Our Classic Thanksgiving Recipes

hi I'm Ben Mims cooking columnist for the LA Times and for Thanksgiving this year I want to arm you with a collection of recipes for classic dishes that you can turn to this year and for years to come to cook the perfect holiday meal each year I work from months to come up with new ideas for Thanksgiving recipes and when they come out I get a lot of friends and readers who say that really sounds great but can you just give me a basic recipe for a stuffing or cranberry sauce but I get it Thanksgiving is tied really strongly to tradition and people ultimately want really familiar flavors because that's the food that reminds them of home so instead of coming up with anything new for Thanksgiving I'm giving you my best recipes for really simple really classic Thanksgiving dishes think of these recipes as templates and once you make them you can riff off of and make them your own for your family and friends Happy Thanksgiving everybody foreign [Music] to most people there is no Thanksgiving without a turkey and I know it can be overwhelming to cook a giant bird that you only make once a year but I'm going to show you my really easy method for making a turkey that's really delicious and as stress-free as possible the Big Bird usually you want to look for something around 12 to 16 pounds this year I got a 21 pounder that was like the best I could do so we're going to talk about how to deal with birds that are in that range from 12 to 21 pounds but I have my turkey I've taken all the packaging off the outside and let it kind of dry I want to Pat it dry with paper towels it's going to help when it Browns later and to help kind of all the things that we're going to add to the turkey to make it taste really good that's going to help everything stick to the skin so the first thing you want to do is get rid of kind of all the things you don't need on the turkey so this little pop-up thermometer here we don't need that we're going to use our own thermometer to make sure that the bird is cooked really well and then also usually turkeys come with this little plastic handle which makes it really convenient for lifting it up and moving it around but once I have it on my baking sheet then I'm going to roast the turkey on I don't need any more so just take your scissors kind of snip it apart sometimes it can be really dug in really well into the back of the turkey so you just want to make sure you can get that out pretty easily also inside the turkey you're going to find the neck and usually there's a bag at the front this time of all the organs and giblets so I just want to peel back that kind of like skin up at the top there's usually the bag sitting right there that has all the like the kidneys and all the organs you're gonna need save that for making turkey stock if you want to or for the gravy later on so once you have all the plastic out you want to trim off all this kind of excess skin you can use your scissors or a knife just got to trim it so there's a little bit there but not a lot excess hanging out and then on the back side as well there's usually the turkeys little Tails a little butt kind of hanging on so you just want to clip that off as well again you can roast these boil these and cook all this together to make a really wonderful stock if there's any excess skin or any kind of like big pieces of fat as well kind of clip those off save those two a little bit extra skin here so I'll clip that off then if you want to it's not totally necessary turkey's little Foams here you can kind of clip those off too [Music] they usually come off pretty easily just like that just makes for a nicer looking wing on the turkey still with nothing on it I like to kind of take the wings and just pin them back behind the whole body that makes for a really kind of even cooking so you don't have these like wing tips burning on the outside so I'll show you that one more time you just want to lift up the turkey take the wing just kind of a little bit of muscle it's gonna be slippery sometimes just kind of bend it back so it's Pan behind the turkey that way you have a nice like Norman Rockwell shaped turkey so now that we have the turkey kind of free from all the extra skin pieces meat and all the plastic we're ready to season it with a really delicious butter first thing we're going to do is take half a pound of butter which is about two sticks we're going to add this to a bowl like that and then I want to flavor this butter with at least two things which is salt and pepper so I take a tablespoon of salt which I know sounds like a lot but this is a giant turkey as you can see so you want to make sure it has a lot of great flavor and then about a teaspoon of freshly ground black pepper which is like a third of a tablespoon so I add this here and so I'm just going to stir these up to incorporate the salt and pepper with the butter you can absolutely and you probably should add a little more flavorings than just salt and pepper but even if you just use salt and pepper your turkey will taste great because this is going to be stuffed under the skin of the turkey it's going to keep the breast really moist it's going to help kind of like fry the skin so it gets really crispy it's mostly just going to baste the turkey by itself so just want to stir until it's all evenly combined and now we're going to grab our turkey again and so before we kind of like Lube this thing up with all the butter we want to be able to handle it really easily so I want to season the inside so I just want to kind of set it up like that on its neck and then just sprinkle the inside lots of salt and pepper because you might think this doesn't really do anything but this does season the meat from the inside as well so just kind of tip it to each side to make sure some salt lands in there a little bit of pepper as well just like that this is a tip too that whenever you are working with a turkey and seasoning it for Thanksgiving put a little extra salt and pepper in some bowls that you can use with your turkey hands that way you have to worry about any kind of cross contamination so now that we have the inside of the turkey seasoned I'm going to separate the skin from the meat over the breast and that's where we're going to put the butter so here's what you want to do you want to take your finger and just kind of lift up the skin if you kind of press your finger where the skin meets the meat it will kind of like break a really thin membrane and you want to break through that and then just kind of like wiggle your finger back and forth and you'll kind of feel it open up and you're kind of breaking that membrane that holds the skin to the meat so you just want to break that open but you don't want to like tear a huge hole in the skin because you want this to keep all that butter in that you're using to stuff the turkey so again lift up the skin kind of press your finger wear the skin kind of meets the flesh of the turkey until you find an opening and then just kind of wiggle your finger around again make sure not to break the skin and so if you want to keep that intact if you have long fingernails this might not be the job for you get someone that has short fingernails to do that and then so we did that over the kind of the lower quadrant of the breast now we're going to do it over the upper part as well so lift up that skin press your finger where it meets the flesh and then just go back and forth and eventually you'll kind of meet that first part that you broke through over here you just want to connect the two so you have one kind of like open pocket that's going to hold all that butter so now you have this big open pocket we're going to stuff that with our butter so I like to use a spoon for this just because it helps scoop up some of the butter and then also there's no sharp edges so you can lift up the skin find the kind of hole where you put the you put your finger before press the spoon in and then use the skin to kind of rake it off the spoon like that and now we're just going to do that in all four kind of entry points that we made over the turkey before so lift up the skin find the hole and kind of use a scan to kind of rake the butter off the spoon just like that we'll do it the bottom four as well if a little butter gets on the outside or on your fingers that's totally fine because I'm going to show you what to do with that in a second so you should use big spoonfuls of butter again lift up the skin press it in break it off just like that once you have all the butter under the skin and these kind of pockets are connected you can just kind of mush the butter all over the breast just like that using the skin until they connect then you kind of have this really flavorful butter that is spread all over the turkey breast and then you're going to take all this extra butter that you just made so I'll scrape it all onto the turkey just like that and then use your hands and you want to cover this turkey every square inch with that butter so just kind of spread it around [Music] just like that might be a little like kind of wet and doesn't want to stick at first but then you'll see eventually it'll kind of spread itself out make sure to get the wings as well you'll make sure everything is covered with this butter I mean when a turkey's covered with two sticks of butter you can't tell me it's not going to taste good even if it's just salt and pepper and then once you have all that on there it's going to wash my hands and then we're going to season the bird with some more salt and pepper so now that I have the butter all over the turkey and even though we have salt and pepper on the inside of the cavity it's in the butter and that's under the skin and on top we want to add a little more that's just going to help to really season this bird because it's pretty big bird so I like to add maybe another tablespoon to two depending on how big their turkey is evenly kind of sprinkle it all over the turkey this is going to season the skin a lot more and then as you cut the pieces once the turkey is done it'll make sure that all that meat is really well seasoned even down to the meat that's like by the bone as well just give a nice kind of like light even coating a lot of the salt also would kind of fall off the turkey into the pan and help kind of flavor the drippings and the fats you're going to use to make the turkey as well you want to make sure every piece has a lot of seasoning you can lift up the turkey a little bit make sure you get the thigh as well just like that so now we have this beautifully seasoned buttered turkey it's ready to go in the oven but what we're going to do is we're going to actually let this sit for at least overnight preferably 24 hours and that lets all the salt and pepper really get into the turkey kind of create an even cooking environment and then all we have to do on Thanksgiving morning is take it out of the refrigerator pop in the oven and that'll be it so I've let the turkey sit for a day in the refrigerator and that again helped to get all the salt and pepper really into the meat of the bird and help it cook really evenly so I actually took this turkey out about an hour and a half ago that helps to ensure that it's really room temperature which is going to also help it roast really evenly so before we stick in the oven though I'm going to add some more aromatics to ensure that's really flavorful so what I like to do is take two large yellow onions and just cut them into pretty thick slices probably about a third to half an inch what I'm going to do is take all these slices and kind of put them on the bottom of our baking sheet and this is going to one kind of flavor all the drippings that we're going to use to make the gravy later but also if you don't have a rack it helps to keep the turkey kind of lifted off the baking sheet so it doesn't Steam on the bottom but kind of gets nice and crispy just like that and now before you set the turkey on top of the onions I'm also going to put some lemons inside the turkey and that's just going to help really kind of perfume the turkey from the inside so let's cut it into like four pieces just like that I'll do about two of these if you have a smaller turkey one's fine if you have a big turkey two or three depending on the size of the lemons and then just kind of stuff those inside the cavity like that once they come out also as well you can kind of squeeze the