Holiday Sides 3 Ways (My Best Versions of the Classics)

what's up the main problem I have with holiday dishes is that I only get to make them like once or twice per year Max so every year around Thanksgiving or Christmas I'm back on the old internet Googling best stuffing recipe or how many potatoes does it take to feed 12 people so in an attempt to make that entire process easier or eliminate it all together today I'm gonna show you my best versions of the big three holiday sides mashed potatoes stuffing and green bean casserole all three of these recipes are well researched very well tested and feed up to 12 people first up is mashed potatoes or more specifically potato puree these potatoes are going to be much smoother than their mashed counterparts and at my Thanksgiving dinner always steal the show to get started on the potato puree I'll grab 10 pounds of potatoes I almost always use russets over the Yukon Gold alternative because I find russets to be less sweet and just more consistent from back to back to get these prepped for the pot I'll just give them a thorough peel and then dice them into large chunks like this next I'll grab my largest pot and then scoot all 10 pounds into it I'll fill the pot with just enough water to cover the potatoes and then I'll drop that pot on the stove and bring it to a boil once it's boiling I'll turn the heat down to medium I'll let these simmer for 25 to 30 minutes or until they're fully tender gentle simmering is much preferable to hard boiling here because it yields a less blown out potato that is much less waterlogged while those finish cooking I'm going to grab two small saucepans and into one add four sticks of butter that might seem like a lot and it is but these potatoes are going to be thirsting for it into the other sauce panel add 350 grams of heavy cream a pint is 475 grams and I'll be using the remaining 125 for the third recipe in this video now I'll drop both of these pots over on the stove over low heat to melt the butter and warm the cream over at my big pot these potatoes have been simmering for 25 minutes so I'll come back and check them for tenderness as you can see when I poke it it mushes that's ideal I'd rather be overcooked than undercooked on these by the way because undercooked potatoes get gluey when you mash them now now once I've got these potatoes very very well drained off as in no water standing in the bottom of the pot I'll pour over my butter and get to work smashing these with a sturdy wooden spoon if you're wondering hey Bry why add the butter and cream separate well adding the butter up front actually coats the starch molecules in the potato and that makes for a butterier tasting potato puree I know it sounds crazy but based on my experience making potato puree every single day in the restaurant it's true and that's how we do it at the pro level once I've got these potatoes smashed and the butter is mostly mixed in I'll stream in my 350 grams of heavy cream and jump back in to stir again I'm just trying to smash things up and get the cream evenly spread throughout the mixture and once I've got a well combined but lumpy mess like this it's time to actually do the hard part for that I'll scoop my pot off to the side and then grab my potato straining equipment that's a large vessel to catch all the strained puree I've also got a fine mesh strainer here highly recommend getting one of these if you don't have it and lastly I've got a one ounce Ladle I actually use that to push the array through the mesh okay I'll start by loading up three to four large spoonfuls of potatoes then in goes my Ladle and I'll just stand here and push them through for however long it takes this part is just pure elbow greasing you guys every year when I make Thanksgiving I make sure to set aside at least 20 minutes to pass these through in peace but the final texture here is really worth the effort you guys and you'll see in just a minute it's ethereal once I've got a decent amount of these potatoes pushed through the mesh and they're starting to creep up the side of the strainer I'm going to move them over to their final resting place for me that's a crock pot or a slow cooker I'll just turn it on the low heat or the keep warm setting and then add in my potatoes as I finish them this way I can make the potatoes one to two hours ahead of time and just keep them warm while I finish all my other prep speaking of keeping things warm while passing these potatoes make sure to keep the lumpy stuff as warm as possible this puree will start to get a little gluey if you pass it through the mesh while it's cold and it is just much much easier to pass while it's still warm once I've turned 10 pounds of lumpy stuff into to Silk I'll give it a taste well no salt at all just as I suspected tastes not very good so I'll add in three to four very strong grips of salt about 15 to 20 grams and I'll stir that in make sure to get into every corner here and give the potatoes a good minute before you taste again because that's just about how long it takes for coarse kosher salt to fully melt one more taste this time it's salted and it tastes great but I think it needs just a little bit more butter so I'll add another half stick or so 75 