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Thanksgiving tips to make the holiday meal easy and delicious

By Mark Fisher, Staff Writer Updated 7:01 PM Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Thanksgiving isn’t so much a holiday as it is a meal, so we combed through our archives and through the nation’s finest cooking magazines to cull all of the best tips on making your Thanksgiving dinner both easy and noteworthy.

And for good measure, we picked the brains of some knowledgeable and savvy wine retailers to help us recommend wines that will enhance the dinner, discovered a new recipe for a side dish and dusted off a trusted family recipe to make the day even more special.

The turkey

I’m a brining convert — it truly does produce a moist, flavorful bird. This brining recipe comes from Greg Atkinson, chef and author of “The Northwest Essentials Cookbook” (Sasquatch Books, 1999), in a piece he wrote for the Seattle Times in 2002. Atkinson cautions that it’s important that the turkey stay cold during the brining process, lest bacteria spoil the bird. Use ice packs to keep the brine below 40 degrees while the bird soaks. Kosher salt works best. Check labels to make sure your bird has not been pre-basted or brined beforehand, don’t brine longer than the recipe suggests, and if you want to cut down on the salty flavor, rinse the bird thoroughly before roasting (I don’t take that extra step, however, and my turkey was not overly salty). The recipe calls for a 16-pound bird, but the brine will work for turkeys of higher or lower weights.

Brine:

4 cups kosher salt

2 cups brown sugar

2 tablespoons whole black peppercorns

4 bay leaves

1 gallon boiling water

8 pounds of ice cubes

The night before you plan to serve the turkey, wash out a cooler just large enough to hold the bird. Unwrap the turkey and put it in the clean cooler. Remove the giblets. Make the brine: Stir the kosher salt, brown sugar, peppercorns and bay leaves into the boiling water, remove from heat and let the mixture steep for 20 minutes. Stir in enough ice to bring the level of the liquid up to 2 gallons. Pour the icy brine over the turkey and cover the cooler. Allow the turkey to soak in the cold brine for 12 to 24 hours. Use gel packs if necessary to keep the brine below 40 degrees. (Adding more ice would dilute the brine.) Transfer the turkey from the cooler to a roasting pan and discard the brining solution. Roast as per your favorite recipe. Let the turkey “rest” outside the oven for 20 minutes before carving.

Other turkey recipes

Bon Appetit magazine’s Thanksgiving issue included three turkey recipes — Sage Butter-Roasted Turkey with Cider Gravy, Grilled Turkey with Toasted Fennel and Coriander and Fresh Thyme Gravy and Clementine-Salted Turkey with Redeye Gravy — that are viewable on www.bonappetit.com.

Food & Wine Magazine’s November issue spotlights a recipe for Roast Turkey with Lemon and Chives, then gives two “creative” alternatives: Roast Turkey with Fried Sage and Pecans, and Roast Turkey with Pickled Jalapeno-Paprika Gravy. Check www.foodandwine.com/turkey.

Gourmet Magazine’s November issue — the magazine’s final issue before ceasing publication — features a recipe for Cider-Glazed Turkey that blends apple cider with butter and sugar for a last-minute glaze. The recipe is available at www.epicurious.com.

Turkey help

The USDA meat and poultry hot line: (888) 674-6854.

Butterball Turkey Talk Line: (800) 288-8372

Perdue Turkey Tips Hot line: (800) 473-7383

The best wines (and beers) for the Thanksgiving table

The key is to serve fruity, crowd-pleasing wines that match up with the kaleidoscope of flavors that come with the traditional Thanksgiving cuisine. To Mif Frank, who helps guide wine drinkers who come into his family’s Arrow Wine & Spirits Far Hills Avenue store, that means riesling and pinor noir. Specifically, Frank recommends the 2007 Columbia Cellarmaster’s Riesling from Washington State (on sale for $10.99, down from $12.99) and the 2007 Hangtime Pinot Noir ($13.99, down from $15.99).

Dean Breeding, who oversees the Kroger Fresh Fare wine shop at East Stroop and Shroyer roads in Kettering, tasted through several wines in order to recommend a little something for every palate. The winners were the Loosen Bros. 2008 Riesling ($13.99), the drier 2007 Hess Collection Chardonnay ($10.99, down from $14.99), the 2008 Mark West Pinot Noir ($11.99, down from $14.99), and a more robust red, the 2007 Cline Ancient Vines Zinfandel ($15.99, down from $18.99).

“I plan on having a couple of bottles of each of these wines at my house Thursday,” Breeding said.

Here’s another option: The 2009 Nouveau Beaujolais light and fruity red wines that just came out last week received a lot of positive advance buzz for their quality and would also fit right in on the Thanksgiving dinner table.

If your tastes run more toward the hops-and-barley beverage, Food Network Magazine’s November issue recommended what it called “top notch beers” as alternatives to wine at the holiday table, including the Chimay Red, Ommegang Hennepin, Southern Tier Imperial Pumpkin Ale and Rogue Morimoto Imperial Pilsner.

Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2258 or mfisher@DaytonDailyNews.com.

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