This episode is sponsored by Ruby.
Whether you're a passionate home cook or just trying to get dinner on the table without stress, Ruby Online Culinary School has you covered.
With options from a $30 membership to their comprehensive ProCook certification, there's something for every cooking journey.
You'll learn from industry experts with personalized feedback, all 100 % online so you can fit it into your life.
Over a million students trust Ruby.
Join them at learn .ruby.
That's R -O -U -X -B -E dot com slash cook with us.
You can save money without missing out on the features you need.
Check out Odoo at odoo .com.
That's odoo .com. Of all of the processed foods to bring to your Thanksgiving table, cranberry sauce is, like, the least processed.
It's not filled with, like, 99 Jell -O's.
Yeah, you've got 99 Jell -O's.
I feel bad for you, son.
I've got 99 Jell -O's.
Cranberry's not one.
What is even happening?
I'm Samin Nasrat. And I'm Rishi K.
Sherway. And we're Home Cooking.
This is episode 12 of our four -part series, and part one of a two -part series within that four -part series dedicated to Thanksgiving, and how the heck we're going to do all the Thanksgiving things this year.
Wow, that was a lot of math.
We're going to talk about some of our own Thanksgiving recipes in part two, but for now, we've got a lot of questions to get through, so just like Thanksgiving dinner, let's get into it way too early.
Okay. I mean, normally I eat dinner at 7 .30.
Thanksgiving dinner starts at like 3 .30.
Two. Some people start at 11 a .m. Wow.
On Thanksgiving, there are no rules.
There's no rules, except there are a lot of people who have a lot of rules.
That's the thing. Yeah, but maybe one of the rules in your house is that you can start eating dinner at 11 a .m. Totally.
My rule, unfortunately, I mean, this is the opposite of a rule, is that I end up cooking all day and tasting so much that by the time it's time to sit down i'm like sick to my stomach oh yeah the actual act of eating on thanksgiving is is punishment also it's a bit like day three of being on vacation i've also eaten like seven layer dip exactly so i've planned out our questions to follow roughly the order of a meal i think and so i want to start with an appetizer okay okay or maybe this counts as a side i'm not really sure, but this question comes from Anna.
My question revolves around the classic green bean casserole.
So I live in Brooklyn now, but originally from Wisconsin, and I don't think I've ever had a Thanksgiving at home where this hasn't been present.
And it's delicious, but I always have the sense that it could be even more delicious and, you know, perhaps a little bit more wholesome.
So my understanding of how it's made, which is usually done by my mom or grandmother, other is a can of cream of mushroom soup goes into what I assume are frozen green beans and probably some other stuff goes in there as well and then topped with fried onions and baked to crispy golden perfection.
And although it is delicious, as I said, I always feel a little gross after eating it.
So I'm wondering if you guys have any thoughts on how to make it more more wholesome, more delicious, and basically a reimagined look at green bean casserole.
Thanks again. Oh, I love this question.
Awesome. For the record, I didn't grow up with Thanksgiving.
I've never had green bean casserole.
Actually, I haven't either.
But I do have some recommendations of how I would sort of lighten it and modernize it.
Absolutely. Okay. So what I would do is I would start with fresh green beans from the farmer's market or grocery store.
And I would trim them, I would lightly blanch them, and set them aside.
And then I would make a very thin bechamel sauce using, you know, flour and butter to make a roux.
And the way you make it thinner or thicker is by controlling the amount of milk that you add to your roux.
So I would add a little bit more milk than normal than like the recipe suggests.
And I have a great recipe that we actually linked to last week, so we'll link to it again.
Then I would think about all the other things that make cream of mushroom soup taste delicious.
And so clearly there's mushrooms in there, so I would probably start with just like some delicious sort of button mushrooms and saute them.
Oh, you're going to sub out the whole cream of mushroom soup situation.
I guess I just thought that for something like this, you'd need to have the mushroom soup as a part of it.
Oh yeah, I think that that's a big part of what's making it too gloopy and too thick.
And too, like, rich and cloying for her and heavy, you know?
Yeah. And so I think you can leave all that out, and then you just have a really nice homemade bechamel sauce that ends up being the total volume of this can of soup and the milk that you were adding.
And then, yeah, you can still add some soy sauce.
You can add some black pepper.
You add your home -cooked mushrooms and onions.
You could add some, like, delicious, nice, fresh herbs right at the end, some parsley and thyme.
and you can make your own instead of using like pre -made store -bought french fried onions you could make some slow cooked shallot rings that you fry in oil until they're golden and brown and put those on top and bake that in the oven and that's sort of like a lighter more modern version and you're still getting that casserole yumminess and that flour in the bechamel is still going to of bind it.
And you're still having every bit of sort of all of those little flavors that make it green bean casserole.
But it's not that processed taste.
But you're just winging this.
You have not actually had it.
No, but that's exactly how I would do it.
And I think it would totally work.
Yeah, no, I like it.
This is exciting. I mean, I like when you're riffing.
I like the idea that it's like throwing a knife blindfolded.
It's just exhilarating to witness.
miss i also suspect i mean i don't think that i'm like that creative i suspect that if i googled this and like we looked up like a new york times or bon appetit or some other credible source for a recipe it would basically step by step be exactly the same but i really appreciate your wonders really making my ego feel really good right now okay good let's keep going this feels good because i feel like i get to impress you and this like i've had a hard day so today i'm gonna feel really good about myself okay good i'm gonna spin the wheel and now and i'm gonna are you gonna put in a wheel wheel
sound effect here like uh next thing that comes up on the wheel of sides is cranberry sauce we have a couple questions about cranberry sauce and i want to play both of them hit me hi y 'all this is sean from Portland, Oregon with a cranberry conundrum.
So during the holidays growing up in my family, the cranberry sauce was kind of an afterthought, just like getting plopped on a plate out of a can last minute.
As you can imagine, it wasn't my favorite, but I do know for some people, the cranberry sauce is what brings the whole meal together.
