My Best Traditional Holiday Meal Ever

On the 21st of November 2022 my son, spouse and I made our best ever traditional USA holiday meal. We invited two friends over and prepared the turkey and trimmings. Here are the recipes and how we timed everything, so all could sit down and eat at the same time.

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Planning the Holiday Meal

When planning a holiday meal I take into consideration not only what I have on hand, what needs to be bought, but also the serving sizes and dietary needs of those joining us in the celebration. Beyond those considerations, I also plan on having each person taking home enough leftovers to have a meal or two afterwards.

Serving Sizes + Diets

For the turkey we figured 1# per person for the meal, plus another pound to take home as leftovers. So 2# per person, 5 diners, would require a 10# turkey. We upped it to 15# for the maximum size, given we wanted leftovers for us and the dogs; plus the advertised weight of the turkey includes the bones.

Potatoes and sweet potatoes were simple, we just did 1 of each per person. Although I did want leftover mashed potatoes, so added a few more to my estimate. For the sweet potatoes, half of one would be a serving, as they are stuffed with additional goodies.

Since I was entertaining a vegetarian friend of mine, adding orange lentils to the sweet potato would provide a main protein dish for her. Works well and you cannot really tell that it is in the dish.

For the dressing we bought two cornbread boxes, for I figured I’d have to make three versions: 1) gluten-free vegetarian, 2) mushroom free, and 3) everything.

Cooking the Holiday Meal

Three Days Ahead – Shopping

We bought a smaller, fresh, and unseasoned turkey that was as close to 15# as we could find. There were plenty to have, but my goodness were they all expensive. Even the Industrial Farmed turkeys like Butterball were higher than I have ever seen them cost. We also bought two links of Italian hot sausage to use in the dressing.

Experts claim buying fresh turkey will result in a more tender and moist dish, than cooking a frozen one.

I use foods that I grow as often as possible, so I used dried thyme from my garden last year, but bought fresh tarragon and sage. We used lemons from our tree, but as we do not have an orange tree we had to buy 3 navel oranges. I had a bag of cranberries in the freezer from last year, but also had some frozen blueberries we picked earlier this year from our bushes.

My spouse bought 9 medium sized russet potatoes, and 4 large Beureguard sweet potatoes, along with 2 yellow onions and 1 garlic head. For greens we picked up 2 bundles of red chard, and 1 bundle of brocolinni. We also picked up some dairy, 1# unsalted European butter, sour cream, and Parmesan cheese.

Everything else was already in our pantry or fridge.

Two Days Ahead of Dinner

Turkey: For five people we bought a small turkey, just under 14#. I decided to dry it with paper towels, and then spatchcocked the turkey two days ahead of time. I dry rubbed it with some kosher salt and a bit of pepper. Then left it in the fridge uncovered, yet safely placed in a pan on the bottom shelf.

_{Turkey bone broth. Unattributed photo.}

Turkey Bone Broth: The offal package included a small liver and gizzard which I chopped into smaller bits. Then I cut out the backbone (as part of spatchcocking), the fatty tail, the wingtips, and bits of extra fat I did not want. However, it was not enough to pre-make a turkey bone broth, so I went to the local natural grocery store and asked for turkey necks. They had a bundle of three so I bought those.

I dried off all the meat bits, seasoned with salt and pepper, and then roasted the turkey parts, flipping over halfway so everything had a chance to brown. Once done, I put the charred parts and all the fat drippings into my soup pot, added 2 quarts of water and brought to a boil. Took off the scum, and settled the heat down, so the water was at a low simmer. Then lidded it and cooked for 28 hours on low heat, with the lid on.

I clip off the wing tips for I do not want them to burn or char, and want the parts for making the broth. Minimally they should always be folded back, or hidden so they do not burn.
Since I did not use a slow cooker, but made broth on the stovetop this year, we checked the pot every so often through the night to make sure there was still water, and that everything looked okay.
Bone Broth Ingredients: I only use turkey bones, fats, or skin in making a turkey bone broth. That means no veggies or additional seasoning of any kind.

At hour 28 I moved the bone broth into containers and into the fridge. Any meat from the bones was picked off and saved for adding to the dog food, which meant I composted only a couple of hand fulls of bones. Nothing went to waste.

