At Home 1995 Thanksgiving Special: Part 2 – Turkey & Sides!

Wow, look at all these recipes… In the second part of this Thanksgiving program from 1995, Arlene is making the big stuffed turkey and all the trimmings! But there’s one little twist this year… instead of traditional bread stuffing, she’s making a scrumptious cornbread-pecan dressing. Yum!

Plus there are elegant orange sweet potato cups , Brussels sprouts with walnuts, mashed potatoes, gravy, and orange cranberry relish!

In case you missed it, be sure to get the dessert recipes from Part 1.

Stuffed Roast Turkey

This turkey recipe is designed to go with the cornbread pecan stuffing.
Course Main Course

Ingredients
  

  • 12-14 lb whole turkey, fully thawed
  • salt, pepper, and paprika
  • 1 stick melted butter (1/2 cup)
  • stuffing (see other recipe)
  • 1 cup chicken broth

Instructions
 

  • Place turkey on a large, rimmed cookie sheet and inspect. Clean any remaining pin feathers, remove neck and giblets from inside cavity, and wipe entire turkey dry with paper towels.
  • Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Season turkey generously inside and out with salt, pepper, and paprika. (1-2 tablespoons of salt, and several teaspoons of pepper and paprika.) With a food brush, brush melted butter all over the outside of the the turkey.
  • Pack neck cavity loosely with stuffing. Pull neck skin back and fasten to back of turkey with wooden skewers. Fill turkey body cavity loosely with stuffing. Don't pack too tightly. Close cavity with skewers. Tie or skewer turkey legs together.
  • Place turkey breast side up on a roasting rack in a shallow roasting pan. Tuck wing tips underneath turkey to prevent burning. Insert meat thermometer into thickest part of turkey thigh. Pour chicken broth into roasting pan.
  • Roast in a 325 degree oven, basting with pan juices every 30-40 minutes. If top of turkey starts to get too brown, cover loosely with aluminum foil. It takes around 12 minutes per pound to cook, so a 14 lb turkey would take around 3-4 hours.
  • Start checking thermometer about 1 hour before turkey should be done. Turkey is done when thermometer reads 180 degrees, juices run clear when turkey is pierced, and the center of the stuffing reaches at least 165 degrees. (Stuffing must reach 165 to be safe to eat!)
  • Transfer turkey to a carving board or platter, loosely cover with foil to keep warm, and let rest 20 minutes before cutting. Save juices and broth from roasting pan to use in gravy. Remove stuffing from turkey and serve in a nice dish. Carve turkey and serve immediately with gravy. Enjoy!

Homemade Turkey Gravy

Real good gravy has to be made with drippings from the Thanksgiving turkey!
Course Sauce

Ingredients
  

  • Drippings from roasting turkey
  • salt and pepper, to taste
  • 2 cans chicken broth (15oz each; you may not use all of it)
  • 1/2 cup flour
  • 1 cup water
  • dry poultry seasoning (or thyme, rosemary, and parsley)

Instructions
 

  • After roasting a turkey, allow juices to settle in the roasting pan. Carefully tilt pan to one corner, and use a big spoon to skim excess fat and grease from the top of the juices and discard the fat. (Do not pour down the sink; it can clog your drains!)
  • With juices still in pan, use a wooden or plastic scraper to scrape up browned bits from bottom of pan. These drippings add a lot of flavor! If the pan is too dry, add a bit of chicken broth to loosen browned bits.
  • Pour juices and bits into a 2 cup measuring cup. Add enough chicken broth to get a total of 2 cups liquid. Pour into a small saucepan and bring to a low boil. Carefully taste, and add salt, pepper, and seasonings as desired.
  • In a separate bowl, whisk water and flour together until smooth. Slowly pour some of the flour and water into the saucepan while whisking vigorously. (The faster you whisk, the less likely your gravy will get lumps.)
  • The gravy will begin to thicken. Stop adding flour and water when the gravy reaches your desired thickness. Boil gently for another 2 minutes, then remove from heat. The gravy will get thicker as it cools. Enjoy with turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, and more!