And my wife is one of those people.
I'm wondering if you have a delicious cranberry sauce recipe so I could help make my wife's holiday a little better and who knows maybe i'll join team cranberry sauce team cranberry sauce by the way has never won a world series rude i'm so anti you right now because i feel like team cranberry sauce is the only team to be on on thanksgiving and i will explain why shortly so like any jokes anti team cranberry sauce i will not stand no i'm just saying team cranberry I know no no no like not even making fun in a theoretical sports way is okay okay all right I'm going to give you a little complication okay
Sean does not like the canned cranberry here's a question from Liz though my name is Liz and something you need to know about me is that I am a trash goblin who really likes canned cranberry sauce my mother on the other hand and really likes homemade cranberry sauce with whole cranberries.
I was wondering if you guys had any recipes or ideas for homemade cranberry sauce that is more of the texture of canned cranberry sauce.
Thank you. So here I'm throwing you a needle to thread.
Can you come up with a solution that solves both Liz's desire for homemade cranberry sauce that feels like canned cranberry sauce, while also giving Sean a delicious cranberry sauce recipe that is better than the cranberry sauce that left Sean wanting more from it?
Okay, yes and no. The answer is basically water and sugar.
I think we're going to need a few more words than that to really make sense.
Water and sugar. Next!
Got it, everyone? Okay, so let's start with Sean, and then I'll use the answer to Sean's question to sort of answer Liz.
So for Sean, my preferred cranberry sauce is cranberry with quince.
And that's just because quince is a really lovely fruit that I love working into things at this time of year.
And I find that cranberry and quince are a lovely pairing.
For those people out there, definitely not me, but like say, you know, slightly less food savvy people.
Could you explain what a quince is?
Oh, sure. Not you. a quince is a fruit.
It's a beautiful fruit that is related to an apple.
It kind of looks like a lumpy, misshapen precursor to an apple.
It's also related to a rose.
Wait, what? Well, apples are related to roses.
Wow. I didn't know that.
You can't really eat quince raw because it's very tannic and it'll dry your mouth out.
It's not pleasant to eat raw.
So you have to cook it and you have to cook it with a lot of sugar or you have to like cook it in wine.
It's really nice to cook with meats in braises and things like that.
But traditionally it's cooked with a lot of sugar into jams, marmalades, or into fruit pastes.
And it comes into season at this time of year in the fall.
And it has a really delightful fragrance.
And one of the things I like to do with it is put it in my cranberry sauce.
I can't tell you why.
I just, it's a nice thing I like to do in the fall.
And I have a recipe for it.
I will link to it it's also a classic Iranian ingredient and so it's like a way for me to bring a Persian flavor to the Thanksgiving table guess what else I like to put in my cranberry sauce a Persian mulberry no it's one of the ones that other people might think is just a piece of trash oh a bay leaf yeah so you put quince and bay leaves yeah so cranberries are very very tart heart.
So I like a really, really simple flavorings in my cranberry sauce.
I think they take a fair amount of sugar, some water, you're basically making a jam when you make cranberry sauce, you're making a really simple jam.
And so depending on how much sugar and how much water you use and how long you cook it, you're just, that's going to be what determines the texture of that jam and whether it becomes a jelly, whether it becomes super stiff, whether it's looser, thicker, sweeter, more acidic, all of that.
So that's where the answer to this question is going for both of these question askers.
And there are different things that we can do to control the texture and the taste.
So I like a pretty loose and pretty tart cranberry sauce for a couple reasons.
One, I can see your eyes.
I also like my tarts pretty loose.
This is a children's show.
They don't understand what I'm saying.
One of the reasons I advocate for a pretty acidic or tart cranberry sauce is because on a typical Thanksgiving table, there's so much richness and saltiness.
There's so much fat.
There's so much just like starch. starch. And on a typical Thanksgiving table, the only source of acidity is cranberry sauce.
And so I really like that to be very bright, very acidic.
I want every bite that I eat to have cranberry sauce on it because that's what wakes up my palate.
That's what makes things really exciting.
And I'm actually an advocate of other condiments on the table too.
Like I like a little herby salsa verde with fried sage in it because I want there to be more sources of acid so that there are things perking up every bite that I eat because I think that that's why after just a few bites often Thanksgiving can become really heavy and you're just like, I can't eat anymore and you have to fall asleep.
That makes so much sense now.
Now I understand when I was growing up why I always loved, you know, we would combine American Thanksgiving with a full Indian dinner.
And now I understand why I always loved having a little bit of spicy spicy Indian pickle on the side.
And I would mix that in with my stuffing.
I bet. Back then. And really for a long time before I read your book, I used to think of these things in music terms. I used to think about them as base and treble.
And I would always be like, oh, like this food is too basey.
It needs a little bit of treble.
And I realize now the treble that I was looking for was acid.
That's exactly it. Exactly it.
So yeah, we'll link to my cranberry sauce recipe.
The other thing I think a classic cranberry sauce often has is like uh you know a strip or two of orange zest and even like the juice of half or a whole orange like a little bit of that um you could even put like a little piece of cinnamon stick in there if you wanted to or juniper berry I'll link to a couple recipes for you it's a really simple thing to do it's usually one of the very last things I make before I go to the table it's not difficult at all and frankly like it's really inexpensive to also buy a can of cranberry sauce.
So you can have both.
And so how do you get the consistency of the homemade cranberry sauce to appeal, to feel right for the trash goblin?
For the trash goblin, which I'm a trash goblin, too.
So I love that. I'm always gobbling the trash.
So if you want, you can leave out quince or you can put it in.
You don't have to do that step.
But what I would do is make some homemade cranberry sauce that appeases your mom and maybe make it a little bit more watery, and then you probably will want yours to be sweeter and have some amount that's less watery.
Wait, you're suggesting two different batches of cranberry sauce?
No, what I would do is make a larger batch and then take half of it out and then add some more sugar to half of it, and that'll be your batch, and add some more water.
