dlyn

I love recipes like this. They seem more complicated than they really are and the result is a truly made from scratch creation. Made from scratch is very satisfying, because you take raw, un-messed with ingredients and turn them into a meal – real food. Yum. I will say that in my book, any cooking is better than no cooking, so I would not be the one to tell you that you should go to KFC rather than use canned broth or frozen biscuits. Do what you can and enjoy the result. But if you have a lazy Sunday afternoon with a bit of free time, you may want to give this a try.

It’s an appropriate recipe for this time of year I think. It’s an option perhaps, if you don’t want to tackle a whole turkey for Thanksgiving dinner. I have always been a fan of the dark meat on turkey. My dream turkey would have huge thighs – like a speed skaters. I love that they sell them separately now and pretty cheap too. I think this package of two thighs weighed about 3 and half lbs and it was under $5 and will easily feed 4 to 6 people. Here are your ingredients for getting started. The thighs, 2 large chopped carrots, 2 large celery ribs with the leaves and 1 medium onion- all just a rough chop. Oil for browning, salt and pepper and 4 cups of water.Wash the turkey and pat dry with paper towels, sprinkle with kosher salt and fresh cracked pepper. Dry stuff browns, wet stuff just kinda boils, so make sure you dry them well and add the salt right before you put them in the pot. Put a couple tablespoons olive or vegetable oil in the bottom of a heavy stew pot and set over high heat until very hot. Carefully add the thighs, making sure they don’t touch each other [sorry – the ones in the photo are touching – I scolded them for that] and leaving the heat on high, allow them to brown on one side.When the first side is brown, salt and pepper the side facing up and carefully turned them over, again making sure they don’t touch. I find good quality tongs work well for this.If you have a large enough pan so that the veggies will not just be on top of the meat, you can leave the thighs in there, but if not, then take them out and put them in something like a pie plate to catch the juices and set aside for a couple minutes. Put all of the veggies in at once and stir around for 30 seconds or so. You can lower the heat a bit and sauté the veg for 3-4 minutes, stirring once a minute or so. Add the 4 cups of water to the pot, being careful about any steam that may rise up and then put the turkey back in, along with any accumulated juice. Bring up to a simmer, cover and lower heat to medium low and allow to cook for about an hour, or until thighs are done through. Once again, remove thighs to a pie pan to cool and turn off the burner. At this point, a lot of recipes will tell you to fish out all the veggies and discard them. You can do that certainly, but it just seems wasteful to me, so I use my hand blender to zap it all up into a smooth broth.See? This is like the car chase of this recipe – the hand blender in motion.Here you go – all nice and smooth. The carrots give it a nice color.Return the pan to the heat and add
1/2 cup white wine
1 Tablespoon poultry seasoning
1 finely minced garlic clove
thyme – 1/2 teaspoon dried or about a tablespoon of the leaves if fresh
Also add about a cup of onion sliced thusly:Let that simmer until the onions are a nice soft texture – 20 minutes or so. In the meantime, remove all skin, bones and other nasty bits from the thighs and chop the meat in roughly one inch cubes.Add to the simmering pot and cover, cooking maybe 10 minutes more.Make a slurry from 1/4 cup water and 3 tablespoons cornstarch. Add this very gradually, stirring constantly and bring back to a simmer after each addition until it is as thick as you like. You can serve this over store bought biscuits if you are pressed for time, or make Buttermilk Biscuits yourself. Place split biscuit halves on a plate, top with turkey mixture and then with the other biscuit half. Now stand back and wait for the sighs of contentment.

Since I don’t cook food just for blogging, I was starting to run out of time when I got to the biscuits. So, sorry, no photo so of the ingredient lineup. It’s easy though, so we should be fine. I love making biscuits – again it is that creating real food thing. It’s easy to buy premade, and I have to admit that the frozen ones aren’t terrible – but this is much cheaper and you are repaid for your efforts with a lot more flavor. And like I said – easy.
In a mixing bowl, combine:
3 cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt [not kosher – I use canning salt for baking usually]
4 teaspoons double acting baking powder
Stir until uniformly combined
Measure in
1/3 cup vegetable shortening
4 tablespoon cold butter, cut into cubes
Using a pastry cutter or two knives, cut in the shortening and butter until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs.
Measure in 1 and 1/3 cups lowfat buttermilk
Use a fork and gently combine the wet and dry ingredients. Try to bring some of the dry ingredients up over top the buttermilk but be gentle about it – the less you fool with this, the better the biscuits will be. If it seems terribly dry, you can add another couple tablespoons of buttermilk. [It is possible to get it too wet and then it will not roll out. Not the end of the world, you make drop biscuits instead, and don’t add quite so much milk next time.] You can finish the combining on the counter, emptying the dough onto a floured surface and kneading in much the same way as the bread recipe from the other day, but more gently. Until you can gather it into a cohesive ball. It doesn’t take long – about 8 or 10 kneads will usually do the trick. Pat or roll it out to about 1 inch thickness and cut to the size you like.Put the cut biscuits on a parchment paper lined baking sheet. Gently reform the remaining dough into a sheet and recut until it is all used.Place on a greased or parchment paper lined baking sheet and bake at 400 degrees for about 17 minutes, turning half way through. Cool on a wire rack or serve immediately.Now don’t those look yummy?