Wild Rice Stuffed Turkey Roast - Dinner edition

Today's lunch was leftovers from our Easter meal, so here's the dinner I made for my family-in-law on Friday. Please note, I made WAY too much food. All this was enough for maybe 10-12 people. Also, this recipe is not for the lazy, you need to be ambitious for this!

Working time: 1-1.5 hours
Cooking time: 2.5 hours altogether


Ingredients
5 turkey thighs, bone in
8 servings of cooked, wild rice and brown rice blend (2 cups of uncooked rice, cooked to package instructions, I bought the President's Choice brand)
4 celery stalks, cleaned
2 onions
4 carrots
5 cloves of garlic
2 cups of mushrooms (whichever kind you want, I had white and cremini) diced
1 cup of dried cranberries
1/2 cup of salt
1/2 cup of sugar
fresh or dried rosemary (maybe 1tsp dried, 1 tbsp fresh)
2 tbsp flour

Tools: A sharp knife, a giant bowl, one or two big baking/lasagna trays, kitchen string cut into 15" lengths, cling wrap or parchment paper, a meat mallet, an instant read thermometer, a friend who doesn't get grossed out about raw meat.

Let's do it!

Gravy part 1 and meat prep
Debone the turkey thighs. Make sure you have a sharp knife. I used my chef's knife. If you have a sharpening stone, sharpen the knife before you start. If you don't, use a sharpening steel, followed by the rough underside of a ceramic cup, wipe the side of the blade along it, both sides. In fact, even if you have a sharpening stone, make sure to do this stuff after, too.

Quick tip: If you don't have a sharpening stone and a good knife and you love to cook, save $100 and buy them. A good chef's knife can be purchased for about $80, and it's worth every penny. My mom bought me a Victorinox as a housewarming gift 10 years ago and I use it every day, for everything. Henkel's twin series is also a good brand. DO NOT skimp on this. If you cook a lot, you need to have a good sharp knife. Otherwise, you're going to give yourself a lot of fatigue and random cuts. There's nothing more dangerous than a dull knife when you're working in the kitchen. In terms of the stone, I mean stone. Get the kind that has two sides, a course and fine side, not the sharpening gadgets. This is a heavy block of rock I'm talking about.

Feel along the underside of the meat, you will feel  the meat come apart along the bone. Follow this with your hands. Rip it apart, slide your knife against the bone to cut the meat away at it. Try to get as much meat off the bone in one piece as you can. Leaving a little meat is fine, the stock (coming up later) will be more flavourful.

Use the bones, garlic, 3 of the carrots and celery, and one onion all chopped coarsely to make the stock. Find a container that will fit all of the meat. Pour in the sugar, salt and rosemary. Dissolve with water and put the meat in. Fill the container until the water covers the meat, and stick it in the fridge, covered with cling wrap, or a plate or whatever. This is called brining. Some people say it helps the meat stay moist and juicy. Some people say that's a load of crap. Personally, I find it works, so I always do it.

Stuffing
Peel the leftover carrot and onion and dice finely, into 1/4 inch cubes. Do the same with the celery and mushrooms. Heat some oil in a big wide saucepan or wok and fry everything until the onion is translucent, and the mushrooms are dark and cooked. Mix this with the rice and cranberries.

Put it all together!
Drain and rinse the turkey. Dry it off with some paper towel. One by one, place the meat skin side down on a cutting board, put cling wrap or parchment paper over it and beat the living hell out of it with the mallet, until it's flattened a bit (but not all mashed up and falling apart). One by one, place the turkey thighs lengthwise (tall) in front of you. Get your friend to cover the bottom 2/3 with a thin later of stuffing (they get the clean job). Press the stuffing down. Roll up the meat and have your friend tie it tight while you hold the roll in place. Put the roll seam down in a baking tray (no grease necessary, it will make enough of its own). Repeat with all the thighs. Make sure you have at least an inch or  two of breathing space between them so they cook evenly. Put the remainder of the stuffing into an ovenproof dish.  Bake the roasts at 350ºF.

After half an hour, I like to turn everything around to make sure it bakes evenly. It's a good idea to keep an eye on the stuff after half an hour, I was using a convection oven and it baked perfectly in an hour. Put the stuffing in when you turn the trays around. All ovens are different, so make sure you check every 15 minutes after the first half hour. They're ready when the thermometer reads 165ºF in the middle. Take them out and move them to the serving dish. Let them sit untouched while you make the gravy. Turn off the oven and let the stuffing (and any sides you made) sit in the hot oven.