Wait, she's going to add water for her mom to make it less like canned cranberry sauce?
Correct. Oh. The one that will please her mom will be a little bit thinner, like a more sort of preserve homemade texture.
And then the one for herself will be a little bit stiffer and a little bit sweeter.
And then she will take an immersion blender, a stick blender.
If she has one, if not, she'll put the whole thing in a food processor or in a regular blender and zap it until it's quite smooth.
And then the trick that's pretty fun if you want, is you can take a can, an empty can can from something from chickpeas or whatever you got and you can spray it with some canola oil or you know some some cooking spray and then pour that cranberry sauce in there and let it set in the fridge and then you can like unmold it so you can have your own homemade cranberry sauce from a in the shape of a can in the shape of a little cylindrical glop in and then you glop it out exactly i added the step of the oil you probably don't even need to do that that's great here's a a question, Samin.
So we've talked about this a little bit in the past, my way of cooking.
A lot of times I'll just take a thing that's supposed to be ready -made and then modify it and make it my own.
And I'm wondering with that kind of approach, is there a way for somebody to work with canned cranberry sauce and improve it?
Start with the canned cranberry sauce and then zhuzh it up.
Oh, totally. What would you do in that case?
In that case, I would take the canned cranberry, I would heat it up with some water and I would acidify it I think it tends to be pretty thick and pretty sweet so maybe I would add some of my favorite ingredients some bay leaf you know and then I would squeeze the juice of half of an orange maybe use a vegetable peeler to like throw in the zest of like two strips of orange zest in there let that simmer for 20 minutes and then if i felt so moved i would add like a spice whether that's a cardamom pod two juniper berries or your cinnamon stick yeah one of those not all of them just to let it sort
of like get a little something oh another thing i think is sometimes nice in cranberry sauce is a little bit of heat like a little bit of cayenne pepper or like a little bit of dried red chili or i think chipotles are kind of nice a little bit of that smoky heat is nice in there too So, yeah, any of those things are kind of nice to add in there.
Wait, Samin, if you did not grow up eating Thanksgiving dinner, at what point did you become Team Cranberry Sauce?
Literally the very first time, because I grew up eating very highly acidic food.
Our palates are so acidic.
There's yogurt and pickles and sour things in everything that we eat.
We believe in balance, you know, in every bite and every dish.
And so I have a really highly acidic palate.
So anytime I eat a meal that's not acidic, I'm very aware of it.
And so Thanksgiving for me, like my first Thanksgiving, when I was invited to a friend's house in college or to a friend's family's house, I was kind of in shock.
And what was that cranberry sauce?
Was that a homemade one or was it from the can?
I'm pretty sure it was homemade.
Like, per family was really avid home cooks.
I got to experience a lot of really interesting things that I will never forget.
And I'm still, like, obsessed with.
like there was ambrosia salad, like, you know, something that is called a salad but has marshmallows in it.
Yes, which was very exciting to me.
Oh, in that case, I'm so excited to play you this next question.
I can't believe you brought up ambrosia salad spontaneously, but here's a question we got from Julio.
I'm hoping you can help me out with this issue.
My husband loves that sweet potato side that is topped with marshmallows, and I think it is the the grossest effing thing ever.
Like, marshmallows are candy.
It's just, ugh, no. Is there a spin on this dish that does not involve marshmallows that you would suggest that would be a good replacement for that?
Because ain't no way I'm cooking that in my kitchen this year.
Thanks for the insight and for the fabulous podcast. I'm 100 % with Julio.
What is that? I mean, it is wild wild that that's considered a vegetable.
I had never even heard of this dish until we got this question.
Then I looked, I was like, this is just some weird thing that his husband, you know, I don't know, some regional thing.
I looked and apparently this is a real thing.
Sweet potatoes with marshmallows.
Oh, my God. It's way a real thing.
Wait, Rishi, please tell me that you experienced, I think it was now like four or five years ago, the highly controversial state by state map of the defining dishes of thanksgiving that was published by the new york times a few years ago no i don't remember that the new york times quote -unquote researched like what was the most popular side dish in each state and then published this like nationwide map of like the defining side dish per state okay and so many states were deeply offended by how they were represented By how they were presented?
Oh, my gosh. There were a lot of marshmallow ones.
There were a lot of Jell -O ones.
One of the states got like a grape salad.
Minnesota was like, you done us wrong.
I like the idea that like the state wrote in.
Experiencing this on the internet was amazing.
So, sweet potato marshmallows.
Why do you have to have marshmallows in there?
There. I love sweet potatoes, but sweet is already in the name.
It's already sweet.
I feel like you can go as far as adding maple syrup.
Or brown sugar. I really love it when sweet potatoes are caramelized and really brown on the outside, but still have soft, delicious, creamy texture on the inside.
Which means on a typical sort of my once a week way that I cook them, I either have them and just cook them them cut side down or I cut them into coins that are maybe about like three quarters of an inch or an inch thick and then I flip them about halfway through cooking so they get browned on both sides but that way I have a nice thick piece that I can like bite into so I would suggest doing that either like halving them or cutting them into really nice thick coins and one of the fats that I really think pairs really nicely with sweet potatoes is coconut oil I really love the taste I just think
there's like a natural sort of sweetness to coconut oil that is so delicious with root vegetables.
And then if I wanted to introduce that brown sugary thing, you know, to appease my husband, who doesn't exist, I would probably just like mix some brown sugar and butter and like sprinkle that on top.
The other thing that would be kind of fun to do, I've done this before.
This might be so interesting and special that, like, he forgets there's no marshmallows.
You could make Hasselback sweet potatoes.
Do you know what those are, Rishi?
Is it named after you?
Like, whenever I try and get you to do this podcast and you give me a Hasselback?
That's exactly it. No, they're so beautiful.
They're like little potato porcupines.
They're like little potato fans.
They're potato fans.
I'm a potato fan. So you, and the way you make them is really, I love how you make them.
