Perfect Gravy

Perfect Gravy

Making gravy is not difficult if you follow these easy steps.  My preference is to create a roux with cornstarch.  I also add heavy cream to my special gravy.  If you have chicken or turkey stock on hand, this will enrich your gravy.  Follow these easy steps.

Ingredients:

Pan drippings from turkey roaster (I do mine right in the roasting pan)

2 to 3 cups of chicken/turkey stock

Cornstarch roux (1 tbl. of cornstarch mixed with cold stock or water)

Salt & pepper

Heavy cream

After removing turkey from roasting pan, set roasting pan over large burner over low heat.  Using a wooden spoon, stir the bottom to loosen the browned bits on the bottom of the pan.  Add stock and stir slowly to incorporate everything.  Mix your roux using a fork in a measuring cup.  There should be no lumps at all.  Slowly add the cold mixture to your gravy and use your wooden spoon to blend everything together.  Add cream (eyeball it) and taste.  Should be creamy and delish

Brosseau Family Stuffing

BROSSEAU FAMILY STUFFING

As the story goes, this meat stuffing has been handed down generations in my mother's family as the go to stuffing with turkey.  It became so popular as our family grew that my mother had to triple the recipe to accommodate everyone.  It is simply five ingredients and quite easy to do.  The secret ingredient is Bell's Seasoning (you can buy it on Amazon).  

Ingredients:

3 lbs. of ground meat (1/2 beef and 1/2 pork)

2 Large onions, diced

2 bunches of celery with leaves

6 to 8 Yukon gold potatoes, cooked and cubed

Salt and Pepper

Bell's Seasoning

In a really large dutch oven, put butter and olive oil, and diced veggies.  Saute until translucent.  Salt and pepper, remove from pot but retain juices at bottom.  Brown ground meat slowly (salt and pepper added) and prepare potatoes at same time (to cut prep time in half, buy prepared potatoes).  Remove pan from heat when meat is browned.  Allow everything to cool at room temperature.  Mix veggies, meat and potatoes.  When the entire stuffing mixture is cool to cold, add the Bell's, sprinkling carefully and tasting as you sprinkle.  (The seasonings will intensify when you warm the stuffing back up.)  You want the mixture to taste mildly seasoned.  Add salt and pepper if necessary.  Place in a buttered Corningware dish.  Bake at 300F for about 30 minutes.  Serve hot.  

Easy Aspic

Easy Aspic

This is epic.  Three ingredients.

1/2 can of Beef Consomme

2 cold cups of Raspberry Jello

1 nip of Chambord

Blend in blender.  

Allow to chill a little before covering something.  Garnish with fresh raspberries.

Pâté

Pâté

Pâté is truly easy to make if you can find processed brunschweiger liver.  You can combine flavors, both savory and sweet, and incorporate whatever you like.  The only tools you need are a fork and mini food processor.  Be creative in mixing ingredients you and your family and friends enjoy.  Call it a house dip because many folks reject liver without a good reason.

Ingredients:

8 ounces of Oscar Mayer Brunschweiger Liver Sausage

8 ounces of whipped cream cheese

1 tbl. Of salted butter

10 garlic cloves

3 shallots

1 Nip of Chambord or fruit flavored alcohol

Add other ingredients to taste such as bacon; berries; mangoes, etc.

Mix all ingredients together and blend well.  Add the chopped other ingredients to taste.

If you feel ambitious, put the pâté in a mold sprayed with Pam before refrigeration.  After four hours, unmold onto a plate covered with plastic wrap.  Put back in fridge for an hour.  Cover with your favorite aspic recipe or fruit aspic.  Decorate with fresh berries after refrigerating overnight.

Outrageously Easy Canapes

Cheesy Pecans

Ingredients:

Pecan halves

Cheese in a can (Nabisco Easy Cheese)

Spray each pecan half with cheese.  

Cranberry Orange Relish

The key to this delicious relish or side dish is superfine sugar.  For those unfamiliar with superfine sugar, it is used to make cocktails (also referred to as bar sugar) but you can buy it in your market.  If it is not with the regular sugar, make a point to ask for it.  This is my first choice for baking and cooking because it dissolves quickly.

Ingredients:

1 12 oz. bag of fresh cranberries

1 large fresh orange, quartered

1/2 to 1 cup of superfine sugar

1 nip of Chambord 

1 nip of orange liquer

Put everything in a saucepan.  Leave the berries alone, don't squash them.  Simmer for about one half hour.  Allow to cool and refrigerate.  Remove orange quarters before serving.  (Reserving orange peels and cutting them into cute shapes makes for pretty presentation.)

Turkey Gravy

Turkey Gravy made without Drippings

If you don't use an oven to cook a turkey, it frees up your oven space for all other things.  This leaves many cooks wondering how to make home-made gravy separately.  My grandmother, Lucy, owned a turkey farm.  It was her belief that the tastiest part of the turkey was the neck.  I decided to use turkey necks for the base of my Thanksgiving gravy to make ahead and freeze (one less thing to do on Thanksgiving Day).  Here is the recipe.  

Turkey Gravy

Butter and butter flavored spray

Three turkey necks*

Salt, pepper and garlic powder

3 cups of chicken or turkey stock

1 bottle of Heinz turkey gravy

Sauté the turkey necks in the butter over low heat.  Sprinkle  spices over the necks, then spray with the butter spray.  Turn over after about 30 minutes and continue cooking over low heat until the turkey necks are golden brown on both sides.  Lower heat to simmer and pour in the chicken or turkey stock and the Heinz gravy.  Simmer for several hours.  Turn heat off, leave on stovetop overnight.  In the morning, simmer again for several hours. 

Take off heat.  Remove turkey necks and discard them.

*Note that I went to my local turkey farm for fresh turkey necks.   You can also freeze the necks from commercially sold turkeys, allow them to thaw and work the gravy with them.  I also added heavy cream and a tablespoon of butter when finishing the gravy.