juices into the pan drippings which adds even more flavor just like that just until they fill the cavity so now that the lemons are in the turkey I'm gonna take some kitchen twine I'm just going to tie the legs together to make sure they cook evenly this is what a lot of trusting is all about is just making sure that all the meat Cooks evenly in the bird but you don't really have to do the whole bird and tie it up the way chefs used to all you need to do is just ensure that the drumsticks are kind of tight into the breast so I like to put some twine just under each drumstick kind of loop the twine around the end just like that to kind of secure it in place and then you just want to make a regular knot just like this kind of pull it together and then like another knot to secure it just like that it doesn't have to be anything fancy you just want to make sure that they're a little bit closer than they were before and now you want to take this whole turkey move it all right on top of all those onions see how they kind of lifts the turkey up so it's not going to be sitting directly on the sheet pan and so we're going to take this big thing we're going to stick it in a 350 degree oven and roast it for around two and a half to three hours it works out to about 10 to 13 minutes a pound but it really depends on the size of the bird and how cold it is going into the oven so I like to start checking it at around two and a half hours then every 30 minutes until an instant read thermometer stuck into the thickest part of the thigh reads 160 degrees so the turkey came out of the oven at just under three hours for about a 21 pound turkey let it sit here for about 45 minutes to make sure it's really cool I think a lot of people think that you know it comes out and you want to eat it right away or maybe even let it rest for like 10 minutes but a turkey is especially a turkey like this it's very big it's going to be very hot in there still so you could probably let it sit for about an hour or so and that will still be fine it'll still be plenty hot for dinner so now I want to take my turkey and I'm going to transfer it to my cutting board and you know if you don't have a carving fork or anything like that I actually like to use two tongs and I like to put one kind of in the front of the turkey and then one in the back and just kind of lift them together that way you don't pierce the skin too bad or kind of like rip any pieces off just like that and then I'm going to take all these delicious juices that have the butter that came off the turkey the onions some of the lemon from the inside and all the salt and pepper that went into that and all the kind of brown bits on the bottom so you're going to take the baking sheet very carefully very slowly kind of pour the drippings to receive and you can save these onions I like to spoon them around the turkey once I've carved it [Music] just drain the onions out now you have all the really wonderful drippings the fat from mixing with the turkey fat and the butter it's really flavorful so you can use all that to make gravy now you have these lovely onions you can spoon all around the turkey it comes time to carve it and so now you have a perfect roast turkey ready to carve and serve for Thanksgiving Thanksgiving gravy can often be an afterthought but it really is the dish that ties the whole meal together [Music] it's a really great gravy starts with really great turkey drippings so I have the fat that I skimmed off of turkey drippings that I made earlier and then all the drippings and kind of liquid that came out of it as well that's kind of like our stock that we're going to use for the gravy and when you pour off the drippings and you don't have enough a good thing to do is just buy some chicken stock that you can add to it so we need about four cups of liquid and then I've also measured out about four tablespoons of turkey fat here that came from roasting so it's turkey fat mixed with the butter that we used earlier but I'm going to set these aside for now while we work on the aromatics it starts with a shallot and I have about four cloves of garlic and about a teaspoon of thyme I'm using shallots just because they're pretty mild but if you don't have a shallot but you have say a quarter of a yellow onion just use that you could use red onions you can use scallions anything that's around that has that kind of like really nice kind of mild onion flavor but you want it to be pretty fine because this is going to be the gravy that you kind of spoon over the everything else on your plate so then we're going to finely chop the garlic so I have about a tablespoon of thyme leaves you can use rosemary if you have that if you don't have thyme or Rosemary you can use parsley honestly any kind of green herb just to give it a little bit of that freshness and kind of like green flavor so once you have all three of these kind of things combined this is going to be kind of think of it like your flavor pile like aromatics are going to make sure that whether you have turkey drippings or like vegetable stock whether you're using olive oil or turkey fat it's all going to taste good no matter what so I have a medium saucepan I'm just going to warm up the turkey fat until it kind of melts in the saucepan and now we're going to add the shallots garlic and Thyme to the fat and cook these over about medium heat just until they're really soft and starting to Brown at the edges so now the aromatics have been cooking for just a few minutes and the garlic will be the first thing that goes Brown so as soon as the garlic starts to turn light brown that's when you know you're ready and so just like with making a white sauce for mac and cheese or a gratin or anything like that we want to add some flour now to the fat and that's going to help thicken the gravy this is about a quarter cup plus two tablespoons so you just want to stir the flour around until it makes a thick paste and you want to cook it for about a minute just to kind of take that raw flour taste out I like to switch to a whisk this kind of helps when you're whisking in the stock and drippings to make sure that they don't form lumps so just kind of whisking constantly so slowly pour the stock into the flour and the aromatics you want to increase the heat to about like medium medium high and just keep whisking this as it comes to a boil that also ensures there's no lumps to form the gravy [Music] okay so the gravy's now come to a boil and as soon as it does that you just want to lower the heat the gravy is already thickened enough to where we want it but we want to let the kind of shallots and garlic in time kind of marry with the stock so we just want to set them it for about five more minutes so I'm going to take it off the heat and now it's time to season the gravy so for this amount of gravy I add about a teaspoon and a half of salt if you're using stock or your drippings are really salty maybe start with one teaspoon and then taste from there and then about half a teaspoon of freshly ground black pepper you can also leave that out too if you don't want pepper in the gravy so just whisk those together and then just because it's the holidays Thanksgiving I like to add a little bit of Brandy as well two tablespoons I'm gonna eyeball it a little more a little less but it really pairs well kind of complements the like turkey flavor that you have from the roasted turkey drippings the garlic and shallots and Thyme makes it really aromatic smells really wonderful there you go the gravy is done all you need to do now just kind of pour it into serving dish pass this around the table there you have the perfect gravy putting over stuffing turkey or anything else on your plate stuffing is really special because we really only get to eat it once a year at Thanksgiving and I'm going to show you my take on a classic recipe using sourdough bread and herbs so the first thing we need is lots of aromatics to flavor the stuffing so I have eight stalks of celery and two yellow onions and I'm just going to give these a rough chop that's about three cups and so now I'm gonna cut up two large yellow onions this is about six cups of chopped onions and now we're going to cook all this down in about a quarter cup of olive oil in a big pot over about medium heat so that way they don't burn but they get really nice and sweet and soft [Music] and to make sure they really have a lot of flavor while they cook down I'm going to add a lot of the seasoning right now so I add about a tablespoon of salt and about a teaspoon of freshly ground black pepper so I'm just going to stir these together we're gonna let these cook stirring them you know every few minutes when you think about it for about 20-25 minutes you'll know they're ready when they're really soft kind of translucent and just starting to Brown up the edge okay so while the onions and celery are cooking we're going to chop up some garlic and herbs they're going to flavor the aromatics as well so I have about four cloves of garlic here if you like more garlic you can absolutely use more so I'm just going to give it kind of quick rough chop put it off to the side and now our herbs and this is going to give you know all the flavor in the stuffing and then kind of keep it classic I like to use rosemary sage and Thyme so you want about two tablespoons of each herb kind of these like kind of hearty winter herbs they're really classic with stuffing another little rough chop off to the side and then with sage leaves you know a lot of times you can get Sage leaves that are a little big like this and kind of velvety but then also they come these kind of smaller bits whatever you get you just want to make sure that after you chop it you have about two tablespoons so so kind of get those rough chop and also off to the side and now our time and you know a lot of people say to pull the leaves backwards to get them off the stem Leaf but I always find that this happens it kind of breaks off and then you have to like go back get the leaves off and pick off more of the stem and you're like what's going on so I actually like to just go the opposite way because if you hold them by this end and pull then where the stem naturally breaks off is so soft just chop it up with the leaves so it's a lot less tedious you don't have to worry about going back and picking off individual leaves I'm going to bring back my garlic My Rosemary and Sage just give everything a good chop together and you know you don't have to do this you can chop everything individually but I like to kind of combine it all makes it more efficient and you have all the herbs and garlic just kind of mixed together it's really beautiful so now all of our celery and onions have been kind of slowly sweating sauteing for about 20-25 minutes so now it's time to add all the garlic and herbs that we chopped earlier just cook them for about two three minutes it immediately smells like Thanksgiving it smells so good so it's going to cook this like again just a couple minutes this recipe uses three cups of vegetable stock which I find to be kind of like the Goldilocks amount and then immediately you want to turn the heat off and set that off to the side and let it cool I made a recipe that uses fresh bread you can toast the bread to kind of dry it out if you want to that just adds an extra step so I like to just use fresh bread this is just a really plain kind of like country Loaf from the grocery store so I just want to cut it in about one inch thick slices and then cut it the other way about one inch cubes so now that I have all the bread in the bowl I'm going to take all the aromatics and that stock that I cooked earlier just want to stir it to make sure you get all those Brown bits off the bottom of the pot if there are any we're going to pour this right over the bread and kind of flavor it all the way to the Core make sure you get all those onions all the aromatics bits of herbs and garlic out of the pot don't waste anything I'm going to give everything a big toss to make sure you know all the stock and aromatics kind of evenly soaking into the bread and instead of baking this right away what you actually want to do is kind of let this sit for about 10 minutes maybe stir it once while it's sitting now we're going to add a few more seasonings and we added lots of salt to the aromatics before but I always like to add a little more at the end as well just because you've added