Ascend makes a really tasty Thanksgiving Turkey flavored jerky.
This bag contained three servings at 80 calories a pop.
I ate the whole thing during lunch with a few other low calories snacks and veggies, and was completely satisfied for the whole day, through to dinner.
Really tender, and great “autumnal” flavor that incorporates all the herbs and spices you associate with a Thanksgiving feast. Highly recommended.
NOTE: THIS PLACE IS CLOSED
A food friend of ours organized a massive 18-person, multi-course Chinese Thanksgiving meal on the weekend before turkey day as a way to celebrate our love of food.
We started with a house soup that contained dry winter melon and shredded pork.
These clams were served in a bean sauce that really popped. Super flavorful and clams were cooked perfectly.
These fried pork chops were incredibly tender and juicy. Definitely one of my favorite courses.
I’m not usually into full veggie dishes, but this mushroom platter was really incredible and satisfying. Those things at the bottom are little tofu skin crepes that are filled with a variety of mushrooms.
This whole fish (flounder, I believe) was another top dish of the day.
The meat was succulent and tender, and the veggies were a nice vehicle to deliver the sauce that they sponged up.
Fried and chopped lobster with some sort of Cheetos-like cheese coating. Incredibly unique for a Chinese joint. These were gobbled up almost instantly.
Beef! Yes! This was likely either flank or strip, but it came out on a sizzling skillet and was served in a really delicious brown sauce. Very tender.
Also a winning dish, this chicken was basically deconstructed and then re-assembled with the meat having been replaced by mixed-protein sticky rice. That rice was then coated and blanketed with extremely crisp chicken skin. So awesome, and so labor intensive.
Another hit dish was this dungeoness crab on a bef of flat, wide noodles (think chow fun style).
This was a very photogenic dish, and the crab meat was delicious.
The noodles could have used a bit more of a flavorful sauce, but otherwise this was really good.
On the side we enjoyed some stir fried and garlicky pea shoots.
And for dessert was a warm bowl of sweet bean porridge, of which I did not get a good shot.
All in, this meal only cost $45pp with tax and tip included. I definitely recommend giving this place a try. Especially for the chicken/sticky rice, fried pork chops and whole fish.
SING KEE
42 Bowery
New York, NY 10013
This Thanksgiving, I went a slightly different route with my leftovers. I grabbed a shitload of turkey and shredded it up, pulling it apart into bite-sized pieces. I heated that shit up.
I took a packet of dry ramen noodles from the cabinet and crushed it up into small pieces.
I used them as a topping, along with about half of the seasoning packet, and drizzled some oils into the mix as well (sesame, chive, chili, szechuan pepper).
I also heated up some of the remaining gravy and poured that over the top, and then finished with toasted sesame seeds, fresh cilantro, and some sri racha sauce.
Add some crushed peanuts and maybe some bean sprouts and you have a really delicious dish.
My industrious, ambitious and extremely brave friend and co-creator of Hungry Dads endeavored to prepare a Turducken for his Thanksgiving feast this year. Lots of people these days, who are interested in indulging in such a menage-a-fowl, are buying them pre-prepared because it is an arduous task to do it oneself. When my buddy told me he made a Turducken on his own, I was extremely impressed. Below is a write-up that he provided for me to share with you, as well as a time-lapse video of his work. Well played!
Hugh Gallon
When it comes to cooking, I’ve embraced the words of my high school Driver’s Ed teacher, Mr. Woods, who preached that people who claim they can’t cook are likely lazy and/or stupid. Any idiot can follow directions. Recipes are just directions. Taking Mr. Woods’ philosophy into adulthood, I’ve boldly undertaken many culinary ventures with unwarranted confidence – yielding more than a few disasters. And when I naively committed to preparing a Turducken for Thanksgiving, I didn’t expect it to be the greatest undertaking of my adult life.
For the uninitiated, a Turducken is a turkey, stuffed with a duck, stuffed with a chicken. Arrogant and uninformed, I assumed I would just need to shove a small bird into the cavity of a larger bird, repeat, cook, and eat. It turns out the Turducken is a true Frankenstein’s monster of poultry. After 3-5 hours of web research, I began to regret my fowl hubris, but ultimately ended up with a solid strategy by combining a few different recipes. Unexpected challenges included:
De-boning all three birds. I guess I could have gotten my birds from a butcher already de-boned, but I am not lazy or stupid, Mr. Woods. The internet provided some good instructions with photos, which I promptly ignored and instead just hacked away at the poor things like I was Dexter blindfolded.
Flavor vs. poison. When you have this much raw meat, and it comes from three separate animals, there is a lot of opportunity for nasty little bacterial microbes to fester. You gotta cook those buggers out, but not at the expense of your juicy meat. If you layer up that much raw meat and put it in the oven, the exterior turkey will dry out before the inner “ducken” is cooked. The website Serious Eats (The Food Lab) had a great solution: poach the chicken and duck portions before putting it together.
