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The Thanksgiving Coach - Tips for a Stress-Free Feast

Chef, columnist and cookbook author Andrew Schloss knows that preparing a holiday meal can be a stressful feat for even the veteran home chef.  To help your readers create the Thanksgiving dinner of their dreams without the stress, Schloss has put together the below “Thanksgiving Coach,” which is a playbook of helpful holiday meal tips.

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Devising a fabulous holiday feast is as easy as opening your pantry door.  How’s that you ask? With a little coaching from chef, columnist and cookbook author Andrew Schloss.  As a spokesperson for the Canned Food Alliance, Andy provides helpful holiday cooking tips that will shed minutes off your cooking time, create exciting new twists to old favorites and enhance nutrition.  Soon you will be basking in the admiration of everyone around your table as they are amazed how easily you prepared such a formidable feast.

Make a menu.  Your menu isn’t just a list of your family’s favorite foods; it’s your game plan.  Unless you are a seasoned professional, don’t include more than one item on the menu that requires on-the-spot cooking, and if you are at all uneasy in the kitchen, we advise you to avoid anything that requires last-minute activity – no sautéing green beans or mashing spuds once you’re dressed for dinner.

Include prepared ingredients, like canned foods, to streamline labor.  A can of cranberry sauce is just fruit cooked with sugar; there are no preservatives because canning is a preservation process.  Use that ready-made sauce as a stage to show-off your own creativity.  Chop up an orange (peel and all; remove the seeds) and mix it right in with the canned sauce, or stir in a spoonful of prepared horseradish for a truly succulent condiment for turkey (don’t knock it until you’ve tried it).  You’ll be glad to know studies have shown that canned foods are comparable to their cooked fresh and frozen counterparts in nutrition and flavor.

Use your freezer.  If a recipe can be frozen (and not all can) make it ahead of time.  Many Thanksgiving tip sheets advise you to prepare pies or soups a week ahead and freeze them, but since most items will last for months in the freezer, why wait?  Once you’ve put away the Labor Day picnic leftovers, feel free to start stockpiling for Thanksgiving. 

Cook the turkey to fit your schedule.  There are many ways to cook a turkey, and only some of them require turning on the oven.  They all work well so choose the one that fits your cooking schedule and the equipment you have.  Whichever method you choose, a turkey is done when a thermometer inserted into the thickest part of the thigh (without touching bone) registers 165°F to 170°F.  The following methods are all written for an unstuffed 15 to 18-pound turkey that has been resting at room temperature for about 1 hour and placed on a rack in a roasting pan, without a cover.

·   In the Oven

o  Mom’s method:  350°F for about 4 hours

o  High temperature roasting:  500°F for 2 hours

o  Slow roasting:  400°F for 1 hour; 170°F for 13 hours or more

·   On the grill:  Indirect, medium heat for about 4 hours

·   In a turkey fryer:  350°F for about 1 hour

Turkey tips.  One large turkey yields more meat per pound than two smaller ones because it contains less bone.  However it will be easier to roast small birds evenly than large ones, which will cook longer at the surface before the interior is done.  Roasting on a rack allows heat to circulate around all sides of a turkey helping it to cook more evenly.

·   Roast a lot.  If you’re already using the oven to roast the turkey, take advantage of any extra room for baking canned sweet potatoes, white potatoes or other root vegetables.  While the turkey is resting after roasting use the residual heat in the oven to warm rolls for dinner or a pie for dessert.  According to the 2005 Dietary Guidelines, vitamin A is one of the essential nutrients that is likely to be consumed by adults in amounts low enough to be of concern.  Sweet potatoes are an excellent source of vitamin A, while other sources include canned apricots, carrots, kale and turnip greens.

·         Make the gravy early.  There is no reason to spend your last few frenzied minutes before sitting down to dinner getting the lumps out of gravy.  You need two things from a roasted turkey to make gravy – fat and drippings.  Flour is combined with the fat to make a roux to thicken the gravy, canned turkey broth or chicken broth is the liquid, and the drippings add roasted flavor.  Most of the fat comes out of the turkey in the first hour of roasting.  Take advantage of that fact by removing the fat to a sauce pan when it appears so that you can make your gravy early, leaving plenty of time to strain out lumps, if they should occur.  Add the drippings for flavor when the turkey is done.  Many canned broths are available in low-salt varieties if you’re looking to cut back.  

Canned pumpkin is better than fresh pumpkin.  Canned pumpkin purée gives better results with less work than cooking pumpkin from scratch.  This is partially because the canning process helps to breakdown tough fibers and concentrates the flavors of pumpkin more completely than simmering would, but it’s also because canned pumpkin is made from a special breed of pumpkin that is unavailable fresh.  Did you know that it’s also more nutritious?  One-half cup of canned pumpkin contains three times more vitamin A than boiled, mashed, fresh pumpkin.