Cornbread Pecan Dressing

This dressing (or stuffing) can be prepared and stuffed into a roast turkey, or it can be baked in a separate dish.
Course Side Dish

Ingredients
  

Cornbread

  • 1 1/4 cups yellow cornmeal
  • 1 cup all-purpose flour
  • 3 Tbs white sugar
  • 1 Tbs baking power
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 1 cup milk
  • 2 large eggs, beaten lightly
  • 1/4 cup melted butter (1/2 stick)

Dressing

  • 4 slices thick-cut bacon, diced
  • 2 cups chopped onion
  • 2 cups chopped celery
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper
  • 1/2 tsp dry thyme
  • 1 can chicken broth (14 oz)
  • 3/4 cup toasted pecans, chopped
  • 1/4 cup fresh parsley leaves (or 1 Tbs dry)

Instructions
 

Cornbread

  • Preheat oven to 425 degrees and grease and 8-inch square baking pan.
  • In a medium bowl, whisk cornmeal, flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt. Stir in milk, eggs, and butter. Stir until just combined, do not over-mix. Pour batter into greased pan.
  • Bake in the middle of a preheated oven at 425 degrees until a toothpick stuck in the center comes out clean, about 20-25 minutes. Cool in pan on a wire rack for 5-10 minutes. Invert cornbread and remove from pan. Cool completely on rack.

Cornbread Pecan Dressing

  • In a large skillet, cook bacon over medium-low heat, stirring until crisp. With slotted spoon, transfer to paper towels to drain. Leave bacon drippings in skillet and add onion, celery, salt, pepper, and thyme. Cook over medium heat, stirring until vegetables are tender, about 10 minutes.
  • Coarsely crumble corn bread into large bowl. Stir in vegetables, broth, pecans, and parsley, mixing gently until well incorporated.
  • If baking dressing inside turkey, stuff turkey cavities loosely and do not over-pack. Cook turkey until dressing reaches at least 165 degrees. Extra dressing can be baked separately.
  • If baking dressing alone, preheat oven to 325 degress and bake in a covered casserole dish for 45 minutes. Remove lid and bake for another 10-15 minutes to brown the top. Makes 10 cups. Enjoy!

Orange Sweet Potato Cups

Course Side Dish

Ingredients
  

  • 4 large sweet potatoes, baked
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 1/2 cup butter, melted
  • 2 eggs beaten
  • 1 cup chopped pecans
  • Dash cinnamon and nutmeg
  • 6 oranges, cut into halves crosswise
  • mini marshmallows for garnish

Instructions
 

  • Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
  • Peel potatoes and in a bowl, mash them while still hot Add sugar, butter, eggs, pecans and spices and mix lightly.
  • Run a thin knife around inside of each orange half to loosen pulp. Scoop pulp from rind and remove membranes from orange sections. Gently peel away and discard inner membranes from orange halves, leaving rinds intact to form 12 dry cups.
  • Add orange pulp to potato mixture, mixing thoroughly. Spoon into rind cups, dividing equally. Bake 20 to 30 minutes in preheated oven. If desired, place mini marshmallows on top of mixture and return to oven until marshmallows are browned. Makes 12 servings. Enjoy!

Brussels Spourts and Walnuts

Arlene's husband Paul loved Brussels sprouts, so she made them often!
Course Side Dish

Ingredients
  

  • 2 lbs Brussels' sprouts (fresh or frozen)
  • 1/4 cup butter (1/2 stick)
  • 1/3 cup chopped walnuts
  • 1/4 tsp ground ginger
  • 1/4 tsp salt
  • 1/4 tsp black pepper

Instructions
 

  • Cook Brussels' sprouts until tender but not mushy. (You can steam with the stove or microwave, or roast them in the oven).
  • In a large Dutch oven, melt butter with nuts and ginger over medium-low heat. Stir frequently until nuts begin to toast and butter starts to brown. (Do not burn!)
  • Add cooked Brussels' sprouts to the Dutch oven and toss until evenly coated with butter and nuts. Add salt and pepper to taste. Serve immediately. Enjoy!