all that bread and stock as well so an extra teaspoon of salt goes on at the end and then also I like to add two tablespoons of red wine vinegar just like coated all those aromatics and the olive oil and just makes it really light and kind of brightens it up give them a star one more time make sure they're really evenly combined with all the bread and in so far this stuffing is vegan you know we use vegetable stock for the stuffing we have aromatics the bread is vegan as well what we want to add next though with eggs if you're vegan just leave the eggs out it'll make for looser texture to the stuffing but that's totally fine it'll still taste great but if you're not you can add some eggs help kind of bind everything together so I like to crack the eggs into a bowl first just kind of break them up so they're nice and loose and then we'll pour this over the stuffing and stir it once more just to make sure all the egg coats all the pieces of bread now we're going to transfer this to a 9x13 baking dish brush this with olive oil instead of butter you could absolutely use but if you want to just a couple tablespoons [Music] greasing a pan like this obviously helps to kind of add flavor to the stuffing it also makes it easy to scoop the stuffing out but also with the oil it helps to really Brown the edges so now we're going to pour all the stuffing into the pan [Music] you're gonna have to pile it up a little bit it's gonna look like it's not gonna fit in but it will just like that evenly distribute it in the pan but you don't want to press it down and compact it you want to kind of let it be loose cover the top the sheet of foil and that lets the stuffing kind of cook through in the center and then after about 30 minutes we're going to uncover it does a little more olive oil over the top it helps to Brown the top as well and then we'll continue cooking it for about 45 minutes at 375 degrees so here is our sourdough and Herb stuffing it's nice and brown and crispy all those herbs and aromatics really smell wonderful this is the perfect thing to serve with your turkey your gravy and everything else on your Thanksgiving plate [Music] this cornbread dressing is flavored with pork sausage chili flakes and aromatics and has a great alternative to a traditional bread stuffing for Thanksgiving [Music] so to get started first thing we're going to do is brown the sausage so I have four tablespoons of butter I'm gonna melt in a pan what I like for this recipe is breakfast pork sausage because usually breakfast pork sausages have Sage which is a traditional Thanksgiving herb break the sausage up with your fingers as you add it in gonna give it a stir and as it Cooks you want to continue to kind of break it up again into small pieces so it gets distributed in the dressing really well and so while that works we're going to chop the aromatics for the stuffing as well so first thing I'm going to need is just two stalks of celery don't have to worry too much about being perfect when chopping for things like this this is you know rustic home cooking for Thanksgiving so just be casual and then just kind of cut it into about quarter inch pieces like so you want the celery to still be big enough so that you can taste it in the stuffing and not kind of disappear no chopped onion about the same size pieces so one kind of medium uh yellow onion so you want to cut right down through the center and more or less the same size as the celery so the sausage has been cooking for about eight to ten minutes and we just want to get it brown and cooked through just starting to caramelize on the bottom and it's rendered out a lot of it's fat and mixed with the butter and so that's what we're going to cook our aromatics in so I'm going to add the celery thank you and all our onions [Music] and at this point you want to season the aromatics to make sure they are really well seasoned and not just salty at the end so I like to add about two teaspoons of salt [Music] about a teaspoon of freshly ground black pepper and then to kind of balance the kind of savory sweet sausage with the sweet cornbread we're going to add later I like to add about half a teaspoon of chili flakes you can add more if you want it spicier or less if you don't just gonna give these a stir make sure to coat all the onions and the celery with all that like really nice pork fat that we've just rendered out in the butter so we're going to stir this for about 12 to 14 minutes until the aromatics get really soft and just start to caramelize [Music] so now that the onions and celery and sausage have all been cooking away about 12 to 14 minutes starting to get really nice and caramelized this is kind of created our flavor base for the whole stuffing what I want to do is I'm going to pour in about three cups of stock you can use chicken stock you can use vegetable stock whatever you like just kind of scrape and just make sure all those like caramelized bits from the sausage and the onions and celery that you you know browned and are stuck to the bottom pan you want to get those up because that again is going to add a lot of flavor so once you get it all stirred up and it's done you can kill the Heat and we're gonna let this cool while we crumble up our cornbread so this recipe uses a 9 by 13 brick of cornbread and I actually developed this to be used for making something like a Jiffy cornbread mix so in the South where cornbread dressing is more popular a lot of us have or a lot of people have cornbread lying around but elsewhere you really don't so you can just bake a fresh batch let it cool and then use it for your cornbread so I like to just break pretty large pieces of it because as you mix in the stock and all the aromatics the pieces are going to kind of fall apart so now I'm going to take all the aromatics in the stock and pour them over the cornbread and now we're going to add our eggs if you don't want to use eggs you don't have to but I like to so I'm going to add some eggs to the dressing just to kind of bind it so I'm just going to lightly beat them just to kind of loosen them up and then pour them over dressing like so all the other aromatics give this a stir make sure it's all evenly combined then let it sit for about 10 minutes and what that does is it allows all that stock that you poured into the airmatics to really absorb evenly into every piece of the cornbread and as you can see you know I broke these into large chunks but already they're kind of falling apart and that's fine that's good that's what you want okay so this mixture has now been sitting for about 10 minutes to make sure that it's really evenly moistened and so before I put it in the pan I actually like to add the last teaspoon of salt here because I feel like you know you add it all at the beginning it's not properly seasoned you want to kind of that last bit of salt [Music] and now I'm going to transfer this to a pre-greased 9x13 baking dish you can use the same pan honestly if you bake the cornbread in earlier so gently kind of spoon it all in [Music] then use your spoon just kind of press it lightly you just want to make sure you have nice even distribution of the sausage and the aromatics you know the cornbread just like that the first what we're going to do is cover this with aluminum foil Let It Bake for about 30 minutes that helps to kind of warm it through and kind of set the eggs and then we'll uncover the dish drizzle it with about two tablespoons of butter and that'll help Brown the top and we'll keep baking it until everything is really nice and crusty okay so now the cornbread dressing has been baking for 45 minutes without butter on top so it's nice and crunchy and golden brown on top still moist inside it's all ready to go on your Thanksgiving table green bean casserole is a nostalgic part of the Thanksgiving table and I'm going to show you how to make my green bean gratin which is just as comforting but uses fresh ingredients foreign so the first thing we need is green beans of course and what I'm going to do first I have them all trimmed on the ends I'm going to line them up in bundles like this and cut them in like thirds I would say and these are kind of you know the thicker kind of American style green beans uh you can definitely use area cover which are those like French kind of thinner more tender green beans as well but those will cook in less time these are going to take around five to six minutes and we have about one and a half pounds of green beans here so I'm just going to transfer them to a bowl and so just like with cooking pasta or boiling potatoes things like that you want to make sure that the water that you cook the green beans in is really highly seasoned with lots of salt we're going to add salt later to the casserole but you also want the beans to be really well seasoned as well so as you take about half a handful for this amount of water and pour it in it's about two three tablespoons then we're going to add our green beans to the boiling water [Music] and so while these cook we're going to cut our mushrooms and these are regular old cremini mushrooms you can use oyster mushrooms or trumpet mushrooms anything else that you want to use doesn't have to be these you can use good old white button mushrooms as well I'm just going to slice them pretty thick because I want you know nice hearty pieces in the casserole and this is about eight ounces just gonna check on the bean just get stir them every once in a while just to make sure they're cooking really evenly you know green bean casserole is one of those dishes that everyone wants to have at Thanksgiving and you know it's really easy it's usually a can of green beans a can of cream mushroom soup that's it and you bake it in the oven and I understand the ease of that but I feel like it's a really wonderful dish to make from scratch just so you still have you know that kind of like comforting feeling but a little bit fresher ingredients than the canned stuff okay so the green beans have been boiling now for about six minutes I'm gonna show you exactly what you want to look for so I'm just going to fish one out so put on your cutting board and then you want to take your knife and just kind of press it lightly on the bean and if it goes through pretty cleanly with Little Resistance you know you're good it's still lightly firm but it's not soft so this is perfect so using a spider I'm just going to take these out of the water and see they're still nice and bright green we haven't cooked them so long they've lost their color that's exactly what we want now that we have our green beans out I'm going to drain the pot and then we're going to bring it back and use it to make our sauce so now I'm going to set this pot aside while we cook the mushrooms so first thing we need is about two tablespoons of butter in a large Skillet put that over about medium heat as well let that melt I'm going to add the mushrooms and I'm going to season these right away with about half a teaspoon of salt give those a stir and make sure they're coated with the butter now we're gonna let these cook for about eight to ten minutes stirring them every once in a while until all the mushrooms kind of give up their moisture become really tender get nice and golden brown with the edges so while the mushrooms are Browning I'm going to get started on the aromatics for the white sauce so I'm going to cut up two shallots and about four cloves of garlic so now the mushrooms have been cooking for about eight to ten minutes and it's exactly what you want them to look like kind of golden brown at the edges kill the Heat and let those just sit aside in like cool in the pan while we make the white sauce for the gratin so this starts with four tablespoons of butter and we're just going to melt it in the pot that we cooked the green beans in earlier I'm gonna put this over about medium heat I'm going to add our chopped shallots and our garlic to the pot we're just going to cook these down so they're nice and tender and sweated but we don't want to get them really Brown and now I'm going to sprinkle in about a third a cup of flour now this is the base of our our white salt this is what's going to thicken it similar to a white sauce you would make for like mac and cheese or even making gravy and when I cook this kind of like room mixture that's flavored with the shallots and garlic for about a minute or so and that just kind of cooks off the raw flavor of the