grams and I'll mention that the last mile of seasoning on this is always going to be a taste and see situation so use your senses and decide if you think it needs more fat or cream or just a little bit more salt and honestly these are really special and I don't really know how to say it other than that people who haven't had world-class potato puree just aren't aware that this level of pleasure is available yes they're a lot of work and kind of a mess to make but the result is going to redefine smooth for you they're silky luscious buttery creamy and work as both a standalone dish or a supporting character for gravy and turkey okay up next is the savory bread pudding also known as stuffin to get started I'll grab one and a half pounds or about 750 grams of hearty white bread when I say hearty I mean something that is a little bit less squishy and less sweet than your standard issue Wonder Bread that stuff tends to make a pretty mushy stuffing now to prep these I'm going to stack these slices and cut them into large squares that are about an inch and a half across or four to five centimeters chunkier bread is going to both hold liquid better and not degrade into a pulp like the stuff that comes in the stovetop box once I've got this whole bread loaf cut into large rustic squares like this I'll spread it evenly between two half sheet trays from there this bread goes into a preheated 275 oven to dry for 25 minutes while that bread toast I'll sweat my veggies for that I'll grab a large saute pan and drop it on the stove over medium heat once that's hot I'll add in a whole stick of butter or 115 grams I'll let that melt then in goes 350 grams of small diced onion 250 grams of small diced celery and then 5G grams of salt or about a teaspoon's worth and from there I'll jump in with a wooden spoon and stir to get that all combined I'll let these veggies cook for three to four minutes and once they've got a little sweat going on and they're halfway too soft like this I'll add in five grams of chopped fresh Sage or about two teaspoons worth that'll get a quick stir to combine and then I'll continue to fry these veggies with the sage for another four to five minutes I prefer to cook the sage a little bit as opposed to adding it raw into the stuffing because raw Sage tastes a little bit too medicinal for me and kind of takes over the entire dish now when my veggies are just about fully softened but not mushy by any means we'll call them done from here I'll scoot this pan off to the side to cool while I finish the rest of the prep that means taking 150 grams of golden raisins and just breaking some glass into the saucepan then topping that with just enough water to cover from there I'll scoot this saucepan over to the stove and bring it to a simmer I'll cook these raisins for about five minutes to soften them up they're gonna bring a little Papa's sweet contrast to the homogeneous plate of savory Brown that is a holiday feast now after five minutes of simmering these I'm going to move them off heat to bloom for five minutes more before I mix them with everything else back to the bread it's been in the oven for 25 minutes now and the cubes are dried out but not caramelized or toasted in any way also they're not 100 dry I'd say they're closer to like 80 that's going to leave some room for a bready texture and yield a moister stuffing overall now both sheet trays will go into my largest mixing bowl then I'll add in all of my sweated onion celery behind that all of my boiled and drained raisins then 15 grams of chopped fresh parsley two to three grams of poultry seasoning two to three grams of black pepper and then all of my wet ingredients to make that I combined one whole box of store-bought chicken stock that's 946 grams exactly but we'll round that to 950 then five whole large eggs and then I've got 50 grams of better than bouillon roasted chicken paste here normally the week before Thanksgiving I would spend a good amount of time making some fortified turkey stock but we're all busy this year you guys and we're probably not going to get to that so the next best thing is to combine a little bit of good tasting high quality bouillon and store-bought stock if you have nice stock use that instead once my wet ingredients are added in I'll jump in and gently fold all this to combine most stuffing recipes out there use about half this amount of eggs and just liquid overall and that's a real Miss in my opinion I consider stuffing to be savory bread pudding and we want this stuff to be moist and well set we need quite a bit of stock and quite a bit of eggs to accomplish those two things once everything's well combined here I'll grab a 9x13 cake pan and butter it liberally from edge to edge I prefer a metal cake pan over a ceramic one because it does a better job of frying and crisping up the edges next the stuffing goes into the pan and then I'll come back and spread that evenly I also like to come back and dock the top with my fingertips almost like it's Focaccia that's going to give me a more interesting Dynamic top crust the last move is to top this with a few pads of butter to Loop things up then a layer of foil I'll tuck that up and then in it goes to a 375f oven to roast cover it