So you put your sweet potato down on your cutting board, your peeled sweet potato down on your cutting board, and you take two pencils or two chopsticks and you put one in front and one behind it so that it doesn't roll around on your cutting board. And then you use a knife cutting across the width as if you were going to cut it into coins.
But what the pencils or the chopsticks do is they keep you from cutting all the way down.
So really all you're doing is you're scoring the potato.
Oh, you're cutting it into slices, but only 90 % of the way.
Exactly. You're cutting it into a fan.
So the pencils keep you from going all the way through.
Okay. You know, and I would cut them into coins that are maybe like, I don't know, quarter inch thick.
Okay. So at the end, you should be able to hold it up, and it's a fan that's held together.
It's a sweet potato cut into a fan of coins that's held together.
Okay. And then you do that with as many sweet potatoes will fit into your dish.
and then you put them all in your dish and now in every single nook and cranny in between each coin slice you can fit all sorts of deliciousness so you can fit butter and brown sugar so if you want like a pat of butter in between each one of those nooks yes so if you want you can make like brown sugary butter or a maple syrupy butter or a spiced butter or like a sagey maple syrupy butter butter or whatever combination of deliciousness that you want and stick little pieces of that in between or pour you can melt it and pour that in between and now you have this beautiful thing that you can roast
and so it will be so dramatic once it comes out of the oven and because they're sliced it will sort of be this kind of you get both things you get both the like the texture chips you know and the bottom part is the texture of that soft chewy gooey piece of like whole roasted sweet potato so you you get the double experience out of the single sweet potato that sounds great i mean that's a few different ways to make a sweet potato and julio i hope one of those pleases your guy i really hope so otherwise i mean unpleasable okay with that i'm gonna play you this question from katie hi rashid samin my
name is katie and for obvious reasons i'm skipping the big family thanksgiving this year but i'm kind of excited about it because i'm a vegetarian and i get to kind of make my own vegetarian thanksgiving this year with my roommate because normally i'm sort of resigned to all of the various thanksgiving sides that are kind of all the same texture and same in play as ingredients and so I was wondering if you guys had any ideas for a vegetarian main that I could make for my little small Thanksgiving this year I'm down for non -traditional obviously no turkey probably not tofurkey now not into that but yeah
I'm down to hear your ideas thanks guys all right I have an idea I I have an idea too, but I'm going to let you go first as our resident veggie.
I have an idea that the last question sort of made me think of, but I certainly wouldn't know how to make it.
Okay, you say the idea and I'll figure out how to make it.
Okay. Thinking about sort of the flavors of Thanksgiving and what would be like a special thing to cook and really delicious to eat, what would you think about a pumpkin ravioli?
Oh, I love this idea.
With sage and brown butter sauce.
I love this idea. If you really want to go all out, you could make it into a lasagna too.
Oh. Yeah, make like a roasted squash lasagna with, yeah, all of those flavors and add like a ricotta layer, you know?
I think that's a great idea.
Absolutely. And we can link to all the different parts of both the lasagna and the pasta.
I think that's a fantastic idea.
I've definitely never had pumpkin or squash in a lasagna form.
Oh, yeah. It's one of my favorite ones.
I mean, I've made it both where I cook the squash and leave it in pieces, but I actually prefer pureeing it.
I really like it where everything in that lasagna or in the case of ravioli, where everything is really, really soft. And it's just velvet upon velvet upon velvet and all of these different flavors.
And the pumpkin has brown butter in it.
And there's a ricotta layer and there's a béchamel layer and there's saginess.
And one of the secret ingredients I like to put in it is there's a cookie in northern Italy called amaretti cookies.
So that's a traditional sort of ingredient often in pumpkin raviolis.
And so I'll sprinkle a little bit of like secret amaretti crumbs in there.
And that adds a little like surprise flavor.
And you know, obviously a ton of Parmesan cheese.
It's super rich. It's super decadent.
It's a thing I love making.
So I think that's a great idea, Rishi.
And I think it would be really fun and really satisfying and really gratifying.
So yeah, I'm totally all for that.
Okay. And what's your idea?
My idea comes from my friend Aaron.
He made it for his partner and his best friend maybe now 10 years ago.
And it's always been like one of my favorite veggie mains at Thanksgiving.
giving, he took a smallish squash, like a kabocha.
And I think it's important for this squash to be like a really flavorful squash.
It's maybe not like a big pumpkin, but like get a nice sort of like heritage flavorful squash.
A curry is another variety that I really like, K -U -R -I.
But kabochas are really nice and sort of core it out like you're going to make a jack -o' -lantern turn and save the top, take the seeds out.
And now you have this beautiful squash that you can stuff with all sorts of beautiful things.
Basically, he stuffed the squash like as if it was going to be a turkey that he was going to stuff with stuffing.
So he made a really flavorful stuffing out of bread and cheese and vegetables like kale and onions and all sorts of other deliciousness and herbs and maybe prunes that he soaked in white wine.
I don't even remember.
He just made like like a super flavorful stuffing.
And then he stuffed the squash and made a roasted squash.
And so then everybody got a slice of big, beautiful roasted squash and stuffing.
And he soaked the stuffing with a really, really rich veggie stock so that it was really flavorful and moist. It didn't come out dry.
And then I think he kept, as he was roasting the squash, he just kept basting it over and over again with butter and olive oil.
So it got all beautiful and brown.
And it was one of those things where at the table, you never felt like you were not getting something.
You just felt so satisfied.
And it was this like really beautiful, big, glorious thing.
That sounds so cool.
Okay. Now that we're in the world of main dishes, here's a question from Casey.
So my partner and I have never cooked a turkey or the whole meal before.
Usually we just like bring aside to a bigger gathering, but this year we'll be all in this together by staying apart art or something else like that, but we feel pretty good about our cooking skills.
We're just not sure how to time it all.
Like what can be prepped ahead and how far can you prep it without losing quality of taste and texture and all that?
