2002 Thanksgiving Special – Part 2: Turkey, Stuffing, and Gravy 🦃

Well hello, and welcome back for part two of our Thanksgiving dinner. We’re so glad you could be with us today. And a friend from Virginia dropped in. Her name’s Gloria, she dropped in. We’re glad you’re here today, Gloria, thanks for coming. You never just, never know who’s going to show up at the At Home set, and we’re glad that she’s here. Thank you. That’s a ways of travel. Now, back to Tom Turkey. I told you, I’m going to tell you all about Tom. This is a fresh turkey. Trust me when I tell you that if you’ve never had a fresh turkey, try one and just see the difference. These were sent to us, of course by the McGinnis Sisters who has wonderful poultry all year long, but this is our turkey, has never been frozen. And we have cleaned out — you want to make sure you take the little bag out of here. Don’t leave that in there, that’s not good. And you want to rinse it out very, very well. And then you want to take a paper towel and just go in there and dry. You need to dry out the inside, because you don’t want all that moisture going into your dressing. Okay, so you dry it out well. All over just like that. And, you know, you look for bruises, you look for dark spots, this baby looks like it was okay. I’m going to probably cut that little piece out because I don’t want that to be there when I’m cooking it. So, but those are some little things that you might see, but it’s okay, that doesn’t mean anything. That just was left there. Now if I had a sharp knife, this would really be easy. No, there we go. Anyway, this is basically how you get them ready. And then what you do, you want to salt the inside of it. You’re going to take some just just plain old salt, table salt and Mama said you have to do that because that just makes it everything tastes better. You get the turkey salted from the inside and the outside, because you ever have turkey that didn’t have any salt? Doesn’t taste good. Well, we’ve got the turkey ready. We’re going to come back with our stuffing recipe dressing whatever you want to call it in just a minute. But here’s today’s At Home hint. We’ll be right back.

Here’s today’s At Home hint. If the gravy you’re making is to thin, chop onions and celery in a blender and add it to the gravy. They will thicken and flavor it deliciously. If you’ve got a helpful hint you’d like to share with us we sure want to hear from you. Send your hint to At Home Hints Cornerstone Television Wall, Pennsylvania 15148-1499.