Gravy part 2


Quick tip: My mother-in-law showed me the most brilliant way to skim the fat. You put all the stock, juices and fat into a glass dish and let the fat float to the top. Then you take a turkey baster and suck up all the stock and juices and put it in another container, leaving all the fat at the top! Genius!

Pour 2 tbsp of the fat into a saucepan or pot on medium heat. Throw in 2 tbsp of flour and stir around for maybe 4 minutes. Do not let the flour burn. If it's burnt, just start all over. You do NOT want burnt gravy. Pour in the juice/stock mixture in bit by bit, stirring to thicken. Keep going until it's all incorporated. If you're like me, the gravy will be thin at this point, because you don't know how to make thick gravy. But it will taste good, and that's all that matters.

Serve!
Cut the string off the roasts and slice into medallions. Put the gravy on the table. Bask in the compliments.

Basic soup stock

Do you ever find yourself at home in the evenings with nothing to do? No? Well turn off the TV, then. NOW you have spare time, don't you? Why not spend that time doing something really good for yourself, like making stock? (Don't worry about missing the latest episode of House. Here's the plot: Someone comes in with a mysterious illness. The team thinks it's one thing and give them treatment, the treatment makes it worse. House deduces that the patient is lying about something. Someone on the team is somehow emotionally involved with this case and disagrees. More treatments, the patient keeps getting worse. They break into the patient's house. The patient's lie is found out through a family member or friend. They still can't cure him/her. Something happens in House's life to set off an epiphany. The patient is cured.)

Why make stock? I realize that stock is really cheap in the grocery store, but it's also full of salt, preservatives and sometimes the dreaded MSG. When I'm cooking something, I save all of the bones (yes, ALL of them. My freezer looks like a fricking crypt) in a large freezer bag. When the bag gets pretty full, I get started. You can also do the same thing with veggies and fresh herbs that are almost on their way out. They won't retain their texture, but they will retain their taste.

Cooking time: 1 hour
Working time: 30-40 minutes


Ingredients:
1-2 Onions, roughly chopped
5 cloves Garlic, peeled and smashed
2 Celery, roughly chopped
2 Carrots, scrubbed and roughly chopped (I don't bother peeling for stock)
Leftover meat and/or bones (unless you're making veggie stock)

1-2 Bay leaf

10 or so whole peppercorns

Salt to taste

Optional: You can add other herbs depending on the flavour that you want. Thyme and rosemary go well with poultry and pork. If you want to make it sort of Thai style, you can also add in ginger, star anise and cinammon sticks. Otherwise, you can keep it simple and use the stock as a base for a variety of stuff.

Let's do it!

Place the meat/bones into the pot and pour in enough water to cover the meat. Bring to a boil and take it down to a simmer. Watch the soup and skim off any oil and gray/brown sludge from the surface. My mom bought me this oil/sludge skimmer from an Asian grocery store, and it works very well for this job. Keep watching and keep skimming until it's all gone. This should take maybe 20 minutes. Feel free to walk away for a few minutes at a time to watch your precious House on PVR.

Toss in the veggies and herbs, and more water if needed to cover everything. Put a lid on it and let simmer for half an hour to an hour. Apparently, at this point veggies no longer impart flavour, so it's time to get it all out. I usually take a large, fine meshed drum sieve and place it in another soup pot. Then I ladle all the meat and veggies out of the soup and into the sieve. (You only need to try pouring everything in the sieve from the pot once to figure out how bad of an idea that is) Press down to extract all the liquid. Toss out the meat and veggies. Pour the rest of the liquid in the pot through the sieve to get any small fragments, herbs, etc.

Simmer the stock uncovered until it cooks down to a concentration of flavour you like. Season with salt and let cool. If there's fat on top, skim it, but I usually find that the initial skimming gets everything out.

Quick tip: A lazy way to skim fat is to put the stock in the fridge overnight. The fat will all rise to the surface and congeal, where you can easily spoon it off. Remember, never pour fat down the drain. We pour it into a jar, and when the jar is full, pour that into a bag (always double or triple bag) and throw it in the garbage. Congealed fat will really mess up your plumbing.

At this point, I'll pour some of the stock into small freezer bags and sterilized 500ml mason jars (and do all the stuff you need to do to preserve soup). The ones in the mason jars will last a couple of weeks in the fridge, and the freezer bagged ones last a few months in the freezer, though I usually go through it all within a couple of months, particularly if I'm on an instant noodle kick.

There you have it! A delicious, healthful stock that you can use for soups, risotto, gravy, stews, etc. without all the sodium and crap in the grocery store ones!