Gourmet Mashed Potatoes

Course Side Dish

Ingredients
  

  • 5 lbs red potatoes, cubed
  • 2 cloves garlic, minced
  • salt and pepper, to taste
  • 1/2 cup butter
  • 1/2 cup cream cheese, softened
  • 1/2 cup sour cream
  • minced chives, optional

Instructions
 

  • In a large saucepan, place potatoes and enough cold water to cover potatoes by one inch. Place over medium high heat and bring to boil. Reduce to medium heat, skim off foam, and cover saucepan with lid. Continue boiling potatoes until fork-tender. Drain off all water. Place potatoes back on burner with low heat. Shake pan to dry up any remaining water.
  • Place potatoes in mixer bowl, or, if using a portable mixer leave in saucepan. Add salt and pepper to taste and butter: begin to mash potatoes to break up lumps. Continue beating until lumps are no longer visible. Add cream cheese, sour cream and chives, if using and allow to w hip until smooth and creamy.
  • Place potatoes in heated crackpot and keep warm. Crockpot should be set on low. Makes 12 servings. Enjoy!
  • Note: Sometimes your potatoes may cook up drier, or moister, in which case you would adjust the butter, cream cheese and sour cream. They should be very creamy. Delicious!

Cranberry Orange Relish

Ingredients
  

  • 2 lbs fresh cranberries, washed and dried
  • 1 cup white sugar
  • 3 Tbs orange zest (about 1 orange)
  • 1/4 cup fresh orange juice (about half of one orange)

Instructions
 

  • Fill blender or food processor with cranberries, sugar, orange zest, and orange juice. (You can use more or less sugar, depending on how sweet you like it.)
  • Pulse until mixture is finely chopped, but not liquefied. Stop to scrape down the sides of the canister as needed, to make sure everything is blended evenly. Empty relish into a nice dish and refrigerate until it is time to serve. Serve as a condiment for roasted meats or for leftover turkey sandwiches. Enjoy!