Day Before Dinner

_{Twice baked sweet potatoes, topped with pecans or walnuts. Photo from PattyCooks.}

Since the sweet potato dish is twice cooked, I decided to prep them up until the second cooking state. I cut the 5 sweet potatoes in half lengthwise, oiled the flesh side, and placed flesh down on a parchment lined baking sheet. The sheet went into a 350F preheated oven for 1 hour. Then once soft I pulled them from the oven to cool.

Meanwhile I cooked a half cup of orange lentils in broth and toasted some walnuts as a topping. Finally cool enough, I removed the flesh from the skins, added to a bowl with the lentils, zest of one orange, juice of one orange, and maple syrup; then mixed the ingredients well. Added a bit of salt and pepper, tasted and adjusted as needed. Then refilled the skins, with the walnuts on top and placed on a clean parchment lined baking sheet ready for the oven. This went into the fridge for cooking tomorrow.

_{For turkey I use sage, tarragon, and thyme.}

I made herbed butter from one bar of butter, with sage, tarragon and thyme. Set into the fridge for use tomorrow.

Herbed Compound Butter: Bring one stick of non-salted European butter to room temperature. Add 3T chopped fresh tarragon, 3T chopped fresh sage, 2T dried thyme. Then mix together well, roll in some parchment paper and put back into the fridge. Take out a couple of hours before you are ready to butter the turkey so it gets soft again.
Cooking Technique: Smearing an appropriate herbal or spiced butter on the outside of the turkey, and under the skin, will result in juicier and more tender turkey. The same technique can be used for chicken meat for a tender meat.

For the dressing I placed the contents of the cornbread dressing into three bowls so I would not forget I was making three versions. Then cut up all the ingredients.

First I cooked the sausage by removing the meat from the casings and made sure to cook it well. That went into one container. Then I chopped up the mushrooms into the chunks I wanted and put that into another container. Then everything else went into a large bowl: sliced celery and leaves, diced onions and garlic, chopped zucchini, chopped tarragon and sage, dried thyme, and chopped chestnuts. Everything went into the fridge ready to be assembled the next day.

Dressing: Dressing is a bread-based umami casserole, softened with broth and cooked in the oven.
Stuffing: This is a dressing that is placed inside a bird (turkey or chicken mainly), and cooked in the oven absorbing the drippings from that meat.

The Day of Celebration Feast

I removed the herbed butter to thaw and made myself some tea. Over a light breakfast I thought of how long to cook the turkey.

I had heard somewhere to calculate ~15min per pound for a stuffed turkey at 350F, so 15min x 14# would be ~3.5 hours.
But I was not stuffing a bird, and was spatchcocking, so thought I should reduce the amount of cooking time to 10min x 14# would be ~2.5 hours.

_{A spatchcocked turkey covered in an herbed butter.}

Eventually, breakfast was over, and I pulled the turkey from the fridge. Luckily, my son took over smearing the herbed butter all over the turkey, including under the skin on the breast and thighs.

Then it was placed on a rack in a roasting pan with 3” sides, which went into the 425F oven for 30min for initial browning.

At 30min we removed the turkey and decided it was not browned enough, so it went back in for another 15 minutes.
At 45min the turkey looked better, so we basted it with fresh bone broth, turned the heat down to 350F and it went in for 45min.
At 90min we checked again and basted, and back in for 30min.
At 120min we did the last basting and it looked close to done so we cooked for another 30 min.
At 150min (2.5 hours) the turkey was out of the oven, covered with parchment paper, and we let it sit for 15 more minutes.

Meanwhile we cooked the orange cranberry sauce on the stove, by emptying a bag of frozen cranberries, adding 1/2C organic sugar, the zest of one orange, and the juice from 2 oranges. I turned the heat on medium to get the contents bubbling, then turned down to a simmer, and put the lid on.

My spouse raised concern that it did not look like enough for everyone, so my son added ~1C of frozen blueberries we had picked earlier this year from our garden bush, and 1/4C of water. We cooked the sauce until the cranberries popped (reason for the lid) and the sauce thickened. Then moved the little pot toward the back of the stove to stay warm from the oven heat.

At some point in the last hour of cooking we put the stuffing together and placed those three dishes in the oven. I sautéd the onions and garlic in a little bit of butter and then divided those up among the three dressing bowls and added all the ingredients to the apprpriate dressings.