Like, can we cook some things at the same time as the turkey?
Because all the 90 sitcoms lead me to believe that sucker's going to be in there for a while.
And Nina and our oven is being a drug lately.
So whenever we heat it to above 300, we have to give it a chance to air out and sit with the door open for a minute and then we get the heat back up and it's usually fine unless it's after that but what if this happens while we're cooking the turkey since it's going to be a while should we just order from Bob Evans please help yes thank you oh my gosh Casey I'm so grateful for this question because I don't know know how many years ago, but many years ago, I spent an absurd amount of time writing many blog posts with a week -long plan of how to plan all of your time for Thanksgiving.
So I will dig up those blog posts.
I mean, and that was for a person who was going to go really, really over the top and make every single thing from scratch. But really the way you figure this out is you work work backwards from the moment you want to sit down at the table and then you just work backwards from there and so you figure out okay how much time does it take to make this thing and oh that thing needs to be in the oven for this long and this thing needs to be in the oven for this long but there can only be one of those things in the oven at a time so how do i juggle them yeah oh wait like you know so you just have to
sort of make a map of your kitchen and of your time and and what you want to have. And that's how you create your schedule.
So what we'll do is we're going to dig up those blog posts and link to them, and then you're going to spend a little bit of time, maybe the Sunday before Thanksgiving, sort of making your plan.
Anytime I enter a kitchen, I think about what's the ultimate sort of constraint.
And for Thanksgiving, the ultimate constraint for most people is oven space.
And because most dishes on the Thanksgiving table table need to spend at least some time in the oven you know like pie turkey stuffing casseroles all those like sweet potatoes all those things have to get roasted and toasted and braised and and at different heats yeah and at different heats and different times and yet somehow you want everything to be hot at the same time yeah and you're like how am i going to do this and keep this hot and this needs to be rested and this and this and this and so trying to write a menu that works around that is going to be helpful.
Trying to choose dishes that will succeed at room temperature is going to be helpful.
Like what? One of the things I really love to serve, I'll roast, say, Brussels sprouts and butternut squash or other squash in advance, and then toss it with vinegar and sugar and hot chilies in a sauce called agrodolce, just as dressing.
And then it's sort of like a marinated, room temperature roast vegetable salad.
Or for example, a pie.
Pie is something I would get out of the way first thing in the morning on Thursday.
But we have not yet addressed the other scary part of your question, which is that your oven freaks out when it gets over 300 degrees.
And should you just go to Bob Evans?
So I would say, can you call an oven repair person?
Because I am worried, this is an oven heavy day, an oven heavy week.
And the fact that your oven is already finicky is concerning to me.
If you can get your oven repaired that would be helpful otherwise I might say yes you should probably order the turkey part of your meal from Bob Evans or somebody else and then maybe make the rest of it yourself so that you can relieve yourself from the stress of the meat because as Rishi pointed out you do want to make sure that the meat is cooked properly and that can be a pretty stressful part of cooking.
Yeah so I mean you have no idea how many stupid things come into my head that I never actually say to you.
Believe it or not, you are spared so many.
I don't believe it.
It's true. I don't believe it.
Like, for example, just now I was thinking about how we would say to Casey that, yeah, making sure you're able to cook everything is of an essential nature.
Oh, no. I mean, it's not.
But then you still found a way to say it.
So guess what? I'm saying I didn't say it.
No, but you did say it.
But I'm not taking any credit for it because it's, it's so bad.
No, but you just said it.
As an example of the kind of thing I don't say to you.
But you just said it to me.
Okay, moving on. Oh, Casey.
Casey, I wish you the best of luck.
You're gonna be fine.
Now that we're talking turkey, it's Rachel and Siri.
And we were wondering if you had any tips for adapting Samin's buttermilk chicken recipe for turkey.
Thanks. Bye. Bye. What an amazing question.
Perfectly timed because today in the New York Times, my buttermilk turkey recipe is being published.
And so we're actually publishing three different variations.
There is this whole spatchcocked turkey.
There's a breast for people who are not going to gather in a large group.
And also we're republishing the original chicken.
So that hopefully there's a version for everyone.
And could you just explain, just a quick reminder, if they're not familiar with this famous recipe of yours, what the deal is?
Yeah. You take a chicken, you put it in like a gallon size zipper plastic bag, you dump two cups of buttermilk on it and put some salt in there and let it sit overnight.
And then you take the chicken out, scrape off as much buttermilk as you can and roast it in the oven.
Do you have to like shake it up once you put it in the bag?
Yeah, you kind of just like move it around.
The buttermilk and the salt turn into this really beautiful brine.
And because buttermilk has natural sugars and acids in it, and also water, it acts like an incredible brine that both tenderizes the meat, the sugars help create this beautiful golden brown skin.
in. And, you know, this is not something I invented by any means.
Like I came to it because I was trying to adapt the yogurt marinated chicken that I saw my mom making, you know, for Persian kebabs.
But yogurt was too expensive in the restaurant where I worked to use.
So I started, I was like, Oh, maybe it would work with buttermilk for our because we had a beautiful wood fired spit.
And I loved spit roasting chicken.
And then as soon as I started doing it with buttermilk, I remembered, Oh, gosh, in the American South, like grandmas have been doing this, you know, for hundreds of years where they marinate their chicken overnight in buttermilk before deep frying it.
Yeah. And so this would work for a turkey too?
People for the last few years have been asking me, will it work for a turkey?
And I was really hesitant to just say yes because I wasn't sure if the skin would get too dark or what the cooking time would be, if it would be different or if the salt amount was right.
So I spent a few, I have been cooking a lot of turkey over the last few months to get the marinating time right and the salt amount right.
And I decided to spatchcock it, which means to cut out the backbone, which dramatically cuts down the cooking time, which I think will be a wonderful gift to everyone this holiday.
And it results in a really beautiful bird with just like an incredibly lacquered skin.