Transcript

  • Hello, and welcome to part two of our two-part Thanksgiving special. I hope that you’re planning for a very special day with your family and friends. Don’t forget, if you know someone who doesn’t have anybody, who is alone and just needs some family around them on Thanksgiving, that would be a great time to invite them to your house to partake with you of a really delicious meal that you’re preparing. It’s the tradition, we’ve talked about traditions before, my dad used to read this Scripture when we would all get to the table, and I’m gonna read it now. This is from Psalm, the book in the Bible, Psalm 95. It says, “O come let us sing unto the Lord, “let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation. “Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving “and make a joyful noise unto him with psalms. “For the Lord is a great God, “and a great king above all gods. “O come, let us worship and bow down. “Let us kneel before the Lord our maker, “for he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture “and the sheep of his hand.” What good words they are, that’s from God’s Word. And if you start out your Thanksgiving dinner, it will set the tone if you just read a portion of Scripture, and it also teaches your children the importance that you’re living your lives pleasing hopefully to this book what God requires of us. Well, today we’re going to get started. We’ve got lots of things to cover. And I hope that you’re sending for the newsletter because all of those recipes from the whole month are in there, so be sure to do that. But today, the center of attention is our turkey, and we’re gonna show you some cornbread pecan dressing, and a whole lot more in just a minute. We’ll be right back, here’s today’s At Home Hint. Here’s today’s At Home Hint. In an effort to keep the last-minute preparations less hectic, set the Thanksgiving table well in advance and have all the big platters, serving dishes, and flatware gleaming and ready for your delicious dinner. If you’ve got a helpful hint that you’d like to share with us, we want to hear from you. Send your hint to At Home Hints, CTV, Wall, Pennsylvania 15148-1499. Well, the center of attention is our turkey. This is Tom, we lovingly and affectionately call him. But he is meticulously clean, and ladies, get your husband to do that. You know, that is a big help if you say, “Okay, honey, will you please clean this turkey?” And I suggest that you clean him thoroughly. Paul does this for me. Cleans, I mean, and then you wanna take a paper towel and dry the inside once you’ve cleaned him well. Tell you what I like in the turkey, I like this little guy, because then you never end up with a raw turkey or a uncooked turkey, and it’s safe. This is a little, it pops out when it’s done, and then you don’t have any guesswork to it. So if you can, buy the turkeys that have the little pop-out reminder. And we’re just going to take some salt. You always have to salt the inside of the turkey. Okay, and you just wanna sprinkle it around in there. If there’s any little bruises and stuff, just cut it off because you don’t want that bruised skin. And if there’s any little bits of turkey feathers or the little quill part, clean them up. You can see he’s really nice. And he’s about 12 pounds. And we’ve cleaned both ends. Take that little bag out, now don’t forget, you don’t wanna cook it with that little giblet bag in there. Okay, he’s ready, now we’re gonna make our dressing. And what we’ve decided to do this time is make a cornbread pecan dressing. And I’ve just for time’s sake, I’ve gone ahead and done some things. We’ve taken about four pieces of thick-sliced bacon, and we did them very crisp in the pan. Then we took two cups of onion and two cups of celery, and we browned it in the drippings from the bacon. And you cook that about five, six, seven minutes. It has to be really well done. We’ve added some thyme to this, or thyme, whichever you wanna pronounce it. We added half a teaspoon of that, half a teaspoon of salt, and a half a teaspoon of freshly ground pepper to this, and we cooked it. Now what we’re gonna do, also what we did, we made our own homemade cornbread. And I’ve included that recipe for you, you make it out of cornmeal, and then you crumble it, just like we have here. You can make this a day ahead. In fact, this whole dressing can be made a day ahead, covered for the refrigerator. Then in the morning when it’s time to put the turkey on, you bring it out, you don’t have so much to prepare before you actually get the turkey in the oven. Now, you say, “Why is this called dressing?” Well, someone wrote to me and said the first helping is called dressing, the second helping is called filling, and the third helping is called stuffing. So there’s a little gauge to let you know at what point you are on Thanksgiving Day. Is this dressing, filling, or is this just good old stuffing? But anyway, we’re going to add that to our cornbread, which we’ve done. Go ahead and turn this off. And next we’re going to add the bacon that we did crisp. That goes in there. And about 1/4 of a cup of parsley, just chopped fine. And toasted pecans or walnuts. You put them on a cookie sheet, put them in the oven, 350 for about 10, 15 minutes, and they get toasted. And we want 3/4 of a cup of that. And then one can of chicken broth. Just pour it in. It’s so simple, but it’s so good. The nice thing about this dressing, it’s a moist dressing. And what you can do with