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An Early Bacon-Wrapped Thanksgiving Dinner
by Guest Writer, Valerie WhitmoreThanksgiving is the craziest time of year here for us at CDK. Most of my time is spent troubleshooting website issues and making sure everything stays up and running during the onslaught of recipe searchers. As a result, we don't usually celebrate Thanksgiving in a traditional way
In years past we tried to have family-style Thanksgivings. We gave up traveling to be with family since being on the road (or in the air) during a crisis with the website proved to be difficult. And having family visiting generated too many distractions when we needed to be working. We would sometimes have friends over for Thanksgiving dinner, but on more than one occasion we had to cancel at the last minute because of some problem that took priority
For the last couple of years, Brent's been cooking dinner for the two of us on Thanksgiving Day. It was his idea - and he doesn't cook! He picks out the recipes he wants to use (I do the shopping) and then hunkers down in the kitchen until they are done. I have to say, it's pretty nice. It frees me up to deal with whatever unexpected technology issues crop up and I get a great meal out of it.
But I kinda miss cooking the big T-Day dinner. It's one time of the year that you get to go all out with all the side dishes and fixin's - and desserts! It's the kind of cooking I consider to be fun.
So this year, I decided that before the Thanksgiving crazies set in (I actually made this on Halloween), I would make us a mini Thanksgiving dinner. Brent will still be cooking for us next Thursday, but this way I got my fun in too.
The menu I chose used traditional meal items but with interesting twists, you know, my usual M.O.
For the stuffing I used a recipe for gluten-free rice stuffing.
I love stuffing, but the bread kind, never have really thought of rice stuffing as... stuffing. But this recipe was good and one of the reasons I picked it was because it had brown rice (healthier) and dried cranberries (holiday-ish)
It had great texture - and came the closest to the stuffing flavors of regular bread stuffing than most rice versions that I have tried. The one disadvantage of this recipe is that it uses the oven for over an hour. If you are making a variety of other dishes at the same time this could be an issue. The recipe should reheat well so it could be made ahead of time and then heated through in the oven (or even in the microwave).
The next side dish was the mashed potatoes. But not just any mashed potatoes. These contained... are you ready? White chocolate. Yep, chocolate mashed potatoes. The white chocolate is used in place of butter in the recipe. The recipe states to make sure you get a good quality white chocolate made from cocoa butter
They look like regular mashed potatoes, right? The chocolate flavor was soooooo subtle. If you didn't know that it had chocolate in it you'd probably never put your finger on what the flavor was. I loved them. I think I'll always make mashed potatoes like this from now on! Plus, it's just fun to tell people they are eating chocolate mashed potatoes.
Finally, the star of the show: The Turkey.
Since 2006, the turkeys I've been making for Thanksgiving were Lauren's Maple-Bacon Roast Turkey
I decided to create a variation on Lauren's recipe and use a bone-in turkey breast. And instead of the sweet maple glaze, I'd go for some spicy heat with a touch of sweet.
Introducing, the Sweet and Spicy Bacon-Wrapped Turkey Breast.
First thing I did was create a spicy glaze of ground spices like cumin, cinnamon, allspice, garlic powder, and some smoky ground chipotle chile powder, mixed with some olive oil and honey.
I placed some of this under the skin the best I could. Then I started wrapping the turkey breast in bacon. You can either just lay the bacon across it like this:
Or get fancy and weave it:
After it's wrapped all snug in its bacon blanket, glaze it with more of the spicy glaze. Bake as directed, brushing with the glaze every so often until it is sticky and delicious looking.
Yeah, like that.
The bacon was of course impossible to resist and I think I ended up eating half of it just while carving the turkey. If there is any leftover bacon it would go great on turkey sandwiches the next day. Leftover bacon, HA!
The turkey was incredibly moist and tender, and very flavorful. The spices under the skin came through without overpowering anything. The sweet glaze was only on the bacon so you get more of just a smoky flavor in the turkey, nothing sweet (for those with an aversion to sweet on savory)
The fun part of all this was that I still got to make a traditional-seeming dinner, with a few untraditional twists. I'm also looking forward to our "real" Thanksgiving dinner. Brent has his menu all planned and will be in the kitchen cooking all day
Yet somehow, I'm sure I'll still end up doing the dishes.