flour I'm actually going to switch over to a whisk to pour in our milk and this just helps to prevent any lumps in the sauce as well so we have two cups of whole milk the way to prevent lumps is just to do this slowly so like while you're whisking the roof kind of want to slowly add the milk and eventually the kind of steam subsides Smooths out so now once you have all the milk added we're going to keep whisking this as it heats up and we're going to bring it to a boil and that's going to help to activate the flour and thicken the sauce make a nice creamy kind of gravy to coat the green beans and the mushrooms for the gratin [Music] so once the sauce comes to a boil and you see it thickens into this really nice kind of creamy sauce you're done so we're just gonna take it off the heat because we don't want to thicken it anymore and now we're going to add back those green beans that we cooked earlier straight into the sauce and we're going to add the mushrooms that we cooked off earlier as well and now the next ingredients are just to flavor the sauce and make sure that it's tastes really good and kind of like classic gretan seasonings as well so we're going to add about a half cup of Parmesan cheese that makes anything taste better it also kind of just makes for a nice kind of creamy cheesy sauce as well about a half a cup of heavy cream again this kind of makes it a little richer it thins the sauce just a little bit about two tablespoons of lemon juice you know you want the cream you want the cheese you want that nice like milky white sauce but this kind of helps to cut through all that richness in a really nice way and now we're going to add our seasonings we're going to do about one and a half teaspoons of kosher salt and then we're going to add about half a teaspoon of freshly ground black pepper as well and it's something that's really classic in kind of like Bechamel white sauces and gratin dishes is nutmeg so like I like to add about a quarter teaspoon of freshly grated nutmeg and you can kind of eyeball it and do it straight into the pot 12 to 16 quick little grating just like that we're just going to stir everything together it's just enough sauce to coat them but not kind of drown them so you guys still have plenty of green beans and mushrooms in each bite transfer it to a nine inch square baking dish you can use a metal pan you can use a casserole dish whatever you have just going to scrape this right into the pan kind of spread it out evenly in the pan plastically green bean casserole gets you know those kind of french fried onions on top but in keeping with the gratan theme of the dish I'm also going to add a little more parmesan cheese so if you want to use the onions you can use about about a cup or so I would say over the top of the gretan if you don't like these onions you can absolutely use those Thai fried onions that they you can get at a Thai grocery store or you can fry your own but I don't mind these also if you don't like any fried onions at all you can mix some Parmesan with some bread crumbs and just sprinkle that over the top anything to give it kind of like a nice kind of Crispy Crunchy topping so again we're going to add about a quarter cup of more grated Parmesan on top as well now we're going to put this in a 375 degree oven for about 40 45 minutes until it's bubbling in the center and nice and golden brown on top foreign baked for about 45 minutes so it's nice and bubbly the green beans and mushrooms are coated that really lovely cheesy sauce we have the parmesan and the fried onions on top this is a really wonderful update on green bean casserole but I promise it's going to taste a lot more delicious my Thanksgiving meal is not complete without sweet potato casserole it is the dish that screams Thanksgiving the most to me so I'm going to show you my absolute favorite way to make it [Music] so the first thing we need of course is sweet potatoes you know so there's a lot of confusion around what's a sweet potato what's a yam they are two different vegetables but oftentimes in grocery stores they're labeled differently or they're mislabeled all you need to know for this dish is you want the orange thing so make sure that the flesh is orange whether it's labeled sweet potato or whether it's labeled a yam and you're in business so what I'm going to do is just take all the peel off about three pounds of sweet potatoes and then I'm gonna cut them up into about a one inch Dice and we're going to put them in a pan to roast them in the oven so the next thing I need is apples and so what I want to do with the sweet potato casserole because a lot of the old recipes call for a lot of sugar and spices it's basically pumpkin pie but as a side dish so to try to make it something that's not dessert I want to sweeten it more naturally so instead of using white granulated sugar I'm going to use really good sweet apples some orange juice and then a little bit of honey as well I like to use Granny Smith apples because they're sweet but they're also a little tart and so it adds nice balance to sweet sweet potatoes but you want about a pound which is usually about two kind of average sized apples so I'm just going to peel these pour them and cut them about the same size pieces as the sweet potatoes and then add them to the pan as well so make sure they're evenly combined the sweet potatoes and apples need a little bit of liquid to help them steam in the oven so I'm going to use half a cup of orange juice if you don't have orange juice you can use apple juice you can use apple cider you can even use water if you really want to but you know since we need some liquid to help the vegetable steam it's nice that it has a little flavor of its own as well to kind of complement everything else that's going on then I'm going to add about two tablespoons of Honey which I feel like gives it enough sweetness but it's not too much I'm just going to kind of eyeball it you can use a little bit more if you want to or a little bit less just kind of drizzle it evenly over the sweet potatoes and apples just like that and then because we want to make this a side dish and not really a dessert we got a little bit more salt than you would normally do so I'm gonna add about two teaspoons of salt which also really helps to ensure that it has everything is really well seasoned throughout the whole dish we're going to cover the top of foil foreign [Music] foreign this is going to go in a 400 degree oven for about an hour [Music] so sweet potatoes and apples baked in the oven for about an hour with the foil alone the whole time and again that kind of helps them to steam until they're really nice and soft let all the orange juice and the Honey kind of get into the sweet potatoes as well so remove the foil and now what I want to do is Mash these sweet potatoes I'm just going to scrape all the sweet potatoes you see the apples kind of just like fall to Mush which is what you want next we're going to save the pan that we cooked the sweet potatoes and apples in because that's what we're going to cook the actual casserole in as well just take a good old potato masher just Mash this sweet potatoes and apples together this will leave it you know slightly chunky again if you don't want you want a perfectly smooth puree you can do it in the food processor or food mill can you use a hand blender if you want to but it's pretty soft all the vegetables kind of break down and become a really nice smooth puree with very little effort so I have about four tablespoons of butter I'm just going to let that kind of melt in to the hot potatoes and then even though we added some salt to the potatoes earlier we're going to add another teaspoon just kind of mix that in here at the end as well [Music] [Applause] and then because we're going to cover the sweet potato mixture with a meringue on top to kind of stimulate our marshmallows we're going to need some egg yolks what that does is actually you know it keeps it from just being you know some mashed sweet potatoes and the egg yolks help kind of bind it as well if there's any kind of like separation from the sweet potatoes egg yolks kind of help emulsify that as well make a nice kind of like Smooth casserole okay so now that I separated my four eggs I'm going to set the whites aside and we're going to use those for the meringue in a minute and I want to add the egg yolks to the sweet potato mixture just kind of mash them around as well until they're really nice and smooth and Incorporated in the sweet potatoes foreign that looks perfect I'm going to take sweet potato mixture put it back into the pan that we saved from earlier that we roasted the sweet potatoes in see this is nice and smooth but also has a little bit of texture it's perfect just like that just want to smooth sweet potatoes out in the dish I'm going to turn the oven down to 350 degrees and we're going to bake this for about 20 minutes while we work on the meringue foreign potatoes are baking in the oven it leaves us plenty of time to make the meringue that's going to go on top so this starts with a cup of sugar and those four egg whites that we separated earlier so we're going to mix them together in a heat proof glass bowl and then what we're going to do is we're going to set these over a pan of simmering water like a double boiler stir the egg whites and sugar pretty steadily doesn't have to be too fast for a few minutes just until you can stick an instant read thermometer in the egg whites and they read around 170 degrees which is just before they start to coagulate but they're still cooked and what that will do will create a really stable meringue which takes about six to eight minutes I'm going to remove it from the water bath I'm going to quickly make sure that it tastes really good so I'm going to add a teaspoon of vanilla extract just like that and then half a teaspoon of fine sea salt which again make sure that it tastes really good has lots of flavor tastes better than those marshmallows you would normally put on top and now take a hand mixer and we're going to mix it for about four to five minutes until stiff peaks form [Music] [Music] so once you've beaten the egg whites to this nice fluffy meringue I'm going to show you what you want to look for you want to lift your beater out of the meringue and if it just kind of gently curls over like a wave that's perfect if it's a little heavy it kind of like Falls in a ribbon you still need to whip it a little more but this is perfect it's nice and light and fluffy marshmallow fluff now we're going to set this aside while I go grab the sweet potatoes and then we can top them and broil it until it's nice and toasty [Music] sweet potato and apple mixture has been baking for about 20 minutes so it's nice and hot and cooked through in the middle so we're going to take our meringue If we Just Whipped up scrape it right into the center just take your spatula and just kind of spread the meringue evenly over the sweet potatoes leave like half an inch border around the outside just so you know what it is [Music] it's just enough marshmallow to lend some sweetness to the sweet potatoes without it being too over the top and now we're going to pop this under the broiler just to cook the meringue through and get it nice and toasted on top okay so after about two two and a half minutes under the broiler the meringue is nice and toasted on top so you have all those really sweet sweet potatoes that were sweetened with apples and orange juice and honey just enough of the meringue on top so it still feels like comforting and nostalgic but this is a nice modern update on a great Thanksgiving sweet potato casserole [Music] of all the dishes at Thanksgiving seems that everybody agrees there has to be mashed potatoes and I'm going to show you how I like to make them [Music] so the first thing I'm going to start with is some potatoes of course and I'm gonna start peeling them and you know My Philosophy when it comes to mashed potatoes especially for Thanksgiving is that you have a lot of things that are really rich going on the table you have the gravy you have your stuffing all these different casseroles so I like to treat the mashed potatoes as a somewhat kind of not Bland but blank canvas for all the other kind of things you're going to put on it so the first way I like to do that is to actually use russet potatoes because they're a little bit drier and that makes for a lighter mashed potato