Thanksgiving was wonderful this year. We've had some struggles with a family member in the past, which has made family gatherings difficult over recent years. Thankfully, some of those things have recently been worked through and resolved so it made this gathering more comfortable than we've had in quite some time.
We hosted at our house and Brandon and I took charge of the turkey mashed potatoes. The kids and I also made some pies.
As I was evaluating my recipes I was remembering that when I used to blog more regularly that I would document what recipes I used to I could go back to them in the future. And let me tell you, the turkey brine we used we definitely want to revisit. I went with a much simpler brine this year and liked it so much better than what we used last year.
So, the recipe inspiration came from this recipe at Taste of Home. Citrus & Herb Turkey Breast. We cooked two 12 pound turkeys. So, I doubled the brine and then just added enough water to cover the turkeys. After letting the turkey brine overnight Tuesday and through most of the day Wednesday I pulled them out and spatchcocked them. This is a fairly easy techinique, even easier when have really good sharp scissors which I did not. I actually broke one of my pairs of kitchen shears trying to cut the bone. Oops. Next step was to rub the herb butter all over the turkeys and then we put them in the fridge until Thursday.
We roasted one turkey in the oven and smoked one turkey on the Traeger. The roast turkey gave me a bit of a headache because our thermometer broke so I couldn't figure out what temperature it was. We tried calibrating it and everything and it kept changing readings. From 140 to 120 to 160. Finally, we took it out to the Traeger and used one of those probes and it read 167. Tada! Perfection!! And it really was delicious, both the turkeys were very delicious.
For the mashed potatoes we bought a potato ricer, in hopes of achieving the creamiest mashed potatoes ever. However, by the time we were making the mashed potatoes I was kind of just ready to eat and didn't give them quite the care and attention (or enough butter) to quite get them to the perfect state. But they were definitely fluffy and did not get gluey at all, which was our main goal.
Finally, the three pies we contributed were key lime pie, fudge brownie pie, and banana cream pie. Banana cream pie has always been my favorite pie for Thanksgiving. I have very vivid memories of making banana cream pie and chocolate cream pie with my mom when I was a kid. So, I will always make banana cream pie, even if no one else eats it. Which, my family loves it, but no one else in Brandon's family had any. Fine by me! More for me! Marie made key lime pie. We add a little cream of coconut to the custard mix and we added a coconut emulsion to the whipped cream It was really delicious. I loved the texture of the custard and I think we'll add a bit more coconut. We were very light handed because we weren't sure how we'd like the coconut. And finally, William made a fudge brownie pie. It was good, but very rich. Ashley brought a tollhouse chocolate cookie pie and all our kids loved that one, so I think we'll do that one in the future and pass on the brownie pie.
Besides the yummy food, we mostly just visited with each other. The kids got a little crazy. We are determined to finish our family room this year so that kids will play down there. We didn't allow cousins in bedrooms and the cousins wouldn't play in the family room, so the kids just ended up under our feet a bit. By the time we host Thanksgiving again, we should have it all finished! Woohoo!
So, here's to a wonderful Thanksgiving and here's to getting it checked off the list. Hurrah!
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