All right, we’re back now and we’re beginning to do our stuffing. And this is just basic. You know, these recipes, as I told you, is in our are At Home with Family and Friends cookbook which is available now. All you have to do is listen to the spot within the program, it tells you how to get it. And Mom’s these are Mom’s directions. And this was enjoyed many, many times by many, many people at our table. Very simple, basic, everybody can do it. I have a stick of butter — don’t use olio, let’s use the butter — in my pan, in a skillet. And I’m going to add — this is for about a 10, 10 and a half pound turkey, you allow one pound of Turkey per person. That sounds a lot, but think of the waste that’s in the turkey. So we’re just going to add this much, it’s about a cup or so of celery. Now, you don’t have to be exact, because that’s not that important. If you don’t care for celery too much cut back on it. It doesn’t matter. Okay, and so we’re gonna get this cooking, make sure it’s on good and high heat because we want this to cook quickly. And you want to put your celery in a little bit before the onion because of celery takes a little longer to cook. And then we’re going to do about the same amount of finely chopped, don’t make it great big pieces. Let’s make it finely chopped and we’re just going to let this cook. And we’re not, we don’t look forward to brown. You say well, you know my mother used to make it and she never cooked it. That’s true, some people don’t, but what I found is anytime you have celery and onion or just onion that goes into something like stuffed cabbages or whatever, if you bring a brownness or you bring a transparency to the onion, it renders such flavor that really changes the taste of what you’re using it in. So it’s worth that extra step. Sometimes you feel like, oh, man, I don’t want to do that because I’m in a hurry or whatever. This is Thanksgiving. This is a special time, and we want to do, we want the best that we can be. Now I’m reminded of a letter that I got from a lady when we did Thanksgiving before on the program. She said Arlene, you made me feel like a queen for a day because for 20 years, I’ve made thanksgiving for my husband and two boys. And every Thanksgiving night, they would say oh Mom, it was okay, but man that pie was this or man that stuffing was dry or complained. And she said 20 years I’ve been listening to that and I thought, boy does that woman have patience. About the second year that I’d have said let’s make reservations somewhere. We’re going out. But anyway, she was so patient and so incredibly nice. And she said this year, I watched your shows, and I sent for the recipes, and I made your full Thanksgiving dinner. And she said you know what? All they had to talk about was how delicious everything was. Oh, Mom was that good. The pie was perfect. The stuffing was great. Oh, the turkey was moist. She said thank you, Arlene, for showing me how to do it. What more could I want. That’s what I’m asking you to do. Just try. If you don’t try, you’ll never know if you can. But when you try and you succeed, you feel so good. You do feel like a queen for a day. So you know, come on, get the cookbook, and there’s loads of recipes in the cookbook for you to try for all occasions, and see how nice this is getting now. If you here you’d be able to smell how wonderful the celery and the onions together just makes yummy, yum, yum, yum. All right, now I’m going to add my poultry seasoning. This is entirely up to you how much or how little you like. And I need to take this tarp off of here, because we need to put about a good teaspoon, maybe a little bit more. Again, this is for a 10, 10 and a half pound turkey. Okay? And you want to put that, mix that in with your celery and the onion. Now when that starts to get a brownness to it, we don’t want it to brown, but when starts to get, you’ll see the onion getting brown before the celery. When it starts to get there, you know you’re there. At that point, we’re going to add some other ingredients. Because what we’re using is just plain bread crumbs, you can see and you know what, you don’t want these to be right out of the bag real fresh. If you get them, cut them the night before, let them sit out just like this so that they dry a bit. If you have them real soft, they get mushy, and then your dressings like mud. You don’t want that. You want something more that’s sub — like these are not hard, certainly, but they’re, they’re not real soft, they won’t mash up into a ball. So you want to do that. So we have a large loaf of bread here. And what we’re going to do is add about a half a can of chicken broth. Okay. Now if you need more when we get there and we see oh, that’s not enough, we can add some more. All right. So this comes to a boil. Now what we’re going to do, we’re going to add half of a can — this was my mother’s secret — of cream of chicken soup. Just half. You scoop out approximately half and you’re going to put that in there and that flavor from that chicken soup will make your dressing, stuffing, whatever you want to call it, so good you will not believe it. All you do is keep stirring until it completely melts. And when it does, oh my. You can tell the difference in the smell when that just enriches it, makes it a richer type of liquid that’s going to go over our bread cubes. Oh, I can still remember having to break up the bread or cut up the celery or cut up the onion. Mama was always so busy making all the pies and she was a fanatic, she had to make the pies the same day as Thanksgiving. She didn’t want them sitting overnight. So she cooked the turkey all night in a brown paper bag. And then, that was in those days when you could do that. And we get up in the morning, take the turkey out of the oven, she’d do all the pies. Oh, it was wonderful. All right, now what we’re going to do, we’re going to take this and pour this right over our bread cubes. Just like that. Okay and we need to mix this thoroughly, like so. Remember, your turkey is prepared, we’ve salted it. We’ve taken all the moisture, the excess moisture out of it. And we just need to keep turning this till it’s all moistened. All right, and then we’re going to start to stuff the bird and when we come back we’re going to show you how to stuff Tom Turkey for your Thanksgiving dinner. We’ll be right back.

