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| My finished Butterball turkey breast yesterday |
Longtime followers of this blog know I like turkey.
Not all the time but around "The Holidays" I do like a good slice of dry (yes, "dry") white meat turkey.
You all know we don't do holiday dinners here at Casa Tipton-Kelly. Bill doesn't have any teeth and I'm not going to cook up a big meal just for moi.
Each year I look in askance when I see those turkey dinners being served from aluminum pans to the homeless by local politicians doing their goodwill thing during "The Holidays". Mostly those people they're serving turkey with all the fixings are homeless or older poor people who have no family. Well, I do qualify in the latter category. Dare I say I'm to the only one who experiences these feelings during "The Holidays." Even some of the readers of this blog may experience similar feelings. Maybe one years I'll show up at the local feel good charity feeding station and get my turkey dinner, with all the fixings. But this year I tried to make my own turkey dinner.
I wasn't planning on making a Thanksgiving turkey. I actually stumbled into roasting a turkey. I happened to be at my local fav supermarket and I saw fresh turkeys drastically marked down. And I mean DRASTIC. The price of turkeys and all that turkey always dissuaded me from actually buying a real turkey to cook. But this time I couldn't pass up the opportunity.
I saw a bin of fresh, not frozen turkey breasts. I'm a white meat kind of guy, no dark meat for me, thank you. I grew up only allowed to eat drumsticks and wings and backs and even the tail; my father got a real kick out of that. My father was a cruel, sadistic man who loved to humiliate me but that's another story for another time.
The price of these turkey breasts was marked down from $30 plus to $5.00! I got a five pound turkey for $5.35! That's cheaper than a McDonald hamburger and vastly better for me. And the turkey was a Butterball. All I had to do was unwrap it and put that bird in the oven and bake a couple hours at 325 degrees.
I snatched up that turkey and brought it home. I calculated I could make at least eight meals out of this turkey, and all white meat. My father would probably turn over in his grave if he knew that.
Yesterday I read the instructions. The instructions said to "rub the outside with olive oil." I'm a butter kind of guy but olive oil it is. I found out later that was a BIG MISTAKE.
I roasted the turkey. The finished product came out great. Nicely browned (as you can see from the photo) and tasty. I cooked a little longer than recommended because I like DRY turkey meat. You can have your juicy meat, I prefer dry.
I didn't salt or pepper the turkey because the instructions told me the Butterball was already seasoned. Well, I could have seasoned it. I like salt and pepper. Not too much mind you but just enough to give the meat a boost in flavor. I will next time.
I didn't have much in the way of "fixings" except Stove Top Turkey Stuffing which is enough for me. I had homemade cranberry sauce that's been sitting in my refrigerator since last year (yes, since LAST YEAR). I had to throw out that cranberry sauce. Didn't taste too good even though there was no green fuzz on it. An abundance of sugar can go just so far in maintaining flavor.
The turkey meat was very tasty though. I got my annual Turkey Fix which is what I was after.
Now came time to deconstruct the turkey and freeze the leftover in individual freezer bags for future meals. That I did quite successfully. I now have eight more meals. Pretty good for $5.35 eh?
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| Deconstructed turkey |
Now I had this grand idea to make turkey soup out of the remaining stripped turkey carcass. After all there was still some meat on the bones of this poor sacrificial bird. Bad idea.
This morning I took the turkey carcass and placed it in the biggest pot I have here at Casa Tipton-Kelly.
I covered the carcass in water, turned the heat up and proceeded to boil off the remaining meat and make some turkey broth for soup. Bad idea.
It was the smell. A strange and other worldly smell.
It was the look of the water. Murkey and frothy.
I decided to give it awhile and continued to boil that turkey carcass another forty-five minutes or so. Now our whole open area of kitchen/sun room/living room was stinking pretty bad. If I kept "cooking" this turkey carcass THAT smell was going to seep into my bedroom which is right around the corner from our kitchen.
That's it! I took the pot off the stove with the murkey frothy water and the now gray turkey carcass and tossed this whole mess out in our back yard for the local vultures. They're not as picky as I am and they haven't had a treat from me since I stopped tossing out the BJ's rotisserie chicken carcasses that I used to buy with regularity.
Never again will I cook a turkey (or chicken) carcass. It's going to take several days for THAT smell of boiling a dead bird's bones out of this house.
Oh and don't let me forget to tell you what a mess my oven was after roasting an olive oil smeared turkey without a covering. The instructions said "Don't cover". I didn't. I got a nicely browned turkey but I don't eat the skin anyway. What I also got was a baked on grease oven.
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| Oven backing soda cleaning solution |
Last night I made up my homemade solution to clean that baked on grease from my previously almost pristine oven. That solution is baking soda, Dawn dishwashing liquid and apple cider vinegar. No chemical smell of Easy Off for me, thank you.
I applied that foam last night and let it sit over night in my oven. I cleaned it out this morning. Took a long time. A.LONG.TIME.
In the future folks I will bake my Butterball covered.
I hate cleaning ovens.
But I do like white meat turkey. Dry.
