As I’ve written before Thanksgiving is one of my very favorite holidays and my preparations are well underway already. I’ve got my chestnuts (ordered online from Allen’s). My turkey is on order (fresh but not free-range) and I’ll pick it up on Wednesday. I’ve got to pick up another turkey tomorrow since I always make one for the Little Brothers of the Poor.
I’ll be up at 4:00am on Thursday morning so I can get a good start on smoking my turkey. I’ve done this for a number of years now and nothing beats a freshly smoked turkey. It’ll be a challenge since it’s unseasonably cold here in Chicago right now.
I’ll be posting more later but here are my posts from last year collected and classified for you:
Recipes
Pie crust
Dressing (also has my complete menu and directions for brining a turkey)
Cranberry Sauce with Zing
Wine recommendations
Live-blogging the cooking
Inspirational resources
What to do with left-over turkey
Turkey chilaquiles salsa verde
Next week I’ll post a soup recipe which is a great use for left-over turkey.
I don’t know that I’ll be able to get up that early. I’m figuring the turkey will go in the smoker around 7am, and in the oven around 1pm. It will have picked up plenty of flavor along the way.
The first time I smoked a turkey for Thanksgiving – back then I used a Weber kettle – four of us had consumed every bite of 22 pound bird by Sunday night.
“We few, we happy few, we band of brothers…”
People who don’t smoke turkeys don’t know what they’re missing. 5:30am is my normal waking time so it’s not too much of a sacrifice.
Can I have the link? I couldn’t find chestnuts in my supermarket this year.
Sure. Here’s my original chestnut post. And here’s the link to Allen’s.
The virtues of buying from Allen’s:
a) I didn’t have one mouldy chestnut.
b) Peeling is so much easier.