Traditional Thanksgiving dinners should be in my opinion, well, traditional. Turkey, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, a vegetable medley, pumpkin pie and of course, gravy are what I look forward to eat on my favorite holiday of the year.
As we approach Thanksgiving, there are frequent recipes in the newpaper or TV food network episodes about doing something really fancy with the turkey. Such turkey menus might include brining it in holy water with salt from the Dead Sea, stuffing it with chipotle peppers while slathering it outside with blue cornmeal mush with a dash of native sage and mutton fat, smoking it with Palo Santo wood (the incense of the Andes) and frying it in dehydrogenated whale oil. (Okay, I made those up.)
I’ve actually tried the smoking and frying thing, but in the end, my opinion is that it should be cooked very long in an oven to fill the house with that unmistakable Thanksgiving day aroma. (One of my favorite things on Thanksgiving day is to split wood in the back yard on a cold morning, then come into a warm house to savor that aroma.)
The problem with other methods of cooking turkey are that you don’t get those good juices to make my favorite part of the meal — gravy. I think I’ve become a bit of an expert on making it, mostly following the traditional recipe that comes stuffed inside your Butter Ball turkey along with the neck and giblets. It’s a simple but tasty concoction made from flour, milk, salt, pepper and of course, the drippings.
I’ve also experienced some weird variations with gravy. One time a guest spent at least an hour making a gravy out of all sorts of strange ingredients and herbs to produce a concoction that in the end almost tasted like “gravy.” And there was that time that we found a lukewarm gravy with slices of boiled egg swimming in it. To say I was horrified at that sight is an understatement. I later looked it up and found that it might be a “Southern” thing. My late sister Kay from Texas, who was all things Southern and spoke with an impeccable twang in her voice, said she was equally disturbed at the thought of boiled eggs in gravy and said she’d never heard of that deviation.
However, last Saturday, and food article popped up on the Omaha World Herald online site that my Nebraska farm girl wife uses to faithfully follow the Cornhusker football program. The article was about various Nebraska cooks sharing their favorite Thanksgiving recipes. I figured most of them would suggest strange things that I’d never want to try and would steer me away from what I think is my God given right to have traditional Thanksgiving day feast.
But one of those alternate recipes caught my eye. It was from a woman who was from the University of Nebraska Extension Service, a “food safety educator.” Her secret ingredient? Bacon.
“Wrap turkey in a basket weave design with bacon,” says food safety specialist Cindy Brison of the Nebraska Extension Service. Then “Wrap turkey legs with bacon.”
As most of us non-vegetarian guys know, bacon makes everything better, so I’m almost tempted to give it a try. I do think it would be a spectacular looking bird with the basket weave bacon design over the breast and drumsticks twirled in bacon slices. However, I do wonder if the fat and juices from the bacon will add a non-traditional taste to the gravy.
It probably will, but I’m sure it will be better than gravy with boiled egg slices in it.
aero-cordero.com 