you can absolutely leave the peels on if you want to but you know we want kind of like smooth and creamy mashed potatoes so I like to take them off and then the other thing that makes these mashed potatoes really light is because we're already going to add a stick of butter to them so I like to also add some buttermilk which gives that kind of Rich Dairy sour Tang but without being super heavy like sour cream creme fraiche or things like that I'm just going to continue peeling my potatoes and then cut them about two inch dice before we boil them kind of cut them lengthwise and then crosswise into roughly thirds and now it's time to boil them so mashed potatoes need a lot of salt and we're going to add salt later to season them once we've mash them but even before we want to make sure we salt the boiling water it's going to cook them to really get some salt into the potatoes as well so I like to add this eyeball it to like a rough handful of kosher salt we're just going to pile them into the water and let them cook for about 15 to 18 minutes until you can Pierce them really easily with a point of a knife and I'll show you what that looks like okay so the potatoes have been boiling about 15 to 18 minutes and I'm going to show you what you want to look for you want to pull the potato out of the water it should be a little rough around the edges and you want to take tip of a paring knife and just kind of poke it right in the center and the knife should go in and out pretty easily and that means these are ready so now I'm going to take these over to the sink and drain them foreign [Music] so I've drained my potatoes and actually what I want to do is return them to the pot that I build them in because the pot is still warm and also dirty's one less dish and then while they're still warm this is what I want to add the butter to let it kind of melt into the potatoes let the butter sit out for about you know a couple hours if you can just so it's not ice cold going into the potatoes let's get yourself a good potato masher go to town probably won't be as super smooth as if you used a ricer but that's totally fine just kind of stir until all the butter is melted and now we're going to add a cup and a half of Buttermilk and again this kind of adds that really nice kind of rich Dairy Tang but honestly not that rich it's pretty nice and Light and it gives the mashed potatoes a really nice consistency it's not so like thick it's like really smooth a little bit thinner which I like for this once all that buttermilk has been absorbed you'll have a really nice light really smooth mashed potatoes so that's the mashed potato part but actually the most important part is making sure that it's properly salted so again this is going to sound like an insane amount of salt but for this amount of potatoes with all that butter and buttermilk you just put in you need a lot so I'm going to use about a tablespoon and a half of kosher salt and this is diamond crystal kosher salt which is what we use in the Test Kitchen if you're using like Morton's kosher salt which is a little bit saltier you're going to want to use a little less if you're using kind of iodized fine salt you want to use a little less as well but start with at least a tablespoon and then go from there and honestly this is all you need some people don't like pepper I like to add pepper so I'm going to add about one and a half teaspoons which is about half a tablespoon here pepper in like that Stir It Around make sure it's really nicely combined now I'll just transfer it to my serving dish smell so buttery and Rich but again not too rich because we use buttermilk instead of cream or sour cream anything like that I also like to put a little bit of green on top so I'm just going to take some chives and scallions just a little maybe about a teaspoon of each gonna thinly slice like that and put them on top it gives it kind of like a quasi Ranch feeling you know with the buttermilk and everything so it kind of gives them also a nice little green fresh flavor to go on top so there you have really simple buttery light mashed potatoes thank you cranberry sauce is actually my favorite part of the Thanksgiving meal because it comes in to kind of cut through all the heavy richness of the other Foods on the meal so I'm going to show you how to make a really classic simple cranberry sauce [Music] when you go shopping for cranberries in the grocery store somewhat frustratingly they're sold in different amounts if you go to the farmer's market and you get fresh ones they come in these kind of eight ounce containers sometimes if you get them in bags they can be 12 ounces I've seen seven ounces or even 10 ounces as well and then if you get in them in the freezer section sometimes they can be like a pound two pounds pound and a half so I created this recipe to be an even pound so it's four cups you can make more you can cut it half if you need to it's a really even number so first thing we're going to do is take our four cups of cranberries and put them into a medium saucepan so what I like to add is a cup and a quarter of granulated sugar now if you want a more assertive cranberry sauce you can go down to a cup if you want a little bit sweeter a cup in half but I kind of find a cup and a quarter to be the nice Goldilocks measurement of granulated sugar you can also use brown sugar if you wanted to but this is good on Plain granulated sugar the next thing you need you know you could cranberry sauce could just be cranberries and sugar but you need a little liquid to kind of help it cook and kind of break up the tough skins The Cranberries so we're going to use half a cup of apple cider here and again that's just to kind of help dissolve the sugar and just give you know some liquid to cook The Cranberries in and then next is spices I'm just going to use one cinnamon stick but you could of course use star anise you could use all spice you could use cloves cardamom things like that you want some kind of like warming spice I find one stick to be perfect and actually one of the most important things about the whole recipe is adding salt because you have you know all these berries and it's a lot of sugar but you need to balance it with a good half teaspoon of kosher salt it's completely optional but I like to add some Citrus zest to the cranberry sauce as well right into the cranberry sauce and you kind of just want to go around take your time and get every last bit of zest off the Yarns and then we're going to save the orange so that while the Cranberries cook we're going to cut it up and then add it and it's a juice and all the chopped fruit back to the sauce to kind of give extra bright bursts of kind of fresh flavor to this like cooked down sauce so so now I have all the ingredients in the pot I want to bring this to a boil and give it a stir just to kind of help you know the sugar dissolve the zest and the cinnamon stick kind of mix and mingle of all those cranberries and then once it comes up to a boil we're going to reduce the Heat and let it kind of simmer away for about 10 minutes which gives me plenty of time to cut up my orange so what we're going to do first is take a paring knife and cut off all the kind of bitter white pith from around the orange so what I like to do first is trim off each end so I have a flat surface and then you want to take your knife and kind of like go in between the kind of like cells and flesh of the orange and the white pith and just kind of cut around like so until you kind of expose the flesh trim off all that white and then just keep going around the orange kind of cutting right at the line of where the pith and the flesh meet and little strips until you get all that white Thief off the flesh of the orange and kind of clean Pieces Just Like That and so once you have you know all the pith removed from the the orange what you're going to do is you're going to work over a bowl and you're going to take your paring knife again and in between each where the membranes are you're going to kind of cut up against the membrane on one side and then do the same on the opposite side to kind of remove each segment just like that you kind of just work your way around cutting out each side of the membrane to release the segments and let them fall into the bowl working over a bowl is really nice because any of the juice that drips down from the membrane as you work it's going to catch and we're going to use that to stir into the cranberry sauce when it's done cooking [Music] so once you get your last segment out you want to take all these membranes that you've just cut through and just kind of give them a squeeze and then we're going to stir all that juice in the segments into the cranberry sauce once they're done because you want the segments to kind of be the same size as the Cranberries this kind of gives you little pops of kind of fresh orange fruit flavor in the midst of all that kind of cooked down cranberry sauce I'm just going to keep chopping them when I'm done I'll just add them back to the bowl of juice so we can stir it all into the cranberry sauce when it's done [Music] this is pretty loose now but once it cools and thickens up it'll be nice and gelled so take this off the heat now I'm going to add the orange segments and juice and again this kind of adds just a little pops of freshness into the cranberry sauce you had that like deep down cooked cranberry flavor and this is just something to kind of wake it up and you want to stir these in off the heat so you don't kind of burst all those pieces of orange that you chopped up so we want those to kind of stay whole in the sauce I'm just going to pour it into a bowl to let it cool you can let this cool to room temperature and serve it right away but you can also make it honestly like three to four weeks ahead of time as long as you keep it covered and in the refrigerator it'll last until then so I have some already that's been chilled I want to show you the texture see how much it thickens up just like that and so you can have this made ahead of time you have a really simple classic cranberry sauce to serve at your Thanksgiving table so the first thing you pass around the Thanksgiving table is a really soft really buttery yeast roll and I'm going to show you my recipe to get rolls that are way better than what you can get from the freezer [Music] so the first thing you're going to need is some milk so I have three quarters of a cup of whole milk and I've warmed it up to around 105 degrees that's really like the perfect kind of temperature for yeast to grow in and next we need to add some food for the yeast so any kind of sweetener will do you can definitely use white granulated sugar if you want to but I like to add honey and then one whole packet of active dry yeast now the difference between active dry and instant yeast is active dry needs to be kind of like woken up the yeast needs to it's kind of in hibernation so you need to put it in some warm liquid let it sit for about 10 minutes until it's nice and bubbly instant yeast you don't need to do this whole process at all you can just like mix it into the dough you just want to stir the milk the honey and yeast together you're not dissolving the yeast you're just making sure that the honey is dissolved in the warm milk and everything is evenly distributed and now we're going to set this aside for about 10 minutes until the yeast is really bubbling and then we'll know it's ready to make our dough so now that our yeast has been sitting away for about 10 minutes it's nice and bubbling on top we're going to add the rest of the ingredients so the first thing we need is about two cups which is around 284 grams of all-purpose flour and then we're going to add four tablespoons of butter now this is what's going to give the rolls a really nice kind of soft texture you know when you're making things like cake or other kind of pastries you want to not need dough a lot and that's what kind of contributes its softness but when it comes to these kind of yeast rolls like this adding lots of fat like butter and milk that's what's going to contribute to the softness of the dough so we're going to be adding a lot of butter throughout this recipe but that makes for really nice really soft and tender yeast rolls so once most of the flour has been mixed in but the dough hasn't come together quite yet now is when we're going to add our salt so I have about a teaspoon of