Lemon Pepper Cream Gravy
Super Simple Thanksgiving
Having come from an Irish family, celebrations at our house were big. Counting kids and adults, we’d usually clock in at about 20 people.
For Thanksgiving that meant a 20 to 25 pound turkey. That was one big bird. In fact, it took up most of the oven.
Thanksgiving offerings were simple. There were just too many kids running around to accomplish more. Besides that, when I was in my early teens my mother was a part-time cook for a couple of half way houses so I can remember Thanksgivings when we did up to three dinners in one day! So simple it is. But simple doesn’t mean boring, or flavorless.
I’m going to endeavor to offer up ideas we used for a super simple Thanksgiving that included all you needed to feel like it was a celebration meal, without all the hassle or stress.
For the turkey, I turn to the basics of Betty Crocker. I still have one of their cookbooks that’s about 50 years old. Betty says a 20 pound turkey is going to take about seven hours at 325 degrees. So just back out your timing to when you want to have dinner and add 30 minutes. Getting away with the very least, all you have to do is wash and pat the turkey dry. Maybe sprinkle sea salt in the cavity and put it in the roasting pan. I’d spray or rub on olive oil and sprinkle sea salt and pepper on top or maybe some kind of meat rub in case you want more flavor in your skin which will translate to flavor in your gravy, too. Pop that baby on the rack placed close to the bottom of the oven. (The turkey has to clear the cooking element.) When the turkey starts to look a little past golden on the outside you can tent it with a piece of aluminum foil. Basting is optional. Cook it until a meat thermometer stuck in the fat part of the breast reaches 185 degrees. Then plan to let it sit on the cutting board or on the platter for about 30 minutes before serving. You can get all kinds of other stuff done while the turkey rests. That’s what makes it juicy. The resting part.
What else do we want to have? I say skip the dressing. You risk food poisoning when you cook the dressing in the turkey and it’s just not smart anymore. You can make the dressing in a casserole dish (and go right ahead and do that if you want dressing) but it’s not smart to eat that many carbs either, so I’d skip it, or make a smaller amount and just have a bite. My mom’s dressing came from Betty Crocker’s cookbook too. She cut a loaf of bread into cubes, then added some sautéed celery and onion mixed with melted butter. She seasoned it with salt, pepper and some poultry seasoning. Mix it all with your hands and then bake it. You can find the old recipes online. I loved adding bits of apples and raisins to it. That made it fancy.
What’s next? Vegetables. The easiest dish is to take russet potatoes, scrub them on the outside and poke a few holes in them with a sharp knife. When the turkey is about 1.5 to 2 hours away from being cooked, toss those potatoes around the turkey in the oven. Buy medium-small ones so you know they will be done. When they are out of the oven just cut them in half and serve the halves in a big bowl. What we used to do was scrape the potato out from the skin and crush it with a fork and put on butter. We also used to put a pat of butter in the skin and let it melt and eat that like a bit of a side dish. I loved that part and saved it til the end. Little did I know then that most of the nutrition in a potato is in the skin. So even if I mash potatoes I don’t take the skin off. All I do is scrub, cut into one to two-inch cubes and boil them til they are soft. Add some butter, cream and salt and pepper and hit them with the electric mixer. And voila. This is easiest if the oven is really full. The potatoes can come together ahead of the turkey. That’s less stress. You can even make them ahead and cool them down. Add a little more liquid and re-mash them after you heat them. There is the concept of resistant starch in the research going on now. The theory is you cook your potato and then completely cool it. Reheat and eat. Then the glycemic uptake of the potato is much lower and it’s not digested the same way so you don’t absorb all the carbs. I’m not sure I buy it yet, but if I do make potatoes I now make them ahead and completely cool them. Then I reheat and eat. You can do this with mashed potatoes on Thanksgiving and heat them in a casserole dish covered with foil or even let the top get crunchy.
One of my favorites is acorn squash. My mom used to cut them lengthwise. Stem to bottom (be careful and use a sharp knife). She’d scoop them out and then put salt and pepper in the cavity along with a pat of butter. Those can also be placed on the oven rack around the turkey and take about the same amount of time to cook as the potatoes. I could eat an entire half by myself but for a big dinner, those halves would be taken and cut into wedges and served.
One more veggie. We’d probably boil up some frozen peas. Or green beans. Then butter them. We got sort of hooked on those baby peas with the butter sauce in the plastic pouch but now I just see those as processed food and not a grand idea.
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