Parker’s Five Steps for a Successful Thanksgiving

Step 1: Write your menu Select all your recipes that you will be cooking, as well as those that guests might be brining. There are no rules for what to make at Thanksgiving, so time to get creative! If someone else is bringing a dish, are they brining it fully cooked? If they’re cooking at…

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Heritage Thanksgiving Turkeys

Thanksgiving — our favorite holiday of the year!– is still a few weeks away, but for our farmers,Thanksgiving is really the culmination of a year’s worth of planning and hard work, especially when breeding and raising heritage turkeys. Heritage turkeys are turkeys that can naturally reproduce their same offspring. Most commercial poultry breeds are cross-breeds…

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Brining a Turkey

Any brine time is better than no brine time– even just a few hours will reduce cooking time, impart moisture and result in more evenly-cooked bird.  Brining, like marinating, is a technique of soaking a piece of meat in liquid prior to cooking. Marinating is done to infuse flavor and moisture. Brining can also add…

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Guide to Roasting a Turkey

First, before you even get to the roasting, you should definitely brine your turkey. Click here for instructions on brining your turkey. 1. Start the oven hot: preheat to 450 degrees. Remove one rack and place the remaining rack near the bottom. The turkey should be about centered in the oven for even air flow.…

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Let’s Talk Turkey

Thanksgiving is just around the corner. It seems like just a few weeks ago we were planning the summer season, and now we are ready to finalize our turkey orders. We gave our current CSA subscribers first dibs on Thanksgiving packages. We had such a great response, that quantities are selling out fast! If you…

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Turkey Brining

Brining is a method of soaking meat in a salt-based solution to tenderize the meat, infuse flavors, and help the meat retain moisture while cooking. The additional moisture in the meat also reduces the cooking time since water transfers energy faster than air. There are no standard “best” brines. It is all a matter of…

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Turkey Aromatics

When roasting the bird, some chefs like add aromatics to the cavity of the turkey to add flavor to the meat.  I’ve never done this . For me, it is traditional to stuff the cavity with stuffing; my family would give me grief if I didn’t do it. I recommend not stuffing the cavity to allow for quicker, more even cooking.…

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