They also recommended browning the duck skin over the stove to add some nice fried fatty flavor.
Structural integrity of stuffing. Bread stuffing is controversial in a normal turkey scenario (under-cooking risks and such) – but in a Turducken, stuffing is important to fill in the gaps like spackle. But web research revealed that traditional stuffing might buckle under the weight of so much bird flesh, resulting in a lop-sided or bulged Turducken. One of the goals of the Turducken is to make it look like a regular turkey on the outside, but with pure un-boned meatiness on the inside. Once again it was the Serious Eats Food Lab with a solution: stuff with sausage instead of bread stuffing. More meat = better anyway.
Duck is mushier than snot. Trying to layer and form everything was a real pain. It was the only point in the process I considered bailing out. But by then I was up to my elbows in soft, fleshy bird tissue – so I crammed raw meat to and fro until everything fit and the outside looked like any other unassuming turkey.
The process is better shown than described, hence my two minute Turducken documentary:
The verdict? Well, I am confident that I created a successful Turducken. It probably wasn’t perfect, but it looked like a real turkey on the outside. Cutting into it revealed a lovely mosaic swirl of dark/light meat on the inside. And wasn’t dry. So I’m calling it a success.
That said, in a final anti-climactic taste review, I must say that the flavor was just so-so. I didn’t think the three birds’ flavors melded particularly well. The chicken and duck skin on the inside didn’t stay very crispy and was a little rubbery. I’d have to say each bird would have probably tasted better on its own.
Nonetheless, a Turducken is about the journey more than the destination. I took pleasure in telling friends and family about the project and enjoyed merely having the opportunity to say “Turducken” on a regular basis. Regardless of flavor, the legend and legacy of my noble Turducken will soar like an eagle for many family Thanksgivings to come.
A number of variations on this gem can be concocted depending on what’s left in your fridge after the annual gorge-fest known as Thanksgiving. I had an abundance of leftover stuffing and ham, so that’s the route I went this time. Check it out, assholes.
STEP 1: Sculpt your stuffing into burger sized patties. My patties were pretty sweet since my stuffing also had sausage meat already incorporated into it (Momma’s recipe is amazing).
STEP 2: Fry off some ham. Get it nice and brown/crisp on the edges.
STEP 3: You should have some hammy oil in the pan now. LEAVE IT! Put your patties in and let them sizzle up like a regular burger.
STEP 4: Flip once, when they are browned.
STEP 5: Add first layer of cheese. If possible, cover the pan so the cheese begins to melt from the steam that builds up.
STEP 6: Pop some ham on that bitch.
STEP 7: Add second layer of cheese (and cover if possible).
STEP 8: Take the burgers off the pan with a spatula and fry up some eggs for the top.
STEP 9: Top off your burgers with an egg or two.
STEP 10: EAT.
I had no buns in the apartment, but since the burger is primarily made from bread, there’s really no need for a bun anyway. Just fork and knife it.
NOTE: THIS JOINT IS NOW CLOSED
My wife and I primarily came here because I was frantic to try the Thanksgiving ramen that was recently added to the seasonal menu. We ended up trying the kimchi ramen too, as well as a few other items, because, well, we think Dale Talde is pretty awesome from the handful of times we’ve met him and from his kickass appearances on the Top Chef shows.
I started with a massive 33oz Asahi beer. Manly.
Then we had some wings. These were sweet and spicy. They had a nice batter but that got soggy due to too much sauce without enough crisp underneath. The flavor was excellent with the cilantro and peanuts on top, and the buttermilk ranch dipping sauce, but I was hoping for a bit more crispiness.
The Thanksgiving ramen was a turkey stock filled with wavy egg noodles, sliced turkey, sliced stuffing, cranberries, mushrooms, and spinach dumplings. It was then that was topped with gravy.
The flavor was unique and definitely Thanksgiving-ish. The tangy cranberries gave it a burst of brightness that you typically get from pickled items in a traditional ramen dish, and the dumplings were a nice bonus that was not expected. I just wished there was dark meat along with the sliced white meat.
The kimchi ramen was spicy and bold. The pork was tasty, and the kimchi was pickled spicy style. A nice bowl of noodles (also wavy egg noodles). However this bold flavor may be a bit overwhelming to have an entire bowl for yourself.
Last was the Filipino pork dish. Essentially this was thin sliced pork meat, non-expertly grilled and served in a clay pot that wasn’t hot enough to get the rice crispy, yet just warm enough to sap the liquids out of the wet pork to make a puddle of meat juice on the bottom. That made for wet, soupy rice. The “6 minute egg” (aka poached egg) was nice but it only made for an even more soupy bowl of rice. We decided this dish would be better if we took it home and fried it up in a hot cast iron pan to try to get some texture into the rice. Not a successful dish. Sounded so good from the menu description though.
TALDE
369 7th Ave.
Brooklyn, NY 11215
