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An Indoorsman Thanksgiving -- The recipes

ON Magazine

Bird with Bourbon and Brown Sugar Glaze

Whole turkey, 16 pounds

3/4 cup bourbon (Jim Beam works well, is delicious and cheap. Wild Turkey is more Thanksgiving-appropriate and also delicious, but not cheap.)

1/4 cup brown sugar

3 tablespoons brown mustard or 6 tablespoons soy sauce (I'd go with mustard, but The Indoorswoman doesn't like it. So soy sauce is a suitable substitute. You could probably use both; these recipes aren't too strict.)

2 sticks of butter

 

Set your oven to 350 degrees and set that bird into a roasting pan. Mix the bourbon, brown sugar and mustard (or soy sauce) thoroughly in your mixing bowl. Drink it. Just kidding. Use about half of it to baste your bird thoroughly, coating it with the mixture and squirting a bunch of it under the skin and into the cavity. Cut a stick of your butter into pats and place them all over the bird. Throw that baby in the oven.

Cooking is going to take about 4 hours, so you'll need to keep the bird moist by basting it every 20 minutes or so. At first you'll use the remaining glaze. But as your bird cooks and you run out of glaze, you'll be able to draw the juice in the pan with your baster and use that. Add a pat or two of butter every once in a while, too. Butter is good.

When the bird is cooked, use the baster to suck up all that juice. Save it in a bowl and add a little flour to thicken it. That's your gravy, which will taste faintly of bourbon and brown sugar.

 

Helpful hints:

* A day before cooking, unwrap your frozen bird and throw it in a 5-gallon bucket. Cover it completely with saltwater and ice, seal it up and let it thaw in there overnight. This is called brining, and it'll make for a moister bird.

* Once your bird is thawed and you're ready to cook, remove the giblets and neck from the cavity. I just throw this stuff away, but some people add it to the stuffing or gravy. Weirdos.

* Feel free to adjust your oven temperature between 325 and 375, depending on how the cooking is going. You need your internal temperature, measured with a meat thermometer, to hit 180 degrees when the bird is done. And you don't want the skin burning before that happens. So adjust accordingly.

* Before you start any of this, make yourself an Old-Fashioned. (See Old-Fashioned recipe.)

 

Spectacular Antipasto Salad

1 bag of prewashed leafy greens from the store. Or, if you're into doing extra work, a couple of heads of leafy lettuce.

1 pint grape tomatoes

1 red onion (Really, you're only going to use about 1/10 of this.)

1 small jar of green olives stuffed with garlic

1 half-pound ball of fresh mozzarella

1/4 pound hard salami

1/4 pound ham

1 bell pepper (I suggest an orange pepper, for color variety and sweetness.)

8 to 10 whole pepperoncinis

 

Seriously, you need directions for this? It's a salad. Chop up all that stuff and put it in the bowl. Arrange it nicely to make a good impression if you want. Serve with balsamic vinaigrette or Italian dressing.

 

Helpful hints:

* Disregard the above instruction to "chop up" all the stuff, and leave the grape tomatoes, olives and pepperoncinis whole. They're better that way.

* Only use a few slices of the onion. Those red onions are potent, and you don't want to overpower the rest of the ingredients. Also, slice the onion as thin as you possibly can. Like, paper thin. Ally McBeal thin.

* If you're looking for a salad that's low in fat and calories, this is not it.

* If you've finished the Old-Fashioned you made while prepping the turkey, mix yourself a Michelada. (See Michelada recipe.)

 

Stuffing with Mild Italian Sausage

1 box of stove-top stuffing mix (Note: I'm using "stove-top" as an adjective here, not a brand name, although I actually did use Stove Top.)

4 mild Italian sausages

 

The Indoorsman doesn't know stuffing, and frankly this was an afterthought. So I just grabbed a box of the fake stuff. Look, I didn't promise you this would be gourmet. Get off my back.

Throw the sausages into a skillet on medium heat, turning them to cook evenly. When they're cooked about halfway, take them out and cut them into slices. Return them to the skillet and cook them the rest of the way. Make your stuffing using the directions on the back of the box. Add the sausage pieces. Voila!