Everything Dressing: Cornbread, aromatics (red onions and diced garlic), herbs (tarragon, sage, thyme), seasoning (kosher salt and freshly grated pepper), cooked Italian hot sausage, diced mushrooms, chopped chestnuts, chopped celery and celery leaves and finally some diced zucchini. Liquid was butter and turkey bone broth.
Gluten-free vegetarian Dressing: Everything BUT, no sausage, use mushroom-veggie broth.
Mushroom Sensitivity: Everything BUT, no mushrooms, use turkey bone broth.

At this time my spouse was peeling the potatoes, cutting each one into 6ths, and putting them into a pot of slightly salted water. The heat was turned on to high to get the water boiling, then turned down a bit so it was a medium boil. The pot was lidded, and my son and I worked on other dishes while it was cooking, while my spouse was setting the table.

My son took over making the dish once the potatoes were fork-soft. He drained the water at the sink by pouring everything into a metal colander, and then putting the potatoes back into the pan via squishing them through a ricer.

Fork-soft means if you push the fork into the food, it will go into the object quickly and easily with little to no resistance.
Using a ricer for mashed tuber-type food is great, as it provides a maximum surface area for the absorption of liquids like butter, broth, sour cream, milk, etc.

He decided to add salt, pepper, butter, sour cream, minced garlic, some grated Parmesan, and milk to the mix. Then he put the lid back on, and parked the mashed potatoes on the stove top near the back to also stay warm and to keep the cheese melted.

If you are still cooking in the oven and need to keep other dishes warm, keep them in a pot or pan and place on the stove top on the back burners for that is one area an oven will release heat and it is an easy way to keep dishes warm, to outright hot depending upon the oven setting.

Broccolini with lemon and small grated bits of Parmesan cheese.

While the mashed potatoes were being made, I worked on the broccolini dish which I had seen referenced in a NYT article, but could not read it since I do not have a subscription. So a picture inspired me.

After washing the broccolini, I cut off a bit of the ends, then placed the bundle into a small parchment lined baking dish. I sprinkled some salt and pepper, a minced garlic, some small-grated Parmesan cheese, and added the juice from 1/2 lemon. This was popped into the oven to roast (it does not take long!). Once done it was removed from the baking dish into a serving dish, and I sprinkled some good olive oil on top. It looked great on the table.

_{Red chard, with red stems or stalks, and green with red veined leaves.}

The chard dish was one we cook occasionally and is fairly quick and easy.

We cut off the ends of the stalks, then separated the leaves from the stems, and chopped them both. For the red stalks, we cut ~1/2” to 1” segments and kept those to one side. Then the leaves were rolled up and roughly chopped.

To cook we heated the skillet with about 2T olive oil, and once hot added 2 minced garlic cloves. The goal was to infuse the oil with a bit of the great garlic aroma and taste. Then we added the chopped stalks as they needed to cook a bit longer than the leaves. After about a minute or two of stirring, we added the leaves and tried to flip them over so that we could wilt the leaves and get some of the garlic and olive oil on as many of the leaves as we could.

After a bit, we added 1/4C water and placed a lid over the skillet to allow the food to steam. Once everything was wilted, we removed the food from the skillet to a serving dish.

The last thing to make was the gravy. We placed the large turkey pan over two burners that we turned on low, and my son and I stirred the juices. I added rice flour and while I was whisking, he was scraping up parts from the bottom of the pan with a spatula. Together we stood there carefully whisking and scraping as the flour combined broth and fat into a thickened gravy. My son tasted it to see if we needed to add any additional flavors, and he was pleased the way it was, so he took the pan and scraped the gravy into our gravy boat for the table, and a container headed for the fridge.

We were ready to eat.

Holiday Dinner Party

The last bit of food was removed from the oven, all the dishes were placed either on the table or our serving counter, the turkey breast was carved (the dark meat was too hard to carve so I just let them stay on bone), the types of dressings were described so folks knew what to take, and everyone gathered their food and sat down to eat.

We started by toasting with a wonderful bottle of Brut, and ended with dessert of an apple crumble with vanilla ice cream, and chocolates.

After dinner I realized we had not cooked the biscuits, but we were all so full it didn’t matter. So they were cooked the next day to add something unique to the left overs.

Our toast was: to friends and family with gratitude and hopes for a good and healthy year.

—Patty