this, if you don’t want to stuff the bird with it, or if you make double dressing because your family really likes it, you can bake it in a casserole for 40 minutes, just about, oh, a little bit before your meal is ready to be served so it’s good and hot. Plus the dressing that you have in the turkey itself, and that’s all there is to it. I mean, this is so simple and so easy. Do your dressing the day before. I’m telling you, it’ll make the day go smoother for you so that you’re not worrying about getting up in the morning and having to do all of that. Okay, so now we’re gonna spoon this. Move my pan over here. We’re gonna spoon this into the turkey. Okay. And we start to turn him around. Remember, we’ve salted him. You can pepper him too if you want to. Now, I know it’s a temptation that you just wanna pack it in there because you think, oh, the more in there, the better it’s gonna be. Well, any kind of stuffing or dressing will always expand during the process, okay? It will definitely expand, because when the heat gets in there, it just swells up. So do not pack it in, but put enough in, I know these guys are having a good time here because I’m holding this turkey at an unusual, um… Okay, Dale. And we’re just going to put that much in there. You know, this crowd here, why do I cook for them? I don’t know, I’ll tell ya. Anyway, after we put that in, then remember, I always take a crust of bread, the heel of the bread, tuck it in there up underneath, all around just like that. Overlap your skin. And remember, when you go to serve it, you’re gonna take that piece of crust out. You don’t wanna serve that. That’s just to hold it in place so that your stuffing or your dressing does not come out of the bird. Okay, then you take your skewers. And I just push them in like that. Another one for the lower part. And we push them in just like that. Okay, that’s not gonna come out there because that bread will hold it in place. Then we take some string, because I want, I don’t want this guy’s legs to fall apart or pull away from the body while he’s roasting. So what I do, I go around the first one kinda like that, around the second one kinda like that, and then just double back up here and go around one of the skewers, like that. Okay, and what you’re gonna do, position them the way you want him to look when he comes out of the oven, and them tie ’em off. Now, what I need, Linda, maybe you can come get me some butter, because we wanna baste this turkey. And you wanna baste him with butter all over. Real, real well. I’m gonna cut the excess off. Okay. Let me see here, may have to double-knot him this time. Maybe just melt some butter in the microwave, that would help, thank you. Okay, now, once you have this side done, we’re gonna turn him around, and we’re gonna stuff this end too, the neck part. And really once you get this done, this is the hard part here, use my hand here. Once you get this done, you just flap the skin underneath the body, and it will stay there, believe me. You can skewer it if you want to, that’s fine. ‘Cause we’re gonna bake off the excess that we have anyway. Turn him over, and you can put a skewer in, but you really don’t have to. I’m telling you that, ’cause he will stay. Once you get him this far, you put him into your roaster pan just like this. And there’s a rack in there, and that’s really important. We lift him in, set him in just like that. And what you wanna do is baste him with butter. Position him in here. Some people tuck the wings underneath so they stay, you can do that, but just be sure you have the rack in the bottom, thank you, Linda. And then we just baste him with butter. Now, you’re gonna do this every about 35 to 40 minutes if you want a real moist meat on the breast, because this is where you’re adding the moisture is right in here. And what you do then is salt him and pepper him and let him roast at 325. 11, 12-pound turkey will take about 3 1/2 to four hours. Important thing to do is to keep basting him so that you’re adding moisture to it so it’s not dry, all right? And I like to put some black pepper on the top, too. And you can rub it with herbs or whatever you like. When the juices in the pan start to get brown, add a little bit of water, ’cause you don’t want them to burn, ’cause that’s gonna be the basis for your gravy. All right, we’re gonna take a break, and while I put him in the oven, we’ll be right back in just a minute. Well, welcome back. The turkey’s in the oven. He’s gonna be baking for about four hours or so. So now we wanna make some sweet potatoes, and these are called orange sweet potato cups. We baked our sweet potatoes. This is what this is. We did about four of these large ones, and we baked them in the oven, then scooped the pulp out and put it in a bowl. And you can do that a day ahead of time too, which really makes it easier to get the meal together on the actual day of Thanksgiving. And so we have our mashed sweet potatoes here. You don’t put any salt and pepper, nothing, just mash them. You have to do that while it’s hot. Don’t let them cool and then you do it. Do it while it’s hot, all right? Now we’re gonna add to this some melted butter, which is about a half a cup of melted butter. All right, and then a dash of cinnamon and a dash of nutmeg right there. Also, this is one cup of sugar. This makes a lot. And two beaten eggs. Okay. And pecans, we’re gonna put some pecans in this. This is about a cup of pecans, and they’re chopped fine. Now, you’re