Posts Tagged ‘Walmart’

Later today I hope to pick up a couple of the 40¢ per pound turkeys at Walmart. I like to get nice big ones, because I’m planning for leftovers. (I buy 2, freeze the second one, and we enjoy another nice turkey dinner in early spring.)

One of the things I’ve learned about cooking a fabulous turkey, one that is NEVER dry, is to brine them.

Since they’re sold frozen and take forever to defrost (or so it seems!) I brine them while they’re defrosting. Usually in an ice chest or a 5-gallon food-grade buckets as well. Think safety here! You need to make sure that turkey stays cold! (safety zone: under 40°, see USDA), so plan on brining it in icy water, in the refrigerator if possible.

While you can get packaged brine mixes at the store, I personally don’t. I can just can’t get myself to pay $5-$9 for what is mostly salt!

Recipes for brines abound right now, check your newspaper (The Virginian-Pilot had a brine recipe on Sunday).

Here’s my turkey brine recipe:

7 quarts (28 cups) ice & water
1 1/2 cups salt
3 bay leaves
1 tbs. ground or rubbed sage
1 tbs. dried thyme
1 tbs. black peppercorns
2 medium onions, thinly sliced
6 garlic cloves, crushed (you don’t even have to peel them, just mash ‘em)
1/2 cup sugar (optional)
1 fresh whole turkey (18 to 20 pounds) — remove the giblets and rinse

Boil 1 quart of the water, the salt, bay leaves, and spices to a simmer, stirring until salt has dissolved. (the simmering really gets the flavor out of the the spices. Let cool for 10 minutes. Add the garlic and onions to the cooked, cooled brine.

Place turkey into your brining container. Add the garlic and onions. Add salt mixture, remaining 6 quarts of ice and water. If turkey is not submerged, weight it with a plate. Brine for 24 hours, flipping turkey once.

Take out of the brine just before cooking and rinse.

Again, please see the safe turkey handling instructions at the USDA link above.

Look here if you get a smoking grease splatter while cooking.

Related post: How much meat does a turkey yield?

Another day of mooching off the in-laws. (It’s 600 miles away, so it’s not like we could go home for meals.) After a very late breakfast we all (excluding Andy) trekked out to do a bit of shopping at Walmart. I did actually spent about a buck and a half (receipt is around somewhere) on some Pocky for Andy. At home I get it at the commissary for about 85¢, but it was over a buck in Ohio. Andy has been a total trooper — not complaining AT ALL about being dragged to Ohio for a week with no other kids around. So a treat was in order.

After shopping my father in-law treated us all to ice cream. Yum! I had butter pecan, which I haven’t had in decades. There was so much to choose from that I simply picked the first thing on the list.

We went out for dinner, also compliments of my father in-law, at a Chinese restaurant. Good food. Good conversation. I think we were all savoring our last night together.

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Getting ready for my trip, taking advantage of Super Doubles at Harris Teeter and Double Dollar Wednesday at Farm Fresh — boy, oh boy, have I had a busy day!

First stop: Bloom – 4 12 packs of pop for our road trip. $10.25 including tax.

Next: Farm Fresh – Total was $17.03, but I bought 2 bottles of Tide ($3.99 each plus tax after coupon), and two boxes of Wet Ones ($0.50 each plus tax after coupon), so my grocery total was only $7.60.

Moving down the road: WalMart – Most of the ticket was non-food stuff. The food total was $10.52. $6 of that was lunch meat. I usually wait for a much better price, but I’m leaving a hungry 18 year old to fend for himself for a week, plus we’re packing sandwiches to eat on the road, so we needed something besides bologna.

Last stop for the night: Harris Teeter – My total was $9.72. If I weren’t so busy getting ready for vacation I’d have posted a picture of this stuff, at least. Lots of frozen heat-and-heat foods for the kid. Even though I’m providing fairly easy stuff, it should be a good experience for him to have to fend for himself for a bit.

Wow! My total is $38.09. Including yesterday’s shopping I’ve used up half of this week’s allowance. This may get tricky!

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As usual in our house, breakfast and lunch are whatever each member of the family prepares for his or herself.

I decided that today I wanted a little red meat, so I planned a shopping trip. So, for day 2, spent $39.97. I got 7.5 lbs of hamburger, 5 sirloin steaks (we ate 4, one is in the fridge), 2.6 lbs of peaches, 3.1 lbs of cherries, one pkg of hot dog buns, one gallon of whole milk, ten 6 oz yogurts, two 10-pks of crystal light singles, and an 8-pc. package of roasted chicken pieces.

Along with the steaks we had a pasta salad (hubby made it) which used a bag of (free after coupon) Wacky Mac, part of a bottle of (free after coupon) balsamic vinaigrette salad dressing, some leftover olives and bell pepper from the homemade pizza on Sunday. Boy, was that delicious!! We also had microwaved corn on the cob, which I’d picked up on Sunday at Walmart for 25¢ each.

If you really want to learn how to grill a perfect steak, get the book The Cook’s Illustrated Guide To Grilling And Barbecue. Seriously, it’s wonderful and gives directions for both charcoal and gas grills. I am the grill master in my house now.

The other order of the night was to boil the hamburger, bag it and freeze it. Yes, boil it. It’s a perfect way to get dinner on the table FAST. I use it for tacos, spaghetti sauce, hamburger helper, shepherd’s pie, sloppy joes, and in any other recipe where you “brown 1 lb. hamburger.” One pound of hamburger equals approximately 2 cups cooked.

After cooking, draining and bagging the hamburger, I let the pot of fat and water cool a bit and skimmed off the fat, strained it and put it in the fridge. Tomorrow I’ll “render” it again (basically put it in a pot of water and boil it to make it easier to strain a second time). If I were using it for suet, I would be happy with having strained it once. But I plan to make soap with the tallow, so I want clean fat.

I’m done in the kitchen for the night and probably won’t do any cooking tomorrow since I have several meetings and a bunko game.

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