It's so simple. And unlike other brine birds, what it means is because you cut out that bone, it kind of folds in half and you just slip it into a two gallon plastic bag and it takes up way less room in the fridge you know you don't have to like make this complicated brine you just put buttermilk and salt on the turkey leave it in the fridge for two days pull it out bring it to room temperature roast it until it's done and call it a day and it's so tender and juicy it's so tasty and yeah the recipe is online and in print today here's a question for you as i imagine you've had to deal with this later.
Since turkey leftovers are such a big part of the post -Thanksgiving eating.
Honestly, the entire reason I care about turkey is for the leftovers.
And how does the buttermilk turkey translate to leftovers?
Oh, the best. So good.
To me, better because I feel like buttermilk leads to juicier turkey, which leads to juicier leftovers.
I can imagine that because I know, as you were talking about the yogurt marinated Iranian chicken, of course, that made me think of the same kind of thing in Indian cooking.
And that's a food that tastes great as a leftover.
So tasty. What size turkey did you develop this recipe for?
I tested this one with several different size turkeys from 8 to 14 pounds.
But if you end up using a turkey that's larger, it will absolutely work.
You just have to adjust the cooking time to make sure you get to the appropriate temperature, which is 150 degrees in the breast and 165 degrees in the leg.
And if you notice that the skin is getting too dark, you can just cover it with a piece of foil until it gets to the right temperature.
An eight -pound turkey, though, is still a lot of turkey.
It is. And usually the calculation for when you're shopping is you buy a pound per person.
Well, that leads me to this question from Polly, and it's a sentiment that we got from a lot of listeners who wrote in to us.
Like many people this year, I will not be traveling home to visit family for Thanksgiving.
Any advice on how to downsize the Thanksgiving meal but still make it special?
Thanks. So, for example, this special turkey recipe that you've made, eight pounds of turkey if you're serving eight people but you're just by yourself, how do you make this work and still get to have that kind of deliciousness?
Well, you said that you did a version of the recipe with just turkey breast?
Yeah, so I made a version that's just with the breast, which honestly, if breast is not for you, you could also just buy the leg and brine the leg.
At the grocery store where I shop year round, you can buy just the breast or the leg like in the, you know, meat case.
You don't even have to go to the butcher counter and ask the butcher to cut it up for you.
I suspect that at most grocery stores that have a butcher counter this year, they will happily be carving turkeys into smaller pieces, into halves, and into individual parts for people because I think a lot of people will be wanting just parts.
I think you can go in on meals with neighbors.
And, you know, as far as I understand it, and, you know, we had Dr. Uncle Sumesh Hirway, PhD in a earlier episode to tell us about some of the science, but as long as you're very careful, it's really the mucus membranes that are how we pass COVID from one another.
And so food and food containers, as long as they're kept dry and clean, is not a way to transmit COVID from person to person.
Right. So a cooked turkey or even a raw turkey, if, you know, neighbors were to like buy and split up turkey.
I think that's one way to be able to sort of get those flavors and get those tastes.
And also, I think it's a tough year.
It's a different year.
This is going to be a year that we look back on at the end of our lives and remember always as just a year that was different.
And it's okay if this meal is different.
I don't think anybody's meal is going to look normal.
yeah the whole year has an asterisk so your thanksgiving can too yeah and so if you don't have turkey you don't have everything it's okay you know honestly i have to say i prefer chicken anyway and frankly like my favorite things on the table have nothing to do with meat yeah i just want stuffing mashed potatoes and gravy i feel like you're eating a pretty butter heavy meal buddy i am exactly you're like a little stick of butter you're like a stick of butter with a goatee oh my god can someone carve rishi out of butter please and this brings us to dessert already i don't even have a stomach ache
we already covered turkey and so i think this is a perfect time to take a little break and then And when we come back, let's get into some pie talk with our friend Demi Adijuibé.
If you like home cooking and you want to hear more from the two of us, I wanted to tell you about a new episode of my series, Key Change, where I interview guests about a song that changed their life.
It's a new part of my music podcast, Song Exploder, and I had Samina on as a guest. She told me about the impact that the song Untouchable Face by Ani DiFranco had on her.
Here's a little clip of our conversation.
Oh, I've bleeped out some of the words for this.
because we don't swear on home cooking, but it's a pretty important part of the story.
So when you go to listen to the full episode, you'll hear the uncensored version.
So we went and the concert was Ani DiFranco.
Had you heard Ani DiFranco's music before?
No, I had no idea who this person was.
And she performed this song, Untouchable Face, which in Untouchable Face, she swears.
She says, f*** you and your untouchable face.
And I had no idea what the song was about.
I just heard the f***, you know?
Which to me was so scandalous.
Like, I'm just this like, you know, good brown kid.
Like, I was like, whoo, I was sort of scandalized.
What was the reaction of the other people in the room?
I mean, everyone else knew all the words and was singing it along.
And like they were, this was like hardly scandalous music for them.
People were listening to way more intense stuff.
And so not only are you in a room where the singer is dropping an F -bomb, everybody around you is singing along with it?
Oh, yeah, totally. And so, you know, you kind of probably by the end of the song, I was also singing along.
Yeah. So that's the clip.
I actually think it's a really moving story and shows a side of Samin that you might not know.
To hear the rest of our conversation, look for Samin's episode of Key Change on Song Exploder, wherever you get your podcasts, or go to songexploder .net slash key change.
I hope you listen. Thanks.
If you're a fan of home cooking and the way it's all put together, but like me, you wish it had a little less Rishi in it.
Let me recommend Rishi's other podcast, The Brilliant and Magical Song Exploder.
Rishi's the host, but he cuts himself entirely out of the interviews he does with amazing musicians like Janelle Monae, Robin, Fleetwood Mac, U2, and more.
So you just hear them talking about the creative process behind the making of one of their songs.
I was actually a fan of Song Exploder way before Rishi and I became friends.
Two of my favorite episodes are the ones with Solange and Sylvan Esso.