Well we’re back and we have totally stuffed the turkey. I didn’t go through that because I know you know how to do that. You want to stuff the back end and store it on the bottom. And then you have this part here that you have to secure. And that’s why you always save the crust of the bread. Don’t break it up, save the crust. Because see, that’s what’s going to hold it all in place. Just like so. Then what you do, you take your skewers and you skewer in there. And you make sure you get it on the other side. Even if it goes through the leg that will hold the leg to the body and it will be prettier when it actually gets — and then this one you’re going to stretch it down as far as you can and just tuck it in. And that way that will hold. See now this one was cut pretty deep here. Don’t worry about that. This will hold it in place. It will be all right. A little caution. You don’t want to overstuff the turkey, like pack it in there, because when the heat hits and expands, it’ll expand the bird and you want it to look nice when you’re serving it. What we’re going to do now is baste this turkey with some melted butter all over thoroughly the first time. You really need to get it all over it. Every part of this bird has to have a butter. Okay, and, you know, when you’re stuffing it too, you’re putting this part back here on, you want to make its shape nice. Don’t let it be like lumpy looking. You know what that means, but, you know, who wants a lumpy look in turkey? It’s so pretty when it’s like rounded and shaped and you do that, when you’re stuffing it in, you’re shaping it. And you can, some people do this, they will take their string, and they’ll wrap string, from wing to wing, and from leg to leg to hold it together. So that it looks pretty when it bakes that way, because sometimes when you get them, the legs are wide open and the wings are sticking out, and they’ll burn quickly too. Now, I’m going to, before I do anything else, I’m going to put this into my roasting pan, just like that, which happens to be my grandmother’s, from very long time ago, I love this pan. And you’re going to want to put, if you have a rack, put a rack in it to hold it up, and then I just take salt the outside of it, just like that. And I do a fresh grind of pepper. Because that just makes — let it go everywhere even in the bottom, doesn’t matter. Then I just like to put a little parsley, because I like that color that that gives, just like that all over. Now this is going to go into — follow directions on the package of your turkey or look in a cookbook, because they’re all different, 10, 10 and a half pound. This has a little thermometer. Remember the hint, don’t always trust the thermometer. Use your own thermometer and put it in a place where doesn’t hit a bone and then go accordingly to that. This should roast in about three and a half, four hours at the most. Okay, so that would go into the oven. Now I want to show you how to make a good gravy to go with our turkey. This gravy, after this is roasted, it’s totally done. Then what we want to do is make the gravy out of the drippings from what’s in the bottom of the pan because it’s roasted. And just roast for four hours. You’re going to have a wonderful, wonderful drippings, a little bits in the bottom. So what I did was I just took the turkey out because we have one baked and put all the drippings here. If you have any of your cream of chicken soup, we’re going to put that in here to enrich it. And also, if you have any of the chicken broth left, put that in here and you want to bring this to a boil. Now at this time is when you’re going to want to season it, like does it needs more salt? Do you want to add more pepper? Usually when you make a gravy, you add some salt because it’s usually not going to add a whole lot because I figured people can add it to the table too. But you need some to cook it in so that it gets in the taste buds, all right? And what I have here is I’m going to add my — get this — just going to add some of this chicken soup. That can be going at the same time. And here’s the key to really delicious, delicious gravy. You start with cold water. I have about, just about two cups, cold water, and you’re going to add plain — this is cold water. Okay, hot broth, cold water. And you’re going to add regular flour, all-purpose flour. And it’s probably, probably need about a cup. Okay, you’re going to take a whisk or fork and just start whisking this until you get a paste. You need a nice smooth paste, no lumps please. No lumps and that might take you a little while, just keep doing it. Just keep stirring and stirring it until all the lumps are gone. And you want to work — probably should have had a little bit bigger bowl here, but we’ll do all right. And this makes your thickening for the broth. And you probably normally would not need this much, but I have a lot of broth here because we’re going to have a lot of company. So you keep working it. Now that looks a little thin to me. Looks like I probably need a little bit thicker. But for time sake, I’m just going to go ahead. You have to make sure see if there’s a little lump in there at this point, it’s going to show up like a dumpling in your gravy and you don’t want that to happen. So once you see these on here, don’t want that. So I usually take a fork or something and just go over the top. This looks pretty clear. Oops, there’s one. That goes in the trash. Okay. Now, we have our gravy. Don’t worry about that soup in there. That’s all going to melt down as we’re adding the thickening. And what you’re going to do here with your whisk in your hand, and you’re stirring, stirring, stirring in a steady stream. You’re going to start to add your thickening. And you’re going to do that until you start — your heat’s on high. This has to be boiling and you’re just going to keep pouring it in little by little constantly until it’s as thick as you like. Some people like a thin gravy. Some people like a thick gravy. Whatever you like, that’s what you want to do. So we just keep stirring and then after this is in there, it’s going to cook for about five minutes on a medium low heat because you want to — what you do then is cook the gravy so it doesn’t taste like flour. You want that flour taste to be gone. Well, I can’t wait till we get to the dining room because everything’s ready for our Thanksgiving dinner. Here’s our break. When we come back I’ll see you in the dining room.