fine sea salt so I'm just going to mix all this together until it's really well distributed and mixer comes into a nice kind of solid dough just like this and now we're going to take the dough pop it onto our work surface and now you could absolutely do this in a stand mixer and it'll be much easier but I'm going to do this by hand I'm going to knead the dough show you what it looks like to set a timer for 10 minutes that's how long you're going to need so here we go what you want to do is push the dough bring it back with one hand or both hands and just constantly rotate it push it out Bring It Back rotate as you bring it back you can do one hand like that as you like to press with one hand bring back with the other onto itself just kind of do that repeatedly you can switch hands if one arm gets tired we're gonna do this over and over and over again and after about 10 minutes you're going to see that this kind of Shaggy flowery ball of dough is going to transform into a really smooth really tight ball of dough and that's what you want okay so I've been kneading for 10 minutes now and you say you have a really nice kind of smooth ball of dough if you press your finger in it and it kind of Springs back that's exactly what you want I'm gonna shape my dough into a ball like this and I'm going to return it to the bowl I used earlier there's no need to grease it or anything you can just pop the dough ball right in there just like that and then we're going to cover it with a sheet of plastic wrap that's going to keep any air from drying out the dough like that make sure it covers the bowl completely so I'm going to stick the dough in a cold oven for about an hour until it's doubled in size and then we'll come back and shape the rolls later so now the dough has been rising for about an hour so I have a nine inch round baking pan like this and I'm just going to brush it with some melted butter this both helps kind of you know get the rolls out of course like greases the pan it also is going to soak into the bottom of the rolls once we shape them and put them in the pan so can be generous here use about two tablespoons [Music] and save this butter because we're going to use this to brush on the rolls throughout the whole process as well so I'm going to set my pan off to the side I'm going to take my dough kind of plop it out onto my work surface press it lightly to kind of expel the gas from that first rising and now I'm just going to take my knife and you want to cut this into 16 equal pieces so I'm just going to eyeball about 16 wedges here so now that I've cut the round into 16 pieces I'm gonna separate them kind of set them aside and work on them one at a time and so this is probably the most important part when it comes to Rolling yeast rolls like this you know most recipe instructions say to just roll into a ball but if you do that even in your hands like this you'll get a ball but see it's kind of like the dough pieces aren't really sticking together and then whenever that rises in the pan it will kind of like unfurl and create a really ugly so what we want to do is take this dough ball and make a really tight outside to it so how you do that is you basically want to press with your hand while kind of rotating the ball around on the counter like this kind of that same motion that we were using when we were kneading the dough at the beginning and as you push and kind of rotate the ball you want to use your thumb just says kind of like a guide to keep it under your hand you just want to do this over and over again and you can kind of feel the dough where it touches your hand kind of tightening and stretching and you do this over and over and over again until it feels really smooth and then you have a nice little yeast roll ball just like that where the outside dough is kind of formed a really nice tight skin if you look underneath there's a hole there where you can see all the dough has gathered that's exactly what you want so I'm going to keep rolling more dough balls I'm going to transfer them to my butter baking pan [Music] and you want to make sure that they're evenly spaced out it doesn't have to be too crazy you can do concentric circles or spiral whatever you want and now we're going to cover it with a sheet of plastic wrap so just to keep them from drying out and I like to place the plastic wrap just over the top and then let these rise again for about 40-45 minutes just until the dough ball Rises and starts to touch the plastic wrap so now the rolls have been rising a second time for about 45 minutes until they just start to touch the plastic wrap so I'm going to uncover them These are nice and puffed they're really soft I'm going to brush them with two more tablespoons of our melted butter here so you just want to gently brush the tops you don't want to press the brush on top of the rolls because you'll deflate all the kind of the gas from the yeast that we've kind of built up as they Rose so just kind of gently press the butter over each roll just like that now we're going to transfer the rolls to a 325 degree oven until they're just light golden brown and cooked on the inside about 20 minutes so the rolls have baked for just 20 minutes as you can see they're really light golden brown so 20 minutes for me is perfect and now while they're still really hot I'm going to take even more butter and brush another like two tablespoons over the hot rolls what this does it kind of allows the butter to really kind of soak into the rolls makes them really soft be generous this is about two tablespoons of butter sounds like a lot but again it's really going to soak into the rolls was fantastic all this butter and the yeast and the honey during the rolls earlier perfect just like that and even though there's already salt in the dough just to Gill the lily a little more make them special for Thanksgiving I like to add just a pinch of flaky sea salt right in the center of each roll normally I would say you need to let these cool all the way before you eat them but I actually can't resist eating one right now so I'm gonna pick one up the best thing about these you can eat them while they're still really hot they're kind of steaming kind of Follow That melted butter it's kind of melted into every nook and cranny hmm nice and light on the inside this is just what I want Thanksgiving if you're making our classic pumpkin pecan or apple pies for Thanksgiving this year this is a great all-purpose pie dough to use in those recipes [Music] so the first thing we need to start with is flour and this recipe uses all-purpose flour and so what's really important is to actually weigh the flour so this is two and three quarter cups of flour which is kind of an odd volume measurement but it's exactly 390 grams and I found out this is the perfect amount of flour to use to make two pie discs to use for your standard nine inch pies so we're going to take all this flour and add it to a food processor you can absolutely make pie dough by hand I do it all the time but honestly the easiest way and the way to keep everything really cold which is really important when making pie dough is to use a food processor it makes the job really quick it goes fast keeps everything cold again which is really important so we have our flour in the food processor I'm going to add two tablespoons of granulated sugar use a teaspoon of kosher salt and now we come to the butter so this recipe uses a cup or two sticks of butter cut the butter stick in half like that flip it over cut in half again so you kind of have like four lengthwise sticks and then turn it this way let's cut it in my quarter inch one third inch slices and you'll see they kind of break up into these nice little cubes that will then add into the flour and that'll help cut them in really quickly to the flour a lot of grocery stores sell like high fat European Butters I find that when you use kind of European high fat butter it can kind of make the pie dough a little too fatty so in this case we actually want good old American Standard butter because it has the right amount of butter fat and water to use for making pie dough so I'm going to put all this butter into the dish so we can put it in the refrigerator and keep it cold before it goes into the flour so now we have the butter nice and chilled and so we're going to pour it into the food processor I'm gonna put the cover on the food processor and then we're going to pulse it and you'll see whenever the butter gets to be about the size of like pea-sized crumbles but this was about eight pulses here's what you want to look for you want the butter right there to be like again the size of peas there's kind of little small crumbles and what that size is important for is that whenever you mix the dough together and you roll it out and it hits the heat of the oven those small little pockets of butter are what is going to kind of inflate the dough around it and make a really flaky crispy pie crust so now that we have the butter pieces at the right size we want them for the pie dough we're going to add ice cold water to the pie crust as well so what I like to do is actually take my water and I have two thirds of a cup of ice cold water and kind of pour it down the funnel tube of the food processor while I pulse the dough all right this really ensures that you're moistening the dough evenly or moistening the flour evenly so it makes for an even pie crust keep pulsing a little bit at a time until you don't have any kind of like dry pockets of flour and the dough is just starting to come together at the bottom a little you kind of form these like nice big crumbles just like that so I'm going to take all the dough from the food processor just kind of turn it out onto your cutting board and then all you really want to do is just bring everything together press this mound of butter and flour and water until it kind of holds together just cut it right down the middle in half because again this makes two pie crusts for two nine inch pies so I'm gonna set one out to the side and I'm gonna take this half just kind of turn them outside and press it down quickly and just keep turning it pressing it lightly until it comes together in a nice disc you don't want to work this too much you just want to get it into a nice even disc you can enroll that later so once you have a nice disc like this put it straight onto some plastic wrap we're going to wrap this up and then stick it in the fridge we'll go rest for an hour you can also if you want to and freeze these for about six months if you want to make them ahead of time but just be sure to thaw them for about a day or two in the refrigerator before you roll them out for your pies foreign pie crust has been chilling for about an hour in the refrigerator so what I'm going to do is take a little bit of flour in my hands and you kind of want to sprinkle your work surface with like an even dusting a flower then unwrap the pie dough [Music] so put the pie crust on the flour and then you want to sprinkle the top with a little more flour as well and I'm going to take my rolling pin do the same thing a little bit of flour to make sure that nothing sticks and what you want to do is just take your rolling pin and like with the middle of it I'm going to strike in One Direction Turn it an eighth of a turn and then do the same thing and then keep going until the pie dough has like flattened out enough to where I can roll it without it stretching too much so here we go foreign [Music] at this point I get them a flower at the top a little more just to make sure nothing sticks flour the rolling pin and what I'm going to do is always start in the very center of the disc and then roll out one or two pushes just like that pick it up move it around Center roll out pick it up move it around again this continues just to make sure the pie dough doesn't stick we're also rolling the dough out very evenly time you kind of get back to the start you have a nice nine to ten inch pie crust which is about an eighth of an inch thick which is exactly what you want then when it comes time to transfer the pie dough what I like to do is roll it up on a rolling pin set the rolling pin at the front edge just like this and then bring the pie dough over it and if you see any extra flour on the bottom or the edges you can kind of dust it off with your hands just like that as you go until you get to the edge make sure there's no extra flour and