The show is so carefully and thoughtfully made, and it's just really inspiring for anyone who creates things.
Find it wherever you listen to podcasts.
So joining us now is comedian, director, screenwriter Demia Dijouibe.
He writes for the new Amber Ruffin Show.
He was a co -host of the podcasts Punch Up the Jam and Gilmore Guys.
He also tried to kill me.
i don't think you can just drop that in it was a game i think he did kill me actually in a game in a game online on zoom he makes hilarious videos and songs and as it turns out baked goods well the baked goods aren't hilarious but they probably are delicious i don't know maybe they're hilarious let's see okay let's find out hey demi thank you so much for joining us.
Thank you for having me.
I have been watching on Instagram as this entire quarantine period, you have been baking so many delicious looking things.
Yes. And as an aside, I have not gotten to eat any of them, but they look delicious.
I was supposed to bring Rishi four apple turnovers that I made last night, and then work got away from me, and I didn't have time.
And I was very excited for him to have been able to have said he'd tasted them by the time we recorded this, but I have to take him over afterwards.
I've been supposed to send Demi a banana bread since February.
I mean, I've been supposed to send—oh, I'm probably Demi, too.
I was like, whoa, I didn't know about this.
Like, Demi gets one before me?
I'll take it. Well, Demi, I'm going to send you a banana bread tomorrow, but I've been supposed to send Rishi a banana bread since February.
Still have not, so don't worry.
She's also supposed to buy me some dark chocolate Almond Joys.
Never got those. He's keeping a list. Oh, yeah.
There's a long list. Oh, wow.
Wow. Okay. I've been to your apartment, Demi, for parties and there've often been great snacks.
Sometimes I've brought cookies, but I didn't realize that you are a baker yourself.
Is that something that's been new since quarantine?
Yeah, that's definitely something that really started in quarantine.
Just before quarantine, friends would come over and we'd make cookies.
And my roommate, Gabe, would always insist that we make them spicy and just throw some cayenne in there so we started experimenting with like cookie recipes and whatnot and then i was sort of like well i'd like to bake other things and it kind of spiraled and spiraled and now it's just like i have a pressed collection of loose pages from a notebook that are just different recipes and like it just gets like it starts with cookies and then gets to like pumpkin pie entirely from scratch but where do you like when you decide you want to make pumpkin pie where do you get the recipe from just googling
blank recipe and being like uh this one works let's go you just Just look one up and you just commit and you go with it.
There is no trial and error.
There's no checking for quality.
I'm like, this looks good.
Sometimes I'll end up on like one of those baking blogs where they tell like a long story and have a lot of photographs.
And I'll be like, just, okay, we go to the bottom and I look at it.
I don't need to. You're like, I don't care about this story.
Exactly. I'm like, I don't even need to hear about like, you know, what's really best for this is this brand of thing.
I'm like, if it's good, it'll work.
Let's go. Well, this pumpkin pie is specifically why we wanted to talk to you for this episode.
episode our first of two thanksgiving episodes what made you decide you wanted to make pumpkin pie so uh my friends and i decided we wanted to watch over the garden wall and uh my friend celia it's like her sort of holiday fall tradition it's like oh it's officially fall now that we've watched over the garden wall and she offhandedly mentioned like oh i wish we could have pumpkin pie and as soon as anyone mentions any baked good now i'm just like can i make it can i make it yeah i can make it and i had i had a graham cracker pie crust but then i was also like well you know what I've never made
a pie before. And I've also never made like a pie crust before.
And I hear that that's a whole thing unto itself.
So I was like, well, maybe I'll make that from scratch. And then I was like, okay, and I can get the pumpkin pie filling.
And then I was like, well, no, can I make the pumpkin filling from scratch too?
And so I looked up a recipe and they were like, yeah, just get a pumpkin and cut it in half and do all this stuff.
And I was like, oh, okay, this is a whole thing.
All right, I'm in. Wow.
How many days did it take you?
Oh, just the one. Wow.
You did the whole thing in one day with a pumpkin?
I did it while we were watching.
I was just like, I'm in my kitchen.
I got the screen over here and the TV's in front of me and I'll just make the pie and not disturb anyone.
It was really fun. Wow.
How did it turn out?
I think it turned out great.
And how do you feel about pumpkin pie otherwise?
Is that a food that you have a lot of attachment to?
Not really. I actually don't, but I don't hate it.
And eating this one, I felt the same way, being like, it's not.
It's pumpkin pie for sure.
Other people seem to like it.
I delivered leftovers to friends, and they were like, this is good.
So I'm like, okay, I'm confident that I did it right.
Can we talk about the crust?
Yes. Okay, so first of all, what was the fat in the crust?
Was it all butter, or was there other stuff in it?
It was butter. I saw a recipe that I could use shortening for, but I read something about butter just tasting better, and I was like, well, I've got both, so I'll just...
It does taste better.
All right. Well, there we go.
You seem like you're like the perfect level of baking experience to enter the pie making, because it sounds like you've been baking and have a comfort with baking yet you're not like so much of a geek and like so sort of in it that you haven't like built a fear because a lot of for me like i had built a real fear of pie crust because i had heard all of this lore there's a lot of lore around pie crust if you add too much water if you overwork it it'll get tough it won't it'll get too chewy and so to me it's you had a kind of beautiful amount of blissful ignorance and so So that probably helped
you because you didn't enter it fearfully.
And you just were like, yeah, I wanted the butter.
The butter tasted good.
Welcome to Home Cooking, where my co -host Samin calls our guests ignorant in a nice way.
Yeah, I love to be called ignorant in a nice way for once.
I do feel like with baking, it is this thing where I'm like, hey, someone wrote the recipe.
I'll just follow the recipe.
It's like there's no fear to it for me.