for 45 minutes while that roast let me quickly thank the sponsor of this video Babel one of the top language learning apps in the world Lauren my wife and I's favorite thing to do together is travel and discover new cultures when we do that we prefer to have a few local words and phrases under our belts to just overall open up the experience that's why I really love to use Babel before we go to learn some of the basics Babel is a scientifically proven language learning app that helps you start speaking a new language in as little as three weeks their lessons are designed by real language teachers and teach you to learn the language in real world conversations about things that you can actually use like travel food and wine if you're interested in checking it out just click the link below in my description or scan this QR code here to get 60 off your Babel subscription they offer a few different subscription levels to choose from including a lifetime subscription that includes unlimited access to all of their languages right now I'm brushing up on my Italian because Lauren and I are hoping to go back to Northern next year let me know down in the comments what language you guys want to learn and again you can get 60 off when you use my link in the description below thank you Babble 45 minutes later I'll pull this stuffing out of the oven and then take off the foil as you can see the eggs inside steamed up and kind of puffed the whole thing and that leads me to believe that it's cooked throughout now I'm going to load this back into the oven at 450 F so that I can get some hard roasting going on the top and some frying going on around the edges cook time is going to vary here but for me about 18 to 20 minutes is ideal 18 minutes later we'll call this done you tell me that this is not better than stuffing steamed inside of a bird when I scoop some out you can see that it's really well set and ready and tender and just looks perfectly soft it's herbal it's Savory it's poultry forward it's crunchy and there's pops of raisins it's just pleasing to eat overall and I hope you try it soon next is probably my favorite recipe in this video and that's green bean casserole to get this one started I'll grab two pots one filled with water that's to cook our beans and then another filled with oil I added about a quartz worth of neutral high smoke canola oil to this Dutch oven I'll let both of those preheat and come to a boil and then I'll grab a two pound bag of trimmed green beans and get them ready for the pot for the beans I'm going to cut them into one to one and a half inch pieces for roughly the length of the ones that come out of the can too long here and we wouldn't have the spoonable casserole quality that we're looking for once I've got all two pounds of these beans or about a kilos worth of them cut into lengths like this I'm gonna boil them now into my pot of boiling water uh two very strong grips of salt then all of my green beans I'll set a timer for five minutes but how long it takes could vary depending on your specific volume of water overall we're looking to thread the needle between soft but not mushy we definitely don't want undercooked green beans that have a ton of Snappy texture and we definitely don't want ones that have no texture so give them a taste and decide for yourself but air on the side of a little bit more tender than less I'm happy with where these are at so I'm going to scoop them out of the water and into a medium bowl no need to set up an ice bath here to stop the cooking a little bit of carryover is totally fine next let's bust out the crispy fried shallots for that I'm gonna grab six to eight large shallots and slice them into about 1 8 inch thick Rings If you can't find shallot red don't even would totally work just slice them sort of close to the same thickness once I got them all sliced up I'm going to do a little bit of Separation to split these into individual rings in total I need about 250 grams of sliced and separated shallot next I'll make the breading into a bowl I'll combine 200 grams of all-purpose flour 75 grams of cornstarch 3 grams of salt 3 grams of baking powder 2 grams of black pepper and 2 grams of paprika I'll stir to get that combined then in goes all of my shallots I'll jump into the bowl and give those a quick tossing to get them coated having some flour stuck to the outside before they hit the wet stuff in just a second is going to help the breading stick much better next I'll grab something to sift the shallots out of this flower blend for me that's gonna be the basket of my salad spinner but if you didn't want to dirty such a large dish you could just pick these out of the flour by hand after these are well sifted and fully dusted with flour I'm going to top them with 225 grams of Buttermilk now I'll start to get that combined to get the shallots fully coated with the milk then I'll use a slotted spoon to scoop these into the flour mixture that we just sifted off there we go now another toss toss to combine to get the shallots evenly coated with the seasoned flour and that looks great now over at the stove my oil is at 350 apps so I'll take these dredged shallots and carefully lower them into my oil using my spider so I