gonna start to mix this. And if it feels like it’s real thick and you just can’t, feels like it needs some moisture to it, let me tell you what we’re gonna do. We took some oranges, and we halved them, took the pulp out of it, just like this, okay? Halved them, cleaned the pulp. Cathy really did a good job on these, she’s working with us today. And this is the pulp from it, and we took all the white membrane, you know the part that I’m talking about, that white part? This is just the pulp of it, just the pure orange. And what we’re gonna do is add some of that to our sweet potatoes to make them creamy. I think this is gonna be a real good taste, and you wouldn’t add all of that, that’s probably, this is about six oranges. This will make enough for 12 servings ’cause you would serve a half of an orange per person. But this is what we’re doing. This looks very creamy, but we want to taste the orange in it, so we’re just gonna pour a little bit. You can do as much or little as you want. We’re just gonna add a little bit of the orange sections to it. Right, and let’s mix that together. And we’re gonna mound it into our oranges. And then it goes into a preheated oven, 375-degree oven, and we’re going to bake them for about 20 to 30 minutes. So timing is of the essence when you’re trying to get everything done, and I would suggest you sit down after you’ve made your menu and you start to check out what each, how long each of them has to bake, and just do a schedule. Two o’clock, I’m gonna do this. 2:30, I’m gonna do that. Three o’clock, I’m gonna do this. Setting the table the morning of Thanksgiving is probably one of the best helps that you’re gonna do for yourself, because that way you’ll know, do I have all the places, the settings that I need? Do I have everything that I need to get this done? And if you don’t, then you can make arrangements to get some of the stuff, okay? Now, we’re just gonna spoon this in. And what’s nice about this, after they bake for 20 to 30 minutes, then we want you to put some little marshmallows, it’s an option, only if you want to, on top. And put it back in for about 10 minutes, just until they melt down a little bit. I think it looks so nice. And you wanna do something a little special, like something different. Like we’re gonna make some, we’re gonna add, for our vegetable, we’re going to add Brussels sprouts to this menu. And we’re gonna serve those, instead of just a dish, we got acorn squash, and we’ve hollowed out the squash, and we’re gonna serve, use the squash as a serving dish. You can do that with a pumpkin if you’re gonna have some kind of a soup. Some people do have a soup for Thanksgiving. You could do that, hollow out the pumpkin, and just pour the soup in there, put a ladle to it. This time of the year, these vegetables, fruits, whatever, that we have available, we need to take advantage of them. And I think it’s a nice idea. I think the kids really love it. The kids think this is great. And anything you do special, you’re doing it for your family and it’s an investment and it’s worth it. May take a little extra time, you say, “Oh, who would wanna do that?” Tell you what, if you do it one time, then you’ll start a tradition, they’ll be looking for it every year, and that’s the nice thing to do. You can put that into a buttered casserole dish, the excess, if you wanted to. But we’re gonna put these in our oven because they need to bake for about 20 minutes. One of the other things that we are doing is baking some plain sweet potatoes because maybe some people cannot have the sugar or the butter or whatever. You wanna provide something for everyone instead of just, well, you know, this is what we have, and then they can’t have it, they can’t enjoy it. The next thing that we’re going to be making is our cranberry relish, which is very easy. It takes a blender and it takes fresh cranberries. Okay, just wanna make sure we got it in gear. And what we’re gonna do, this is two packs of cranberries. And I hope I can get these in here without them falling everywhere. This may be a challenge. But you’re gonna puree them. Well, you’re gonna put them on, and they’re gonna chop. Not puree, you don’t want them to be mush. So only do about six to seven minutes. And it really is so easy. You just add sugar to it and some lemon zest. There they go. And it makes a wonderful cranberry relish you can do two days to a week ahead of time. And I like things that I can get done that I don’t have to do at the last minute. These should not be liquid, these should be a little chunky. Just move these around little bit more. Two bags and one cup of sugar, and then a third of a cup of orange zest. And this is what orange zest looks like. And it is from an orange that you take a little zester and you pull back on, and you just keep working, and you’ll, I mean, it’s a tedious job, but it works because you get the essence of the orange, real, real strong flavor. And you keep working with that, and you add that to the cranberries, and it’s very tasty, very, very delicious. I’m not gonna continue with this because I got some other things I wanna show you. Come on over here and let’s take a look at the Brussels sprouts, because what I have here is my Dutch oven, and I have my Brussels sprouts totally cooked, okay? You can steam them, you can use frozen, you can use the fresh. We have about two pound of Brussels sprouts here. This is one of Paul’s absolute favorite vegetables. We both really enjoy