My wife's family has a tradition - we all congregate at some poor unfortunate family for the holidays... it is is a rotation from the oldest grandchild, nephew, niece, etc. and continues year after year. 40 to 45 relatives show up looking for food and sustenance. This usually works out well (except at Christmas it centers around Swedish meatballs and lutefisk... both are deadly concoctions that must be avoided at all costs...
The major downside at Thanksgiving is the lack of leftovers - yes, when it is our "turn" we get some... but it is years between turns (and there are many other problems when it IS our turn...
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So I decided to make some "leftovers" this week. It was a good idea, but with the kids and boyfriends there are almost no leftovers. So will have to do again after Thanksgiving. I had hoped to do this on the PBC or the grill - but the constant rain and wind "blew" that idea away. So, I looked inside. I found an idea on the Baking Steel web site...
http://www.bakingsteel.com/blog/roasting-turkey-on-the-baking-steelPre-heat the oven to 450* with the steel on the middle rack
The turkey breast was a standard grocery store breast - already injected with some solution, so I did not brine it - just put it ion the fridge and let it defrost.
I made a compound butter with softened unsalted butter, sage, rosemary, and thyme. (No parsley, sorry Simon, but the fresh stuff looked bad at the store.) Let that chill for a bit.
Chopped a bunch of root veg - carrots, parsnips, turnips, celery, leeks, purple potatoes, sweet potatoes, new potatoes, garlic, red onions, sweet onions, probably some more - whatever was at hand. Tossed them all with EVOO, salt & pepper. Let them get to know each other for a bit while the oven was pre-heating to 450*
Spread the veg mix in a sheet pan (left a handful to stuff the breast.) Placed an inverted Bradley Rack over the veg (a regular cooling rack would work.) Put the turkey breast on the rack. Then cut up the compound butter and pushed the pieces under the skin as far as I could reach, always pulling the skin back down over the breast. The last pieces were placed throughout the veg.
Put the breast on the inverted Bradley Rack over the veg on the pre-heated Baking Steel.
After 30 minutes, rotate the pan and baste the breast. Do this again every 30 minutes for 2 hours - checking temp. Keep going until temp is right and then pull and rest.
I made some turkey gravy and stuffing to go with this along with a can of cranberry sauce (Rocky loves the canned sauce - go figure!)
The turkey took a bit longer than expected and the final meal was a bit rushed as I had a meeting at church... but the pictures catch most of it... it WAS tasty...
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