Well, here we are in the dining room. Finally, after all the preparation, after all the how to’s, the do this, the don’t do that, but what a wonderful table we can present for Thanksgiving this year. And I’m just excited because we’ve chosen to do a buffet rather than a sit down because we don’t have seating for as many people as will be attending. So what you want to do is make it as easy and convenient for them when they are participating in the buffet. And that’s why in the background here, we’ve done our plates and our goblets. And we have our — I’ve just taken, this is such a simple, easy, but appreciated idea. You just take your flatware and your napkin and then you just wrap it with a little piece of pipe cleaner. And then you put a little leaf on the front and that’s very festive, very nice, very easy, very inexpensive, so that they can just grab this. They don’t have to be worried about the knife and the fork falling on the floor. You try to make it as easy as you can for those who will be with you. So put them in a pretty little basket and set that in the background. Then the table has plenty of room for all the wonderful things that we’ve prepared today. First of all, we’re going to start with Tom. I told you he would be a beautiful bird. He is golden brown, delicious. Skin is crisp and well done and seasoned beautifully. And we’ve just added some parsley. You know part of eating a turkey in anything is feasting with your eyes before you ever taste it with your mouth. So just decorated up, garnish with a few grapes and some orange slices and some wonderful curly parsley around there just makes it look so pretty and so enjoyable. Next to it we have our corn pudding, remember we did it in the bain-marie, we baked it and this is an absolute delicious corn pudding. You’re going to really — you’ll want to get this. See how it sits like a custard? Look at that. Corn pudding beautifully done, beautifully done. Watch your timing on that it might take a little longer than the recipe says. All right. When it’s set and it doesn’t move, that’s when it’s done. Next to it we have our sweet potato souffle. I told you this is more like a dessert. Look at that. Piping hot and delicious. This will be a big hit. They’ll think its dessert. Next to it, we have our — here’s my dad’s raisin walnut pie and this is always a winner. This just tastes so good and you just cut little slivers, put a dollop of cool whip or whipped cream, ice cream. If you wait and have your dessert a while after your dinner, this is very nice to have, make a fresh pot of coffee. You can even get the pumpkin spice flavored coffees. They had them at McGinnis, by the way, but that’s just nice to do three or four hours after you have your early dinner. And one of the big hits is Dad’s raisin walnut pie. You’ll want to make this one. Next to it, we have our lime jello salad, Mom’s favorite. We just dolloped it with a little bit of cool whip, that or mayonnaise really works well with that. Then we’ve added just a little relish tray with some fresh vegetables. You want to think about people who are, like watching their diet, even on a holiday. So you always provide fresh vegetables for them. Next to it, what would it be without mashed potatoes. And these are nice and creamy. We’ve made a big bowl, you always make a lot of those because they warm up very easily. And next to it. There’s our golden, delicious, oh, so creamy gravy. A table just full of all kinds of goodies. We’ve added a pumpkin pie, we’ve added a few dinner rolls. And I tell you, this is a meal that’s fit for a queen or a king. I hope that this holiday, you will keep the focus with your family, on being thankful. And before you eat, my dad used to take the Bible, and he would read the 136th Psalm that says, oh, give thanks unto the Lord for He is good and His mercy endures forever. What a wonderful way to remind everyone at your table, that God is good. All the time God is good. And then Dad would say a prayer, then we would all dig in. What wonderful memories. So create some of those for your family and your friends, your kids, your grandkids, the neighbors, whoever else happens to be at your table this year. And please, let’s not just use this day to be thankful for. Thanksgiving, a thankful heart is necessary all year long. Not just on Thanksgiving. God loves when people are thankful. And you know what, I like it when I’m appreciated. Someone says thank you, Arlene. That makes me feel good. So let’s decide this year is going to be your Thanksgiving, first of all unto the Lord and then on to people who do nice things for you, or that you do nice things for. We hope that you’ve enjoyed this series. We’re really, really happy to bring you Thanksgiving. And we’re going to do a lot more holiday shows in the upcoming weeks. Most of all, we’re thankful for Jesus, and we’re thankful for you because it’s always a holiday when you come by our house. So be sure to join us the next time because it just wouldn’t be the same without you here at home for Thanksgiving. Happy Thanksgiving.

Food provided by McGinnis Sisters special food stores in Brentwood and Monroeville. Taste the world

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