then I'm going to put this on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper because I'm going to use it later and so then you can kind of unfurl it onto your baking sheet just like that and then this will go into the refrigerator to chill until I'm ready to use it I've got my rolled out pie dough ready to go it's been chilling so I'm going to transfer it to a pie pan I'm going to use my rolling pin to lift the dough then I'll unfurl it over my pie pan kind of want to aim for the middle so you have a little bit of overhang and then what you want to do is you don't want to press the pie dough into the pie pan you want to kind of lift up these edges just kind of gently guide them into the sides and bottom just so they kind of rest in the bottom of the pan and then when you get all the way around just kind of feel to make sure there's no like kind of gaps at the edge of the pie pan where it meets the pie dough and I like to gently just kind of like lightly press around the edge of the pie pan just so I can see where the edge actually is so then I'll take my scissors and trim the dough cut the trimmings so they're about half an inch from the edge of the actual pie pan itself I'm gonna go all the way around and so once I have all the excess pie dough trimmed away what I want to do is take this Outer Edge right here and I want to fold it under to where it just meets the lip of the pie pan and then kind of fold it back down so you have this like nice rounded double thick layer of pie dough that goes all the way around the edge of the pie pan so then once you have the full Edge made around the whole pan you want to take your thumb index finger of your right hand and your thumb of your left hand or opposite if you're left-handed and just kind of press the edge together a lot of people I know use their knuckle to make slightly bigger ridges you can do that as well you can also take a fork and just kind of crimp along the outside [Music] so there I have perfectly formed pie crust I can put this in the refrigerator or the freezer and I can use this to make all sorts of single crust pies like our pecan pie or pumpkin pie and you can use this right away don't need to chill any further if it's going to go right into the oven or you can but if you want to Blind bake it I'm going to show you how to do that next [Music] so if you've ever wondered what is blind baking it's simply just pre-baking a pie crust without any filling to kind of give it a head start when you're making things like pumpkin pies or fruit pies that have really wet fillings so that ensures that you get a really crisp crust that's cooked through by the time the actual fruit filling gets baked as well so here's how to start take a sheet of parchment paper you can use foil if you want to but you would need to grease it I like parchment paper because it won't stick to anything so you want to take your parchment paper sheet and you want to crumble it up one for a lift do it again [Music] just keep doing this over and over again to make lots of little creases all over the parchment paper so that we unfold it at last you have a really moldable sheet of parchment paper that will fit into all the sides of the pie dough without creating those like really harsh ridges so once we get our parchment paper in the pie crust like so we want something to weight it down you can definitely buy things called pie weights which are used for this purpose to kind of weigh down the pie dough but you can also use rice what I like to use is just dried beans so I take about three and a half four cups of beans pour them right into the center of the pie press them in lightly just to make sure that the weight of the beans is distributed evenly in the pie crust just like that so I'm going to put this in a 375 degree oven for about 20-25 minutes and what you're looking for is for the edge of the pie crust to just get light brown the pie crust has been baking for about 25 minutes and you want to see a light golden brown color at the edge and that lets me know that the crust has baked through and will continue to bake through when I add my fillings so what I want to do now is take the parchment paper that I used earlier kind of grab the corners use it as a sling to kind of lift up all the beans set these off to the side the bottom is still slightly underdone but the bottom crust touching the pan is fully crisp now you can use this right away to pour in your pumpkin pie filling your pecan pie filling any kind of fruit pie you want to make or you can let this cool completely wrap it in plastic wrap let it sit at room temperature for a day or two before you use it or you can stick in the fridge or the freezer and store it for up to a month just make sure you thaw it again before you use it for making all your pies for Thanksgiving there's no more comforting or classic of a fall dessert than apple pie and I'm going to show you how to make the simplest recipe for your Thanksgiving table foreign [Music] so I have two discs that I've already pre-rolled and they're sitting in the fridge staying cold which is really important while we work on our filling but before we make the filling we're going to make an egg wash so an egg wash is just egg mixed with water you can use milk or cream anything like that to kind of loosen it and it's just kind of the glue that we're going to use for the pie so you just want to mix one egg with a tablespoon of water just mix it together with a fork then we're going to set this aside until we need it so next we have three pounds of apples and for me that's kind of the perfect amount some recipes use a little less some I've seen use like six pounds that's like a big mounded pie it's best to use a mix of apples you can definitely use something like all Granny Smith apples which are really tart which are really nice balance with all the sugar and spices that we use but I like to use you know some Fuji some honey crisp as well a mix of tart and sweet some firmer apples some softer Apples because it gives a nice like balance of Textures in the pie so what I'm gonna do now is just peel each of these apples and then chop them up into wedges foreign [Music] just like cut off each kind of like lobe around the Apple like so you have a nice clean Core they can be done with just kind of cut in about a quarter inch to a third inch wedges you can also if you want to you know cut the apples in quarters like so and then I like to come at an angle take the core out of the Apple like that so now that I have all my apples sliced up I'm going to add the rest of the filling ingredients so I add about three quarters a cup of sugar and then I add about a half a cup of flour which again is a little more than my other recipes call for but I like this because it thickens up the juices enough so they don't run out all over the place but it's not too thick where it's kind of Gloppy and then we have about two tablespoons of fresh lemon juice again to me the kind of taste of apple pie is definitely kind of like a lemony cinnamon filling so if you want to use fresh lemon juice there we have two teaspoons of vanilla extract two teaspoons of ground cinnamon if you like more cinnamon add more or less I'm gonna add nutmeg if you'd like to as well ground ginger allspice clove things like that but I kind of like just plain cinnamon traditional cinnamon and then we have about a teaspoon of salt so now that everything is over the apples just give it a toss and you'll see it'll look kind of dry at first but just kind of keep tossing make sure that all the apple slices are separated and what's going to happen is the sugar is going to kind of dry out some of the moisture from the apples and by the time give them a toss make sure they're all coated they'll be nice and covered in this like kind of cinnamony sweet vanilla lemon goo which is going to thicken in the oven and kind of hold all the apples together when they bake up okay so now that all the apple slices are coated in the cinnamon and sugar and flour I'm gonna go grab our two sheets of pie dough [Music] so here I've got my two sheets of pie dough that I've pre-rolled and I kind of stacked them on a baking sheet with parchment paper in between that just helps to keep them from sticking so what you want to do is First Take the first pie dough I like to roll it up on my rolling pin just makes it easier to transfer to the pie pan just kind of unfurl it foreign over the pie dish like that and then you kind of want to take the pie dough and just gently lift out the edges to kind of guide them into the pan you don't really want to press push or pull anything at this point because it might toughen the dough and it would spring back so you want to kind of just barely lift up pie dough just kind of let it fall into the bottom of the pan just kind of feel the bottom to make sure everything's nice and even in there I'm going to leave the edge as it is for now we're going to take our filling and after it sits for a while sometimes you know the filling can kind of separate from the apples you just want to give it a nice stir to make sure everything's really even one more time what I like to do is just kind of pile all the apples right in the center of the pie dough it's a lot and they're going to Mound up on top but just try to get them all to fit at least inside the pie you want a nice amount of apples because they're going to cook down when they bake so that way they're nice and level by the time the pie is done I find the best thing to do just use your hands to kind of press them around Clean Hands of course just kind of press the apples down kind of shimmy them a little bit make sure they're really even make sure you don't have any apples they're kind of sticking out they might poke through the the crust so now that I have all the apples in the pie pan it's time to cover them so before we do that though we're going to take a little bit of that egg wash that we made earlier and we're going to brush it just around the edge and that's going to help the next pie dough we place on top stick to the bottom so just dip your brush and you don't want to sell out of this on I just want a light coating lightly paint it around the edge just like this [Music] and now we're going to top it with the second sheet of pie dough [Music] you kind of want to line up the pie crust as much best as possible but not super important and now once you have the top crust on I like to gently just kind of press at the edges again where we brushed our egg wash just to make sure sticks together and then also now that we see where the edge of the pie pan is we know where to trim so you want to trim off the crust and leave yourself about half an inch of overhang [Music] just like that and then once we're done trimming we're going to fold that under and that's going to create a nice beautiful crust for the edge of the pie [Music] so now that we have all the trimmings off the pie I'm going to take the edge here and kind of lift it up while bending it under that that edge now sits on the top of our pie pan and I'm just going to keep going around every inch just kind of lifting up folding back under kind of lightly pressing against the edge and again this is going to create nice beautiful thick border of pie dough so now we have the edge of the pie all rolled under to have a nice thick Outer Edge at this point you could use a fork to crimp it but I kind of like to use my fingers again to kind of make that really classic kind of fluted pie Edge you can go big you can go small you don't have to crimp at all but it really makes it look really nice and you know it's Thanksgiving so you kind of want to impress your guests with a beautiful pie so and crimping is a very easy way to do that so now that I have the edge crimped like this we're going to give the whole pie a brush with egg wash brush a nice even layer of egg wash and also make sure not to neglect the edges because those need to be brown too so just kind of dab at the edge just like this and at the top now that I've got all the egg wash brushed over the pie the final step is just to cut a few slits in the top of the pie this helps to let a lot of the steam that's going to build up from the apples the moisture in the apples Escape and it's going to help to cook those apples once they're in the oven so I like to cut about four inch long slits evenly around the pie and then really importantly make a hole right in the center as