Chicken Larb (Laotian Chicken and Herb Salad)
At our house, we call this skeleton soup. It wouldn't be Thanksgiving weekend without the lush aromas of this broth filling the kitchen. My mother says she started making it back in the Depression. "We couldn't afford to waste anything. Besides, the soup is delicious." You could freeze the broth, to use later in homemade soups. But usually, it's so good on it's own, we finish it all up by midweek.
Are you roasting a whole turkey for the first time this year? Or perhaps you've done this many times before, but you want a quick refresher to brush up on the basics? We'll help you make your mama proud with these step-by-step instructions for roasting a delicious turkey. Here's our super basic, super simple, super easy tutorial for roasting a super beautiful turkey this Thanksgiving.
This is a perfect post-Thanksgiving dish when you have left over turkey and ham.
Ingredients
This new recipe includes a technique I've been using for years: roasting the turkey in two stages. I do this because of the Big Turkey Problem: while you're waiting for the turkey's dark meat to cook (which takes longer), the white breast meat dries out. My solution: cook the bird until the breast is still juicy, remove the bird from the oven, and carve off the two sides of the breast. Put the bird back in the oven -and while the dark meat's finishing, serve a white-meat first course. Twenty minutes later, you can serve a dark-meat second course. And you get to drink two wines with this main course: I always like to serve a white wine with the white-meat course and a red wine with the dark-meat course. By the way: the honey-pepper rub burnishes the big bird beautifully.
Brining turkey makes it more succulent, more tender and well-seasoned throughout. I offer two curing procedures, one for those who've got the space to wet-cure the whole bird in the refrigerator, and a wet-then-dry method where refrigerator space is limited. The first method yields the very best results, but the second method still makes startlingly juicy, tasty roast turkey.
Whole fried turkey is the best illustration I know of just how delicious and greaseless fried food can be.
Ingredients
Use a large, shallow pan, not a turkey roaster, and nurture the bird with its own juices by basting often, and I think you'll like the results.