Deep Fried Turkey

For the third year in a row, we deep-fried a turkey for Thanksgiving. I know this method is getting more and more popular, and for good reason: the bird comes out of the oil juicy and thoroughly cooked every time.

I've been thinking about the process, though, and I'm not sure we can actually call the process "deep frying". After all, what happens with the bird is a lot different than what happens when you make french fries.

The surface area-to-volume-to-cooking time ratio is all messed up. Arguably, the skin is indeed deep fried, but what happens to the remainder of the bird is more akin to boiling or steaming.

I always bind up my bird with marine-grade stainless steel chain and shackles. Culinary chain. An effective, if to some rather off-putting method of securing the bird.

I don't have a proper "turkey fryer," but this 25 liter pot and paella burner work just fine. It takes a while to get the oil up to temperature. The end of the chain is secured in some sort of stick across the top of the pot.

The result. This year I tried something a little different. It was frightfully cold outside, and folks were getting antsy, so we put the bird in at 150 degrees celsius (300 F) rather than wait for it to reach 170. We then watched the temperature drop to about 110, and let the 5.6 kg bird sit in there for about 45 minutes. The lower temperature explains the coloring: maybe a little pale. The meat was great, though! And like I mentioned before, I'm not sure it's really deep frying. The oil never gets back to a temperature where it risks burning the skin. Really, the skin is shocked by the hot oil, and then the bird and the oil slowly approach equilibrium, closer to 100 degrees and well below frying temperature.

Corned Beef in a few weeks

The local store is having a special on högrev (chuck steak) from Ireland, so I picked up a kilo figuring I'd have a hankering for reubens in a few weeks.

Below you can see my preparation for beef corning.

I've got a lidded glass container I can keep the beef in while it seasons for three weeks. In the picture you can see that I've covered the beef with water to estimate the amount I'll need to keep it submerged. I measured the water (about 3 cups) as I decanted it into a small pot. As I heated the water, I determined that I needed about 1/4 C of course salt (I'm going roughly by Joy's recommendation here, though I've learned to cut the salt in half), which I stirred in just before the water reached a boil, and then poured it into the glass container. I've also seasoned the brine with a bay leaf, white peppercorns, allspice, mustard seed, cloves, and a couple tablespoons of sugar. It's cooling in the fridge right now, but this evening I'll free the beef of it's plastic wrap and submerge it in the brine. I use the stainless steel chain pictured in the bottom right (acquired at a marine supply shop) to keep the beef under the water level of the brine while it sits in the fridge from 2-4 weeks.

A Whole Chicken

Every so often, once a week to once a month, I'll take advantage of a good offer and buy a whole chicken. I could roast it whole, of course, or cut out the back and roast it flat as Bittman advises. Usually, though, I butcher it and take it through the following steps:

1 Breasts get used for fajitas or stir-fries, or are maybe marinated and grilled, and sliced and served alongside heaps of veggies and starches. At any rate, there are just the two of them, and they're usually not that big when I get them off of the whole chickens on offer here. But they'll provide the animal protein for a family meal at any rate.

2 Drumsticks get separated from the thighs and, and these together with the wings (and oysters, if I remember to dig them out) are marinated and roasted and served whole, or pan-fried, or thrown into a simple chicken stew. More flavor, and fat in these pieces, though they're filled with those cumbersome bones.

3 The carcass is really what we're working towards here. The other parts can get bought and used already prepared, but the carcass is special, especially in a country where canned chicken broth is unheard of. Here you're stuck with salty, suspicious bouillon cubes or doing it from scratch. I keep a big yogurt bin in the freezer I periodically fill with vegetable trimmings: the ends of onions and carrots and celery, and when I've got a chicken carcass (or back) to work with I throw it (trimmed of fat and skin) in the stock pot along with whatever's in the freezer. I usually get enough stock from this process to make a pot of soup and a batch of risotto.


There's nothing new in any of this, of course, but it does require a little planning ahead and a bit of time on the part of the cook. We're not a vegetarian household, but that doesn't mean we don't respect the animal or can't try to make the most of it while limiting our intake of animal protein. Making a chicken last three or four meals is just part of that philosophy.

Birthday Cassoulet

A Sunday trip to Falkenberg furnished a pair of duck thighs, and a normal provisioning trip to a big-box supermarket provided raw Italian sausage, and since it was my birthday, and I had the time, I decided upon a birthday cassoulet. Below, the meats readied for roasting. Clockwise, from top left: French duck, German pig (I took about 100 grams of this Schwartzwalder ham), Italian pig (salsiccia dolce, 300 g) Danish pig (a chunk of ham I had, about 50 g), Swedish pig (a bit of tenderloin I had, about 250g), Swedish lamb (about 400g). A regular Animal Farm EU summit.

I had soaked a pound (450g) of white beans over night, the proper way, rather than my usual method of pushing them with boiling water. No appreciable difference, but the beans were ready to go first thing in the morning. I replaced the soaking water and added a nice can of tomatoes and let cook. Meanwhile, I roasted the meats, salted and peppered and dressed with olive oil under the broiler until nicely browned. When they were ready, I threw them in the pot, and turned the burner off to let them cook together on the residual heat. Meanwhile, two chopped carrots, two chopped onions, and three cloves of garlic got tossed in the rendered fat of the meat roasting pan and were thrown under the broiler for ten minutes or so. When they were ready I lowered the rack and turned the oven down to 125 C, put the veggies in the soup pot together with a healthy dose of thyme and a bay leaf. The whole pot got put in the oven with its heavy lid on tight for a couple of hours. I pulled it out, let it rest, and threw it in the fridge before my mid-day bike ride.

Two hours before dinnertime I fished out the sausage and cut it up, and picked the duck meat off the bone, and threw the pot back in the oven at 125 C. A fine cassoulet.