Get the recipes:
Sweet And Spicy Bacon Wrapped Turkey Breast
White Chocolate Mashed Potatoes
Brown Rice and Cranberry Stuffing
In years past we tried to have family-style Thanksgivings. We gave up traveling to be with family since being on the road (or in the air) during a crisis with the website proved to be difficult. And having family visiting generated too many distractions when we needed to be working. We would sometimes have friends over for Thanksgiving dinner, but on more than one occasion we had to cancel at the last minute because of some problem that took priority
For the last couple of years, Brent's been cooking dinner for the two of us on Thanksgiving Day. It was his idea - and he doesn't cook! He picks out the recipes he wants to use (I do the shopping) and then hunkers down in the kitchen until they are done. I have to say, it's pretty nice. It frees me up to deal with whatever unexpected technology issues crop up and I get a great meal out of it.
But I kinda miss cooking the big T-Day dinner. It's one time of the year that you get to go all out with all the side dishes and fixin's - and desserts! It's the kind of cooking I consider to be fun.
So this year, I decided that before the Thanksgiving crazies set in (I actually made this on Halloween), I would make us a mini Thanksgiving dinner. Brent will still be cooking for us next Thursday, but this way I got my fun in too.
The menu I chose used traditional meal items but with interesting twists, you know, my usual M.O.
For the stuffing I used a recipe for gluten-free rice stuffing.
I love stuffing, but the bread kind, never have really thought of rice stuffing as... stuffing. But this recipe was good and one of the reasons I picked it was because it had brown rice (healthier) and dried cranberries (holiday-ish)
It had great texture - and came the closest to the stuffing flavors of regular bread stuffing than most rice versions that I have tried. The one disadvantage of this recipe is that it uses the oven for over an hour. If you are making a variety of other dishes at the same time this could be an issue. The recipe should reheat well so it could be made ahead of time and then heated through in the oven (or even in the microwave).
The next side dish was the mashed potatoes. But not just any mashed potatoes. These contained... are you ready? White chocolate. Yep, chocolate mashed potatoes. The white chocolate is used in place of butter in the recipe. The recipe states to make sure you get a good quality white chocolate made from cocoa butter
They look like regular mashed potatoes, right? The chocolate flavor was soooooo subtle. If you didn't know that it had chocolate in it you'd probably never put your finger on what the flavor was. I loved them. I think I'll always make mashed potatoes like this from now on! Plus, it's just fun to tell people they are eating chocolate mashed potatoes.
Finally, the star of the show: The Turkey.
Since 2006, the turkeys I've been making for Thanksgiving were Lauren's Maple-Bacon Roast Turkey
I decided to create a variation on Lauren's recipe and use a bone-in turkey breast. And instead of the sweet maple glaze, I'd go for some spicy heat with a touch of sweet.
Introducing, the Sweet and Spicy Bacon-Wrapped Turkey Breast.
First thing I did was create a spicy glaze of ground spices like cumin, cinnamon, allspice, garlic powder, and some smoky ground chipotle chile powder, mixed with some olive oil and honey.
I placed some of this under the skin the best I could. Then I started wrapping the turkey breast in bacon. You can either just lay the bacon across it like this:
Or get fancy and weave it:
After it's wrapped all snug in its bacon blanket, glaze it with more of the spicy glaze. Bake as directed, brushing with the glaze every so often until it is sticky and delicious looking.
Yeah, like that.
The bacon was of course impossible to resist and I think I ended up eating half of it just while carving the turkey. If there is any leftover bacon it would go great on turkey sandwiches the next day. Leftover bacon, HA!
The turkey was incredibly moist and tender, and very flavorful. The spices under the skin came through without overpowering anything. The sweet glaze was only on the bacon so you get more of just a smoky flavor in the turkey, nothing sweet (for those with an aversion to sweet on savory)
The fun part of all this was that I still got to make a traditional-seeming dinner, with a few untraditional twists. I'm also looking forward to our "real" Thanksgiving dinner. Brent has his menu all planned and will be in the kitchen cooking all day
Yet somehow, I'm sure I'll still end up doing the dishes.
Get the recipes:
Sweet And Spicy Bacon Wrapped Turkey Breast
White Chocolate Mashed Potatoes
Brown Rice and Cranberry Stuffing