well that's kind of like to stab the knife in and kind of cross hatch pattern because you'll know the pie is done when the Steam and juices are bubbling from that Center so it's really important so you have a little hole there to judge that by and you also you want to do this after you've brushed with egg wash because if you cut the slits then brush with egg wash sometimes egg wash can seal them up and we want to keep them open to allow that steam to escape and it's going to go in a 375 degree oven for about an hour and a half [Music] so the apple pie is cooled till almost room temperature I like it when it's actually a little bit warm because I'm going to cut into it and show you what it looks like [Music] this is great the pies super buttery you have pieces of Apple but also some cooked bits as well kind of put those back in there just like that smells like lots of cinnamon lemon juice beautiful apples that to me it's perfect apple pie [Music] pecan pie is a classic southern dessert that's become an indispensable part of my Thanksgiving table [Music] so the first thing we need is a blind bake crust this is using our simple pie dough recipe that you can find on latimes.com I want to make sure we get that done before we start on our filling so I'm just going to stuff that to the side so the first thing we're going to do is actually Brown some butter so I'm just going to heat a skillet over about medium Heat and add about half a stick of butter four tablespoons and when you brown butter you want to do this process slowly you can absolutely do it over high heat if you're in a rush but you better know what you're doing so I like to do it over low heat or medium Heat at the highest so we're going to let this melt completely and then we're going to keep stirring it until it becomes nice and brown and nutty okay so while the butter is melting we're going to work on our vanilla bean a vanilla bean is kind of while it has you know vanilla has the kind of like reputation for being like a sweet flavor they're super aromatic really floral but also kind of bitter so going back to our butter you just want to Stir It what's going to happen is the butter is going to melt it's going to be foaming a lot and kind of like bubbling but then you'll kind of notice that when it stops bubbling it kind of goes quiet that's when you start to smell that nuttiness too that's when you know you're almost there so that's when you want to wash it and just make sure it doesn't burn this is perfect the stylish are nice and brown light golden brown but not too dark so I'm going to take it off the heat I'm immediately going to stir in those vanilla seeds [Music] so once you stir those in they mix with all the like caramelized milk salads from the brown butter and this smells fantastic too it's just you know vanilla seeds and brown butter like what else do you want now we're going to add our corn syrup you know most recipes traditional recipes call for about one cup of corn syrup you can take it down to three quarters of a cup and that works perfectly for me so I like to actually add it to the hot butter in the skillet stir that and also adding the corn syrup here cools down the brown butter so it really doesn't continue to cook now we're going to add half a cup of sugar [Music] these last two ingredients are the other key to a really good pecan pie I use a full tablespoon of fresh lemon juice the acid really helps to kind of cut through all the sugar all the corn syrup so I like to stir that in and then a half a teaspoon of kosher salt so now that all this is really evenly mixed I'm going to transfer it to a bowl so we can store in our eggs and pecans [Music] and now that this corn syrup mixture is cooled now we're going to add our eggs straight into the bowl [Music] I love seeing all the like flecks of vanilla bean in there as well so we're going to set that aside now we're going to add apricons so I like to use about two cups of pecans I don't want to chop them too finely just want them broken up so they're not whole like that that's perfect and we're going to add all these straight into the bowl of our filling [Music] back to our spatula and just stir it to make sure pecans are really well mixed and now we're going to grab our blind bake crust from earlier let's pour the filling straight in this kind of use your spatula to kind of make sure all the nuts are really evenly Incorporated in the pie just like that and now we're going to set this on a baking sheet and put it in a 375 degree oven for about 10 minutes and then take the temperature down to 325 and let it bake for about 30-35 more minutes until it's done so now the pies out of the oven while it's still warm I actually like to sprinkle a little bit of flaky sea salt on the top and again along with the vanilla bean the lemon juice and the brown butter this just kind of helps to balance all the sweetness that's in the pie just a little bit of flaky sea salt on top so now this is here I'm gonna let this cool completely before we serve it [Music] to me this is the perfect ratio by kind of like eggy custard goo to pecans it's a nice sea salt on top that's a great pecan pie for Thanksgiving [Music] pumpkin pie is essential for Thanksgiving and I'm going to show you how to make the best recipe for this classic Thanksgiving dessert [Music] now the first thing we need is a blind baked pie crust this is using our simple pie dough recipe which you can find latimes.com and you want to make sure you do this before you start the filling a blind bake pie crust is really important in a pie like this because the smooth filling needs a contrast of a crisp crunchy pie crust so you want to make sure you get this done before you start your filling so now to make the filling first thing we need is pumpkin now of course if you're the type of person who you know makes their own you know pumpkin you like roast your own pumpkin or your butternut squash the sweet potatoes you can obviously use your own like puree of roasted pumpkins but most people I know they're not doing that so just use the good old canned stuff I really like it the flavor is always really consistent and also the color is also what you expect because when you kind of roast your own pumpkins or squashes you can kind of look uh yellow brown and not really like a beautiful orange color so after the Pumpkin we're going to add one and three quarter cups of light brown sugar now you can use regular granulated sugar if you want to but I really like that kind of molassesy bitter Edge that brown sugar has it also helps to kind of balance all the sweetness now the next thing we need is our pumpkin pie spices the classic pumpkin pie spices which are typically just cinnamon and Nutmeg and you know a lot of the recipes are more cinnamon dominant or have a lot more nutmeg I like to kind of balance them so I just use about two teaspoons of ground cinnamon and then about a teaspoon of ground ginger actually which I really like with anything pumpkin related kind of brings out that flavor really well and then we need about half a teaspoon of fresh nutmeg the fresh grated stuff tastes a lot different and a lot better so it takes like two seconds just to grade it yourself so and then measure out about half a teaspoon I always just like to grind my own like that and then of course one of the most important things is salt so we're going to do about a teaspoon of kosher salt which sounds like a lot but you really need it and then what I like to add to kind of like you know sometimes pumpkin can get that kind of like watery texture that kind of separates and we don't really want that so I like to add about a tablespoon of cornstarch and that just helps to kind of gel up any loose liquid that's in the pie and also helps create a really smooth filling as well so what I like to do is actually add the sugar the spices and the corn starch first and kind of mix them with the pumpkin this creates like a really kind of thick paste and what that does is that it removes any lumps from the spices and the sugar and make sure that all the spices are really well distributed in the pie and in the filling you don't have clumps of cornstarch or sugar or cinnamon or anything like that just want to whisk those well and then from here we're just going to thin it out with our liquid ingredients so I'm gonna add about a teaspoon of vanilla which is classic and a pile like this and I'm going to add two eggs and I always try to break them in a bowl first just in case you get a bad one [Music] just kind of whisk those in a little bit again kind of just thinning it out as we go and then the last thing we need is a can of evaporated milk you know if you're really against using any kind of you know canned milk like this you can absolutely use regular whole milk but evaporated milk is like super condensed milk and so it has a much richer flavor and so it will taste different but you know you can also use the same amount of like half and half if you wanted to I wouldn't use cream just because that is a little too thick compared to what evaporated milk is but you know you can choose your own level of richness whether you want to use evaporated milk regular whole milk or half and half so then you just want to whisk this together until it's really smooth and combined and kind of emulsified and comes together and that's it that's your pumpkin pie filling so what we're going to do now is pour it into our blind baked crust and oftentimes a lot of recipes call for deep dish pie pans or nine inch pies or a lot of recipes make two different pies but I kind of like to use you know an entire can for each recipe so if you have a nine inch pie like this you'll see all of it will fit in the pie crust just perfectly so now we're going to pop this on a baking sheet and put in 375 degree oven for about an hour so the Pie's been baking for about an hour and you can see the crust has gotten a little bit darker brown and the filling is nicely set so we're gonna let this sit aside and cool completely because a lot of the cooking happens actually while they're cooling they're going to continue to heat up and that produces a really smooth filling if you cook it all the way in the oven and then take it out it'll kind of get curled and overcooked and kind of like a cheesecake in my crack on top and we don't want that we want a nice smooth filling so we're going to let that cool and while that happens we're going to make a flavored whipped cream to go on top of it so you know I always love to have whipped cream alongside my pumpkin pie and usually I just sweeten it with a little sugar and maybe like some vanilla but you know it's the holidays make something a little bit nicer so I'm actually use a little bit of Grand Marnier this is like an orange liqueur and I really like it because the orange flavor kind of pairs with you know the flavor and the color of pumpkin so I do about a tablespoon but you can add as more a little to your heart's desire and then all you want to do is just whisk it with a hand mixer [Music] so you want to keep mixing the cream until it just starts to form soft peaks I actually like to under whip the cream just a little bit to just like forms kind of like soft stiff peaks and that's because it's really great to make this ahead of time let it sit in the fridge for a couple hours and that way whenever it's time for you to serve the pie you have the whipped cream ready so the pie is cooled completely so we're going to take slice right through the middle and again remember we blind baked the crust so it made sure to really have a nice crisp crust that's cooked through and browned with all this like Smooth pumpkin filling and we took the pie out just before the center was completely set so that when by the time it cooled it kind of set really nicely this is exactly the kind of texture you want just like that we don't want any like overcooked pumpkin pie and then just take a spoon you can dollop it on top of the pie but as you like to just do a little dollop right on the side again those nice soft peaks and there you go classic pumpkin pie orange whipped cream I think everyone's gonna love it [Music] hahaha [Music]

Channel: Los Angeles Times Food

Views: 1,063,734

Keywords: L.A. Times Food, LA Times Food, LA Times, Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Times Food, Food

Id: YovG2YIYJ8I

Length: 102min 44sec (6164 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 10 2022