them. And all I’m gonna do here, I’ve got a little bit of butter, let’s see, how much butter? Fourth of a cup of butter in the bottom of my Dutch oven, I’ve melted it. And all I’m gonna do is add a few walnuts to this. You don’t have to do it. I know it sounds like we have a lot of stuff with nuts in it, but we kinda got on that roll this year, and sometimes you just go through different flavors, and this year happens to be pecans, walnuts, whatever. And this is just ground ginger we’re gonna put in there. And this cooks until the butter browns and the walnuts get browned. So that will take a couple two or three minutes on high heat for that to brown, ’cause that’s the flavor, that browned butter flavor is what you’re looking for. And we have just about half a cup I think it is, a third of a cup of the chopped walnuts to two pound of Brussels. Once that browns up and the butter gets nice and brown, then we’re gonna add our Brussels to it and mix it all together, okay? This, my friend, while that’s browning, I’m gonna tell you about our gravy. This is the broth. Once you’ve roasted your turkey, your turkey’s done, the little thing popped out, the reminder. You take it out of the pan, take it out of your roast pan. There’ll be little tiny brown bits in the bottom of that. That’s where the juices from the turkey have come out and they’ve roasted in the bottom, in the heat. And what you’re gonna do is take the turkey out, take the rack out, and you’ll loosen all those brown bits by pouring some broth or some bouillon water, or just plain water. You can use your potato water if you want to if it all happens at the same time. And put that in that pan and just start to loosen all of it. You’ll take a, I’ll tell you, one of the best things to use is a wooden spoon, and just loosen it, loosen it. Put it on the burner and let the heat loosen it, and you keep, until that pan is really clean, because all the juices have been incorporated into the broth. Then you’re gonna taste it for seasoning. That’s what this is here, this is the broth. And if it tastes weak, tastes watery, add some more chicken bouillon. Add a can of broth, whatever. Then you taste it and you think, well, I need a little bit of salt, ’cause that’s usually what it needs. Okay, so you add some salt. When this is boiling, okay, these are just about there. We’re gonna add our Brussels to that. When it’s boiling, then you take your flour and water mixture and you add it to it using this whisk, and you keep stirring until it’s smooth, and there’s your gravy, it’s that simple. Let it cook for one minute longer, and you’ve got the best turkey gravy. Make a big panful because you’re gonna want it for warmups afterwards. Well, we’ll be back in just a minute with the grand finale, the whole Thanksgiving dinner, so stay with us.
  • [Announcer] To receive the recipes presented on today’s program, plus many more great recipe ideas, send your best donation and a stamped, self-addressed business-sized envelope to At Home, CTV, Wall, Pennsylvania 15148-1499. You’ll receive Arlene’s heartwarming newsletter, Enjoy!, featuring an entire month of At Home recipes, including today’s mouthwatering dishes. Be sure to include the Enjoy! issue number with your request.
  • Well, here we are at our Thanksgiving table. I think we’ve prepared a really great dinner that your family and friends are going to enjoy. Here in the middle we have the turkey with the dressing, cornbread pecan dressing. We’ve put our orange sweet potato cups around it. Next to that is our Brussels sprouts with the walnuts, mashed potatoes, you have to have mashed potatoes if you’re having turkey and dressing and gravy. And our orange cranberry relish. We’ve added a few baked sweet potatoes, some rolls, nice little basket of red apples. And for dessert, you’ll see what we did on the last program, there’s our surprise applesauce cake that is a really chocolate base to that cake rather than just the plain white. Next to it is the light cranberry mousse. And next to that is the pumpkin apple pies with a layer of apples, with pumpkin over top. Remember now, you have to do those in the deep dish. And right next to that is our pumpkin cheesecake. And what we’ve added to our table is a celebration. No, this is not alcoholic, this is just sparkling grape juice that we thought for a special occasion would be enjoyed. We hope that you enjoy the day with your family and friends, and please, don’t get so caught up in making the meal that you do not take time to stop and thank God for the freedom that we enjoy in this country, for all of his blessings to us. They are so bountiful, so many, you can hardly begin to count them. But please, take the time right before you start your meal and stop and give God thanks for all that he’s done in your life and in your family’s life. It’s a day full of love, and I hope that you enjoy it. So be sure to join us the next time because it just wouldn’t be the same without you here At Home. Happy Thanksgiving.
  • [Announcer] Fresh produce provided by Jordan Banana, wholesalers of fresh fruit and vegetables in Dravosburg, Pennsylvania. Appliances provided by Dacor Distinctive Appliances, a reflection of your good taste. Groceries provided by Foodland, where the answer is always yes.
  • [Announcer] Cornerstone Television wishes to thank all our faithful viewers whose consistent prayers and financial support have made this program possible.

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