Up to four days before:
- Start
preparing the turkey. Roasting and
thawing time will be size-dependent. Refrigerator thawing could take just one day for a tiny bird or up
to four days for a 24-pound giant. You can speed up thawing by submerging the wrapped bird in cold
water. It is imperative that you
adjust your thawing time for your bird's exact weight and your preferred
thawing method.
A few days before:
- Prepare
the cranberry sauce. Refrigerate.
- Mix
the dry ingredients for the pumpkin pie, transfer to an airtight container, and set aside.
Two days before:
- Thaw
the pumpkin puree.
- Prepare
the dough for the dinner rolls and refrigerate dough according to the
directions in the recipe. Refrigerator rolls need enough time for the dough to double, but
should not be refrigerated longer than about three days.
The day before:
- Thaw
the pie dough. When it is ready,
lay it in the pie pan. Mix the dry
ingredients with the pumpkin puree and other wet ingredients, according to
your recipe's directions. Bake
(usually takes about an hour).
- Begin
the mashed potatoes. Peel the
potatoes and boil them until they are soft enough to mash (about 30
minutes). Refrigerate.
- Prepare
the stuffing. Refrigerate in an
air-tight container.
Early Thanksgiving morning:
- Stuff
the turkey. For roasting,
medium-sized bird will need 15-20 minutes per pound, plus another five
minutes per pound if it is stuffed. A stuffed, 15-pound bird, for example, could take over six hours to
roast. Begin roasting the turkey
based on your turkey-specific calculation.
Nearing Thanksgiving dinnertime:
- Set
the table.
- Take
the roll dough out of the refrigerator and let it rest at room
temperature.
- Mash
the pre-cooked potatoes. Add
butter, cream, and seasonings, then whip. Heat the mashed potatoes on the stove on very low heat.
- Steam
the green beans (about 15 minutes). To reduce stovetop chaos, this can be done in a rice cooker.
- Form
the dough into rolls and pre-stage on baking pans. Start baking the rolls as soon as the
turkey comes out.
- Make
the gravy and carve the turkey.
- Bring
the remaining food to the table; pull the rolls out of the oven, and bon
appetite!
In addition to planning ahead and staying organized, you can
help yourself by accepting any offers of help. Guests and visiting family members like to feel involved and there is no
better place to socialize than in the kitchen. For the guests that will invariably offer to bring food, don't deny
their offers. Have in mind some things
that they can bring that will complement the meal you've planned.
When the meal is over, swap places with the people who were
busy watching football or the Macy's Parade while you and your assistants were
cooking the meal. Make this known ahead
of time to avoid gripes.
This Thanksgiving, make it your goal to serve your own special dinner that will be talked about for weeks. Make it your secondary
goal to get that food started ahead of time so you can actually enjoy every
aspect of cooking this great American holiday meal.
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