7 cooking hacks to save your Thanksgiving from disaster
Welcome to Plated's New York City headquarters.
This is the test kitchen where all of the recipes that end up in your Plated boxes are created.
And this is Plated's culinary vice president, Elana Karp. Today she's demonstrating hacks for common blunders with turkey, gravy, mashed potatoes, and pie.
1. LUMPY GRAVY: What do you do if your gravy is lumpy and there aren't enough turkey drippings to make a second batch?
First, grab a few cubes of butter and a couple tablespoons of flour.
Then mix the two together until they form a paste. This is called a beurre manié ("hand butter"), and it can be used in place of the more lumpy prone roux.
A roux is made by mixing raw flour into a pan with browned butter. It's tricky to get right if you've never done it before.
One by one, drop bits of the beurre manié into a pot of boiling, low-sodium chicken stock and whisk vigorously until the gravy thickens.
After about five minutes, you'll have perfect, lump-free gravy. Don't forget to add salt and pepper to taste.
2. BURNT TURKEY: If areas of your turkey are getting a little burnt, pull that sucker out and put aluminum foil bandages over its burnt spots. You can't turn back time, but you can prevent further scorching.
3. RAW TURKEY: Worse than a burnt turkey is a raw turkey. If you realize your bird is still raw mid-carve, don't panic.
Arrange the fully carved turkey in the roasting pan and stick it back in the oven. Carving the turkey and re-roasting it is also a good hack for crisper skin.
4. NO ROASTING RACK: Simply use nature's roasting rack, potatoes.
Slice potatoes into 1/4 inch rounds and lay down one to two layers in the bottom of a roasting pan. Not only will they keep your bird from stewing in its own juices, they'll absorb the drippings and taste AMAZING.
5. DRY TURKEY: This one's easy. Just carve the turkey and pour gravy on top of it before you serve.
6. LUMPY OR SALTY POTATOES: If your potatoes are too salty, try adding more milk. This will thin them a bit, but it's better than boiling and mashing extra potatoes if you're in a hurry.
Throw lumpy potatoes into the stand mixer and you'll get a perfect consistency every time. You can also use a hand mixer for the same result — but avoid the blender at all costs.
7. PIE CRUST PROBLEMS: The best way to deal with a pie disaster is to turn the pie into something else.
In this case we're styling an apple pie into a crumble. Our pie is cooked everywhere but the middle of the bottom crust, a common pie fail.
So we scraped the filling into another pie dish and put the raw pie crust back in the oven to finish cooking.
Then we crumbled the perfectly cooked pie crust on top of the filling and added ice cream. You can also do this with small serving dishes and make individual crumbles.
Finally, the ultimate Thanksgiving hack is to outsource some of your sides to Plated. This holiday they'll be delivering recipes and ingredients for acorn squash with apple-sausage stuffing, pumpkin baked pasta with sage, pecan pie bars, and more.
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