Oh man, the Thanksgiving meal looked perfect! And then you improved upon perfection with that Wellington!!!
Very nicely done!
Very nicely done!
Better Late Than Never Thanksgiving!!!
- Thread starter civilsmoker
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OK here it goes....be prepared to read a book.......
airyleech, we use Gordon Ramsey's mash recipe from his Hells Kitchen Cook Book. They have butter, crème fraiche, and the salted water the potatoes were boiled in. They are put through a ricer and then mixed together with a mixer. My wife also covers them and then bakes them for at least another 20 min @350 to make them extra smooth and silky....GR's cookbook is worth it just for his mash recipe!
The gravy is two different stocks. The base stock is a French technique...It is made by taking the legs, thighs, wings, neck, and whole backbone structure from a cut up whole turkey. I save the breasts for another cook. I also remove the nasty stuff from the back bone. The wing and leg bones are chopped through and then everything is washed clean. They are placed in a 12 qt stock pan then covered with bottled water. This is brought to a light simmer very slowly and once simmering the top is skimmed to removed nasty stuff. This is then very lightly simmered (covered) for at least 12 hours. After that about 1.5 cups each of onion, carrots, celery are added along with a sachet (small cloth baggie) of fresh spices (rosemary, sage, thyme, 3 cloves of garlic, bay leaf, pepper corns). The veg and spices are simmered for about 1 hour to 1 hour 20min no more. If they go soft and mushy they add a bitter overtone. At this point a large screen spoon is used to VERY carefully remove the veg and bones. Once removed the stock is strained through double thick cheese cloth. The end result should be CLEAR stock (NOT cloudy). Oh and no salt at all. That is added to the dish. This clean stock is packed with flavor and will turn into jelly when cooled.
The gravy is made by reducing the stock a bit more and thickened with a butter flour roux (1/3c each - paper bag dark). I also add the turkey drippings if I catch them. This year I didn't catch them so I put the partial back bone, and neck from the second turkey in a pan under the broiler. When they were nice and brown I added a couple cups of the above stock and then let that cook down for about 40 min. Then I add some more stock and about a cup each of the veg and spices above and roast that at 375 for another hour, then it is strained with a fine kitchen screen and added to the roux thickened stock. That mixture is then seasoned with S&P and if a little extra thickness is needed a little bit of starch slurry is used (ONLY a little bit and make sure you boil it after to cook it in). As an FYI, I believe gravy should only be thick enough to coat a spoon but thick enough no to run off when you wipe your finger down the middle of the back of the spoon. This allows the gravy to go into the meat and other items rather than just coat them.
The second day gravy was a dirty gravy...I took the remaining bones from the smoked turkey and then they were just boiled (a mid boil) for 8 hours. This stock was added to the original gravy and thickened with more roux. It seems like a LOT of work, but this second day, two turkey gravy is flavor like none other!!!! Usually, we use the second day gravy to make turkey tetrazzini (this is better than the original turkey in my book), but this year we did the Turkey Welly.......
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I will add that this stock isn’t just for turkey day. The extra is put into freezer bags to be saved for future meals!
That is one busy recipe Civil. But well worth the work of course. Excellent write up.
thanks MJB! It is very busy but I do it every year cause this stock is also used in the focaccia sausage dressing as well. The bone marrow extraction from the long simmer is magic! I learned the Stock technique from Jacques Pepin’s cook book back in the early 90s! So been doing it this way for nearly 30 years now..... Jacques taught that you first must master making a pure stock then sauces and once these are mastered then you can move on to cooking dishes.......
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