Author Topic: Thanksgiving Recipes  (Read 1516 times)

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Offline Ryffnah

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Thanksgiving Recipes
« on: November 21, 2012, 04:25:57 pm »
Do people have favorite Thanksgiving recipes?  Favorite ways to cook a turkey?  Anything like that?

My husband and I have only been responsible for the turkey a couple of times, so I don't feel like we have it completely figured out yet.  As for stuffing, mashed potatoes, and cranberry sauce -- I think they're all essential, but I'm somewhat flexible about how they're actually done.  I do like it when the cranberries are fresh though.  My husband thinks green beans casserole is essential.  And we're always a little undecided, as a group, about what kind of pie to have.

The one specific recipe that I'm super attached to for Thanksgiving is the rolls.  I've gone out of my way to make sure that I've had these crescent rolls at every Thanksgiving that I can remember.  This meant that the one year in college when I stayed in the dorms for Thanksgiving, I made these rolls in a dorm kitchen.  I've also made them any time that my husband and I are with his family for Thanksgiving.  Usually, though, my mom makes them, and I always try to be around for at least one batch as it comes out of the oven warm.  They are so good that way.  Anyway, without further ado, the recipe:

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2 packages yeast
1/2 cup warm water (for the yeast)
2/3 cup sugar
2/3 cup butter or margarine
1 1/2 cups hot water
2 eggs
6 cups flour
1 teaspoon salt

Dissolve the yeast in the warm water.  Put it aside.

In a bowl cream the sugar and butter.  Beat in the eggs.  When the mixture is smooth add the hot water.  Add the yeast mixture.

Beat in 3 cups of flour and the salt.  Mix the dough (count fifty times around) with a wooden spoon.  Then stir in the final 3 cups of flour.

Cover the bowl with a slightly damp cloth and place it on the counter in a warm place.  Punch down the dough with a spatula after two hours.  Refrigerate the dough until it is cold.  (Can be refrigerated for up to three days.)

Divide dough into four equal portions.  Roll each portion into a circle 1/4 inch thick.  Cut the circle into twelve wedges.  Roll each wedge and place it on a greased cookie sheet.  Let the rolls rise for two hours before baking.

Bake at 375 for ten minutes.  Cool slightly (if moved right away, the rolls squish).
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So, that's the recipe.

A few additional thoughts...  When I made these in the dorms at college, I was a stupid college student, and I figured that Thanksgiving was a day when I should sleep in.  So, I woke up sometime in the afternoon and headed over to the kitchen to make the rolls.  I'd given the list of ingredients to the other students who voyaged off campus to buy stuff at the store, but I hadn't really looked at the recipe.  So, I found myself making these rolls without giving them any of the time they were supposed to have to rise.  Because, you know, people were going to want them for dinner, and there wasn't time to leave them in the refrigerator over night or let them rise for hours on end.  And, amazingly, they turned out okay.

Another year, I was making them at my father-in-law's house, and I'm pretty sure that the yeast he gave me to use was many, many, many years old.  And mostly dead.  It did not really work.  The rolls barely rose at all.  So, they weren't as wonderfully soft and puffy as usual, but they still weren't bad.  Just a little dense.  So, this is a pretty robust recipe.  You can mess it up in all kinds of ways, and you still get lovely rolls.

Also, if you shape the dough into cinnamon rolls around a sugar/cinnamon/chopped nut filling, well, they make lovely cinnamon rolls too.
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Offline Acton

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Re: Thanksgiving Recipes Smoker Running Hot
« Reply #1 on: November 22, 2012, 07:04:48 pm »
As for how I am doing my Turkey?




I ma trying Apple Wood this time around.