 

Mashed Potatoes

8 to 10 medium-sized russet potatoes

1/2 cup whole milk

1 stick butter

 

Slice your potatoes into quarters and boil them. Drain them, add the milk and butter and get after them with a mashing device (I used a slotted metal spoon). This is a good way to work out any aggression you might have toward potatoes.

 

Helpful hints:

* I leave the skins on because I like the added texture and flavor, but you don't have to.

* Add garlic or grated cheese or salt and pepper or just about anything else you want your mashed potatoes to taste like. Get creative.

* Like 'em smoother, add more milk and butter. Like 'em thicker, add less.

 

Apple Pie

2 frozen pie crusts

5 Golden Delicious apples

1 stick butter

Brown sugar

White sugar

Brownish white sugar

Whitish brown sugar

Ground cinnamon

 

Again, I'm not going to lie to you. I really don't know pie-making, and I unashamedly cheated on this by buying frozen pie crusts. Anyway, the pie turned out great. So stick that in your pipe and smoke it.

Peel your apples and cut them into thin slices. Throw them into one of your pie crusts, add a stick of butter (cut into pats) and a whole bunch of sugar. I really have no idea how much. Let's say, "enough to coat the apples" and agree on that; that's the sort of instruction that feels appropriate in a written recipe. Top with a liberal sprinkling of cinnamon. Then gently set (smash) the other pie crust down on top of the apple-filled one.

Cook for about an hour in a 350-degree oven, watching carefully to avoid burning.

 

Helpful hints:

* Put a cookie sheet underneath your pie in the oven, because that juicy little son-of-a-gun is going to drip. And if you let that juice hit the bottom of your oven, things are going to get smoky.

 

Berry Sauce for Ice Cream

1 pint raspberries

1 pint blueberries

1 pint strawberries

1 cup white sugar

1 stick butter

1 pint water

 

Combine all of the ingredients in a saucepan over medium heat, stirring regularly until it thickens to your liking. Ladle over vanilla ice cream.

 

Helpful hints

* Don't be afraid to use frozen berries or any other fruity odds and ends you've got in the kitchen. I wasn't planning to make an ice cream sauce at all until I found a whole bunch of frozen berries in Ziploc bags in the back of my freezer. They were covered in ice crystals and generally no good for anything else, but they made a killer sauce.

* For a nonfat version, omit the butter. Also, if you do use butter and you refrigerate your unused portion, be ready for that butter to separate and rise to the top. If that happens, just reheat it before using it again.

 

Old-Fashioned (cocktail)

3 ounces bourbon (or rye)

1 sugar cube

Angostura bitters

Orange peel

Ice

 

There are a million ways to make an Old-Fashioned. Some recipes call for orange wedges and maraschino cherries. Some call for seltzer water. I like to keep it simple.

Start by dropping your sugar cube into a heavy-bottomed, short rocks-style glass -- this is actually called an Old-Fashioned glass. Add four or five dashes of bitters. Throw in a spoonful of water to help dissolve the sugar and stir until it's pretty well dissolved. Add ice and bourbon. Stir it up. Cut a thin slice of orange peel, twist it over the glass and drop it in. It's like Thanksgiving in a glass.

 

Helpful hints:

* Experiment a little. You think you might want an orange wedge squeezed in there? That's fine. If you prefer the smoothness of Irish whiskey to the bite of bourbon and rye, make yourself an Irish Old-Fashioned. Play around a bit till you figure out how you like it.

* Eat something first, because these babies pack a wallop. In fact, if you're mixing yourself a second Old-Fashioned, go ahead and plan on staying in for the rest of the day.

 

Michelada (Beer Cocktail)

1 can of cheap beer

1 quarter lime

Tabasco

 

Some people add tomato juice, Clamato, Worcestershire sauce, celery salt and all manner of other business. Again, I like to keep it simple. And I haven't found a better use yet for Pabst Blue Ribbon.

Pour a beer, squeeze the quarter of lime into it. Throw in 4 to 10 dashes of Tabasco, depending on how hot you want it. Stir.

 

Helpful hints:

* If you like salt as much as The Indoorsman does -- it's my favorite food -- rub the lime around the rim of your glass and salt the rim before you pour your beer.

* If some party guest is giving you all kinds of jibber-jabber about how they make this drink better than you do, they're probably right. So let them make you one.

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