don't Splash myself with hot oil once they're all in I'll come back and give everything a little poke and a prod to loosen the shallot so they don't stick to each other also if you're not looking to get a big pot of oil like this dirty store-bought fried onions are actually pretty good so if you are looking to cut a corner this one would be it after five minutes at 350f these onions are taking on some nice medium gold color so I'll lift a few out to see how they feel and on the spider I can tell they're crispy and brittle and I like the color so I'll pull them out over on my cutting board I've got a paper towel lined sheet tray set up as a landing pad so I can drain these off and keep them from getting greasy and there we go fried shallots taste amazing I'm really stoked on how these turned out and by the way there's a few extras here to snack on so feel free to make this final dish I'm going to preheat a medium pot over medium Heat then in goes one whole stick of butter or 115 grams I'll let that melt then in goes one pound of medium to small diced mushrooms then 15 to 20 grams of minced garlic and then 10 to 12 grams of salt to get these mushrooms ready for the pot I took one pounds worth of RAW button mushrooms and then threw them into my food processor I cut them in half first though so they break down as fast as possible if you didn't do this the mushrooms on the bottom would get chopped too quickly before the ones on the top had a chance to make their way down to the blade now the lid goes on I'll pulse this a dozen times or so until the mushrooms are well broken down into a uniform small dice like this now back at the stove after a quick stir in about a minute of heat these mushrooms have released all of their liquid and so from here we need to simmer it down to reduce it until they're dry and starting to fry that takes about five minutes or so and once the butter is visible again and these are just barely on the edge of taking on color I'll add in five grams of chopped fresh thyme I'll give that a stir to bloom it out and give it a little fry for maybe another minute or so and then from there I'll add in 65 grams of all-purpose flour I'll stir that in and give it about one minute to cook off the raw edge of the flour and to scrape up any of the brown bits from the mushrooms and once this roux is going from white to light blonde I'll add 400 grams of chicken broth and 125 grams of heavy cream one more quick stir to get that mixed into the roux and bring it to a simmer and once the stock is thickened into something that can be reasonably called the cream of mushroom soup I'll simmer it for about two to three more minutes to make sure the roux and the mushrooms are fully cooked if yours gets a little thick on you like this that's not a big deal just splash in some additional stock to thin it out until it's relatively the texture of canned cream of mushroom soup it should be pretty thick though and this looks great next off heat I'll add in all of my cooked green beans then 50 grams of Parmesan cheese and 3 grams of black pepper I'll stir that in to gently melt the parm into the roux the parmesan here makes this dish much more Umami and delicious overall without making it overtly cheesy I really love it this is looking to touch thick again so in goes another splash of stock to get the texture that we're looking for once I've got some very flavorful Bean fill build a cream of mushroom soup going on I'm gonna load it into a 9x13 cake pan just like for the stuffing and by the way this is a standard issue grocery store pan that I got for like seven bucks nothing fancy I'll spread that out evenly then top it with my fried shallots once I got an even spread I'll load this into a 375 F oven to roast it for about 18 to 20 minutes I'm looking to roast the top of this thing a little bit and get some caramelization on the bottom and around the edges after just about 20 minutes I'll pull this out so that we can take a look freaking textbook handmade green bean casserole you guys for me the real differentiator for this version as opposed to say your mom's is the quality of our mushroom soup making the roux sweating the mushrooms with garlic all that stuff adds up to a really grown-up flavor That Just Smokes anything you can get out of a can this casserole is peppery it's earthy creamy soft crunchy salty oniony it's just really good it's really good yes it is a lot of work all of these recipes are but isn't that what Thanksgiving is is all about I truly hope that you try at least one of these for this holiday season and oh yeah let's eat this thing [Music]

Channel: Brian Lagerstrom

Views: 405,014

Keywords: holiday sides, thanksgiving, stuffing recipe, green bean casserole recipe, mashed potatoes, how to make stuffing, best stuffing recipe, best green bean casserole, green bean casserole from scratch, thanksgiving sides, holiday side dishes, holiday side recipes, holiday recipes, thanksgiving recipes, best thanksgiving recipes, best holiday recipes, christmas recipes, potato puree, how to make green bean casserole, brian lagerstrom, weeds and sardines, cooking, holidays

Id: Z8J2HgaaSgQ

Length: 17min 39sec (1059 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 14 2022