Thursday, December 2, 2010

Tight as Thursday ~ 'doing' Turkey three ways...

Because it's a lot prettier than dinner... *grins*
So - turkey is out on the shelves! By-jingos it's getting closer to Christmas. Mid year there was a bit of a glut from 'Christmas in July' celebrations and turkey wings, drumsticks (or 'shanks' as these were labelled) all marked down so low it was impossible to not grab some and put into the freezer.  Just didn't really know what for at the time.

Tonight, the turkey was retrieved from the bottom of the freezer (because we can see in there now and 'found' them) and dinner was made from four turkey wings ($2.15) and two drumsticks ($2.09) and this $4 frozen outlay will make 3 meals, possibly 4. It's a :
Turkey, Barley & Bean Hot Pot

Before starting on the turkey, we took about a cup of barley and a cup of soup mix to soak in water ~ could have added brown rice, probably ~ this soaked for an hour or so while dawdling around the preparation, homework, tidying. If you forget to soak, just rinse and add - still works.

We removed about half the skin from each turkey piece, the meat was coated in seasoned flour (with some Moroccan spices). We put flour, salt, pepper & garlic powder into a plastic bag, placed the meat in, twist the bag shut and turned the contents to coat, using one hand at the bottom so the bag doesn't break.

You may use more or less, but we add about two tablespoons of oil and melt added butter in the roaster, put the coated meat in the pan and brown both sides on the stovetop in the big Chefs' ToolBox roaster before adding onions, carrots, a tin of creamed asparagus (because there was no creamed corn or chicken & corn soup in the cupboard), a tin of drained/rinsed red kidney beans, the barley & soup mix and about a cup of water.

Mixed it all around until the liquids were starting to simmer and boil, popped on the lid and whacked it in the oven for an hour at 200oC.

After an hour, it came out of the oven for a bit of a mix n stir, added about half a cup of water - could have put some frozen beans or peas in about now - and picked up the lid (don't forget that sucker will be HOT) and put it back into the oven for 60-90 minutes at 180oC.

Personally it would have been delicious to have on rice, cous cous or mash - but with the meat just falling off, it was easy to just ladle into the bowl and eat with a fork.
The LeftoversThe bones will now be cleaned of all the meat and half the remainder will be padded out with broccoli, cauli, peas and maybe potato to make a pie filling for Saturday's dinner. The rest will probably come out of the freezer next week or the month after and the bones will come out for stock when there are some veggies ready for the pot, then the rest will go into the soup, or be another pie or something else as a quick meal. $4 of turkey and a few odds about the fridge & pantry and there's 3-4 meals!

If you see any seriously marked down turkey - grab it and give this recipe a go. It's definitely not 'exact' in measurements, but if you've made a casserole or used a slow cooker before, its the same kind of dish. I'd do this in a slow cooker over 6-9 hours on high and add more liquid than for the oven. Love to know if you try it and how it went.

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Please buy, tell your friends to buy, just help us pay our debt ~ *the Plug*

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