Cooking on the bright side of life

During my time studying abroad in the US, I fell in love with Thanksgiving food. My college roommate took me home with her over fall break and I got to experience the full small town Wisconsin thanksgiving weekend. Milking cows, hunting, and all. Ever since then, I make a thanksgiving dinner for my husband and myself once a year. There’s just one problem: 2 people can’t possibly eat a whole turkey. Therefore, I have created a downscaled version: a stuffed turkey breast, that I serve with a cranberry sauce, mashed sweet potatoes, and coleslaw. For the dessert, I have also created a muffin-sized version of a pumpkin pie.

Low-temperature cooking

Especially for poultry, I prefer the low-temperature cooking method. That means, after searing the meat, it slowly roasts in the oven at 80°C. This has several advantages:

• Once your meat is in the oven, it takes time but this is a low maintenance method. You don’t need to baste the meat or worry about overcooking it.
• This guarantees that your core-temperature can’t go above 80°C, even if it stays int he oven longer than needed. So your dinner time is flexible.
• Juicy meat and no risk of it drying out while in the oven!

Your only risk is, that the meat might take longer than anticipated. Therefore, my advice is to put your meat into the oven with a bit of a time buffer (at least 30 minutes).

Stuffed Turkey Breast

The perfect Thanksgiving recipe for a smaller household

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Servings: 4 Servings

Course: Hauptgericht

Cuisine: Amerikanisch

Ingredients Equipment Method Notes

Ingredients

  

• 1 Turkey breast 800-1000g

Stuffing

• 5 slices Toast whole grain or rye, diced
• 1 Apple diced
• 1 stalk Celery chopped; keep the green leafs and also chop
• 1 Onion diced
• 1 clove Garlic crushed
• 100 g Bacon bits
• 5 g Thyme
• 5 g Parseley finely chiopped
• 100 ml chicken stock
• Salt, Pepper
• Clarified butter/ghee or vegetable oil

Equipment

• Cooking thermometer I highly recommend this to make sure your are not over or undercooking your turkey

Method

 

1. 2 hours before, take the turkey breast out of the fridge.
2. Start by dicing the onions. Heat butter/oil in a pan (should be big enough to hold the turkey breast) on medium heat. For me, that's 5 out of 9. Add the onions and bacon bits and let brown slowly while prepping the rest of the ingredients for the stuffing. Stir occasionally. Overall, this will take about 15-20 minutes. Don't rush it by turning up the heat, this will turn your onions bitter.
   
3. When the onions are golden brown, add celery and apples. After about 2 minutes add crushed garlic, briefly wait for it to become fragrant, then stir. Now add the diced toast and roast for another 2 minutes. Add approximately half of the chicken stock and stir. If the toast can absorb more moististure add remaining chicken stock. Add the herbs and chopped celery leaves and season with salt and pepper. Set stuffing aside to cool.
   
4. In the mean time, trim the meat if needed and cut a pocket into your turkey breast. Do this from the thicker end and cut carefully to make sure you don't cut wholes into the surface. Season the insde with salt.
   
5. Heat your oven to 80°C. Make sure this is actually 80! For my oven that means setting it to 90.
6. Once the stuffing has cooled, stuff the turkey breast. If you're like me, and you don't have kitchen string, you can close the turkey breast with toothpicks X's. But be careful when serving the meat so you don't end up with a piece of toothpick in your mouth.
   
7. Wipe the stuffing pan with a paper towel to remove any small stuffing bits that could burn. Then add butter/oil to the pan and set to high heat (for me 7 out of 9). Sear the turkey breast from all sides for 2 minutes each. There should be no raw patches left.
   
8. Add the turkey breast to a roasting pan. If you have some stuffing left over, add it as a bedding for the turkey. Add the cooking thermometer from the thick end, so that it's placed relatively central, without inserting it into the stuffed part. Put the roasting pan into the oven. A turkey breast with 800-1000g will take about 4 hours. If the temperature on the thermometer is below 65 after 2 hours, increase temperature to 100 and keep and eye on it.
9. While your turkey breast is slowly oasting, you have time to prepare your sides and dessert.
10. The final core tempreature should at least be 75°C. Keep in the oven at 80°C until your sides are ready. Plate the sides first (ideally on pre-heated plates) and then cut the meat and serve it. Since it has 'only' 80°C it will cool a bit faster than a roast cooked with a high-temperature method.

Notes

If you don’t want to to the low-temperature cooking method, you can roast the turkey breast at 140°C for approximately 1.5 hours. In that case, I recommend to add 100-200ml of chicken stock to the roasting pan. But it will likely not turn out as moist as with the low-temp method.

Of course, thanksgiving wouldn’t be complete without the Cranberry sauce:

Cranberry sauce

The perfect sauce for your turkey

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Ingredients Method

Ingredients

  

• 200 g fresh cranberries washed
• 70 g cane sugar
• 200 ml water

Method

 

1. Add water and sugar to a small pot on medium heat.
2. Add the cranberries and bring to a boil.
   
3. Reduce to low heat (for me 3 out of 9), and simmer for 10-15 minutes, until cranberries are soft and the sauce has thickend a bit.