I was intimidated by pastries for a while.
and then i uh tried making an apple turnover and i was like oh this turned out good so i'll just keep going i feel like the way you're describing your approach to making baked goods and making this pie it feels like how i think of the way you approach all the things you make like music and videos and things like that like good ignorance no that the difficulty you're not intimidated by the difficulty level that actually you get excited by the challenge of doing something you've never ever done before yeah whereas other people might be like oh well i can't do that that's well that's me is i'm like
let me admire myself in all of the nuances and details and overwhelm myself with like how difficult this thing could possibly be and then i will not even attempt it for 22 years until i've learned every possible thing that's my thing whereas you're you have a much wiser though it It sounds like an insult.
It is actually a compliment.
Okay, let me just say.
Demi, I love how much of your baking is motivated by your friends.
I feel like one of the reasons I've gotten so into baking through quarantine is that it is a very nice way to make a thing that is not for me.
And then just deliver it to a friend is like a just like a here's a fun thing for me to do.
I made baked goods for my coworkers just as like, oh, I'm so excited to be working with you.
And like, I'm going to deliver it to them tonight also.
Your coworkers on the Amber Ruffin show?
Yes. Nice. That's so nice.
This is a nice way for me to have a reason to deliver things.
And also it's just like every so often I'll post the things on Instagram and someone will just be like, Oh my God, what is this?
And I'll like start talking with them and I'll be like, let me bake you something.
And I'm just like, pick a thing because then it's a fun, it's just a fun thing for me to like, get to learn how to bake more things by taking requests from those friends and being like, Oh, well I would never eat oatmeal raisin cookies, but I'd love to make them for you you to eat wow do you have a sense maybe or like a list of the number of people who've gotten baked goods from you before me i do i want to say it's in the hundreds now but it could be the 200s i don't know i'm going alphabetical rishi you're still on the g's yeah i have a lot of g friends oh i understand why you have a lot of g
friends why it's because they all want you to be there their B friend.
Oh boy. I'm leaving.
Oh, I can't believe it took us 17 minutes to get here.
To get Demi to want to leave. I know he stayed for you calling him ignorant, but B friend, G friend.
That crossed the line.
Yeah. Okay. So your pumpkin pie ambivalence aside, what's the thing that you've loved the most that you made?
Yeah. What's your favorite baked baked success?
I really love the apple turnovers I've been making.
I think the thing I've made the most is these lemon cakes that every so often...
There was a day when I just was bored and had so many lemons, and I was like, all right, I'm just going to make seven lemon cakes.
And then I delivered them to friends, and people seemed to really like them.
So I like making those.
Those were all the bee friends, Rishi.
Oh yeah, that was...
That was the bees. For the apple turnovers, do you make the pastry dough yourself?
I have not. That was partially because I was just afraid of pastry stuff.
But after making this pie and it turning out fine, I'm like, well, next time I make it, I definitely want to just make the sheets myself.
You totally should.
And a really nice trick, like you should look for a recipe for cream cheese pastry because cream cheese doughs are really quite easy to make and they come together really well and they have a really nice texture.
And that's a really sort of common dough for a turnover.
Try it out. The only thing I've made with cream cheese so far, I made these orange cream cheese glazed cinnamon rolls, mostly off of a dare.
Do you have any interest in baking cookbooks?
Or is it really like you just are so into this process of the Google and the notebook?
I like baking cookbooks, but I've realized this thing.
So I made sour cream and onion biscuits for the first time the other day.
Oh, yeah, I saw those on your Instagram, too, and they looked amazing.
Interesting. You didn't heart eyes those.
I would have sent you some.
Well, because I got the message.
Rishi, all you had to do was do one more, and I would have been like, well, I'll bring you some.
If you want to make me some of those biscuits, that would be an amazing Thanksgiving.
Okay, you got it. I'll deliver these turnovers today, and then I'll deliver some biscuits to you before Thanksgiving.
This is incredible.
You got it. All you got to do is ask.
Everybody follow Demi on Instagram.
Send them your wish list. send him the hard ice so i made those and it was off of this recipe on bon appetit and it was like the first time i had used a recipe that was like specific and not just sort of someone submitting a recipe somewhere and i realized that it was like oh okay this is made with such attention to how you have to make it and i was like oh i might actually screw this up i think i'm not as confident here so i was sort of just enjoying being like if i google a thing what will pop up but then I also do want to get good enough that I'm confident following like an expert's recipes.
I don't want to project or impose, but I am inspired to send you a big stack of cookbooks.
Please. I will bake you anything from those cookbooks.
And then Rishi, I'll get to you after I do this.
This was so great. Thank you so much for doing it.
Thank you so much. Thank you for having me.
We're going to promote your baking career.
Cookbook deal coming soon.
Yay. It'll be 12 recipes, all from Google.
you can follow demi on twitter and instagram at electro lemon if you're really nice and send emojis at his baked goods he may or may not decide to make some for you an update by the way he dropped off my apple turnovers and i already ate one and it was delicious crap now i really do have to send that banana bread you definitely do wow you really do that's it and that's it for this episode.
Thanks so much for listening.
We make this podcast with the help of Margaret Miller, Zach McNeice, Gary Lee, and Casey Diehl.
And Mamie Rheingold makes our artwork.
We're a proud member of Radiotopia, a collective of fiercely independent podcasts.
You can learn more about all of the Radiotopia shows at radiotopia .fm.
Let us know if you have any cooking -related questions.
Just record a voice memo and send it to us at alittlehomecooking at gmail .com.
If you hear this episode the day that it comes out and you have Thanksgiving questions.
We might still be able to answer them.
Otherwise, I don't know.
Send us your questions for the things you make in December.
Holiday cookie box.
In the meantime, our website is homecooking .show and you can find all the recipes and transcripts for all of our episodes there.
You can follow me on Twitter and Instagram at Chow Samin.
And I'm at Rishi Hirwe.
Stay healthy, eat well, and take care of each other.
We'll be back with more Thanksgiving in part two of our two -part series from the episode you know what I'm saying we'll be back in two weeks until then I'm Samin and I'm Rishi and we'll be home cooking Radiotopia from PRX
