Tag Archives: green onions

Casseroles, Chicken / Poultry, Meat

Turkey Roll with Cranberry, Walnut, Sausage Stuffing

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If you’ve been reading my posts recently, you knew this was coming. I did debone a 15 lb turkey and successfully rolled and roasted it. Very pleasantly surprised, especially since my oven has ruined several recent holidays by refusing to cook a whole turkey all the way through. It was a great meal, but much of it will have to go in the freezer, because the two of us just can’t eat like we used to.

There were a few things different, though, about deboning a turkey compared to a chicken:

  • It was bigger than a chicken, obviously, so that might have been the easier part, since all the parts were bigger.
  • The wing and leg bones seemed harder to remove for reasons I can’t quite explain. Anyway, I got them out and only sliced one thumb, requiring a slight break in the activity while I cleaned up. Remember to keep alcohol and bandages around when working with sharp knives.
  • Then there were the bone-like leg tendons. I was not strong enough to pull them out with needle-nose pliers as all the video chefs do. The best I could do was hold one end with the pliers and scrape them out with the knife edge.
  • The dark meat end was a hot mess, but I just kept sticking in the ends and bits I could and didn’t worry about the ones that refused to go. I’ll figure that out next year.
  • It sliced much better than the chickens; not sure why.

The stuffing was delightful. I used about a cup of my oven-dried cranberries in the stuffing, with some chopped walnuts and a country-style sage sausage. I think I will always use fruit and nuts in future stuffings, and sausage when I want a savory sweetness. For a change, and to save me more work, I used packaged stuffing cubes for the base.

There really isn’t a recipe for the turkey that’s different from the videos I’ve shown in this previous post, but here are the roasting details for my 15 lb turkey:

  1. Preheat oven to 450°; lightly oil a large roasting pan (I wish I had a heavy stainless steel roaster, Santa).
  2. Place stuffed, rolled, and trussed turkey in pan. Rub the roll with oil and season with lots of salt and pepper.
  3. Roast at this high heat for about 15 minutes to get browning started.
  4. Without opening oven door, reduce heat to 325° and roast until internal temperature reaches 165°, about 1 1/2 hours.

You can save time by deboning the turkey earlier in the day and keeping it in the fridge until ready to stuff. Plus, it gives you time to make a stock from the bones. We ate late in the day.

Cranberry, walnut, sausage stuffing
Roasted with crispy skin
Resting
It sliced nicely
Makes a nice presentation

Cranberry, Walnut, Sausage Stuffing

  • Servings: a lot
  • Difficulty: easy
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1 14 oz package seasoned stuffing cubes (mine were sage and onion)

2 medium onions, chopped

1 celery heart, about 1 1/2 cups thinly sliced

1 1/2 sticks butter

1 cup dried, unsweetened cranberries

1 cup walnuts, roughly chopped

1 lb sage sausage (mine was Jimmy Dean®), lightly browned

about 1 1/2 cups turkey or chicken stock

  1. In a large bowl, combine stuffing cubes, cranberries, walnuts, and cooked sausage.
  2. In a large skillet, melt butter over medium heat. Add onions and celery, cooking until translucent.
  3. Pour butter and vegetables over stuffing and mix well.
  4. Add turkey stock, stirring until all the bread is moistened. If you are using fresh bread, you might not need this mush stock. You want moistened bread that is not pasty.

Not only was the stuffing great, but it made the pan drippings in the roaster very flavorful, so that the gravy was exceptional. You could taste a little tartness in the stuffing from the berries and savory sweetness from the sausage. The walnuts retained a little chewiness after cooking.

Most of the stuffing went into a buttered 13″ x 9″ casserole to bake for 30 mins covered and 20 mins uncovered.

Asian, Game, Rice

Crispy Orange-Ginger Coconut Pheasant

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I’m using coconut two ways in this dish, coconut flour to bread the pheasant chunks, and coconut milk to cook the rice. You could make the same dish with chicken or turkey or pork cut in strips, but as I have said before, I have a freezer full of pheasant and grouse to cook. This is the last week of grouse season, so I will be getting a chance to catch up before next season.

I’m going to bread the pheasant as I would do any breading—flour, egg wash, then the final breading, which is often bread crumbs or panko, but today will be a second coating of coconut flour. After breading, I’m frying them in peanut oil. Coconut flour makes a softer breading than regular wheat flour, but I’m calling it crispy, anyway. You could make the same recipe using all-purpose white flour.

This recipe turned out very well and will become a regular on the menu. I’m still searching for the perfect pheasant (or grouse) recipe, though, and am thinking a meatball is probably next in the works.

Pheasant breasts cut in chunks
Breading process
Breaded chunks
Fried until brown
With sauce

Crispy Orange-Ginger Coconut Pheasant with Coconut Rice

  • Servings: 4-6
  • Difficulty: easy
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Preheat oven to 375°

Baked Coconut Rice

1 cup brown Jasmine rice

1 1/2 cups chicken or vegetable broth

1 cup coconut milk, shaken before opening can (save the rest for the breading liquid)

1 teaspoon olive oil or butter

salt & pepper

  1. Place the rice in a 2 quart baking dish.
  2. Combine the broth, coconut milk, and oil or butter. Bring to a boil.
  3. Pour the liquid over the rice and cover the dish with foil. Bake for 1 hour.

Crispy Orange-Ginger Coconut Pheasant

6 boneless, skinless pheasant breasts, cut in large chunks (use fewer if using large chicken breasts)

3-4 cups coconut flour

2-3 eggs

1/2-1 cup coconut milk (from the same can used for the rice)

Peanut or vegetable oil to make a depth of at least one inch in a large frying pan with straight sides

Orange-Ginger Sauce

1 1/4 cups orange juice

1/4 cup soy sauce

1 tablespoon olive oil

3 tablespoons ginger, grated

3 large garlic cloves, grated

1 tablespoon rice vinegar

2 tablespoons brown sugar

1/2 teaspoon sesame oil

1 tablespoon cornstarch and 1/4 cup water for thickening

toasted sesame seeds and chopped green onions for garnish

Prepare the sauce and set aside, keeping warm:

  1. Heat olive oil in small saucepan and lightly sauté the garlic and ginger until fragrant, but not browned.
  2. Add the rest of the ingredients, except the thickener and sesame seeds. Bring to a boil and simmer for 5 minutes.
  3. Stir in cornstarch/water mixture and continue cooking until translucent and thickened.

Prepare pheasant:

  1. Heat oil in pan over high heat to a temperature of 350°
  2. Set up breading ingredients in 3 containers, one for the first dredging, one with the egg wash, and one for the final coating of flour.
  3. Dredge pheasant chunks in flour. For the first coating, I shake them in a sealed plastic bag.
  4. A few at a time, coat  floured chunks in egg wash made from whisked eggs and coconut milk.
  5. Remove pieces from the egg wash with a fork, placing them in a bowl of the rest of the coconut flour, tossing to coat. This coating makes little clumps of egg and flour that make an interesting texture on the meat, similar to a buttermilk breading.
  6. Continue until all pieces are breaded.
  7. Fry chunks in hot oil, placing them in your pan so that they do not touch. I got about 8-9 pieces in my pan at a time. Turn them when they are browned to brown the other side, about 5 minutes total. Remove to paper towel lined plate while you cook the rest.

Mix fried pheasant chunks with orange-ginger sauce and garnish with sesame seeds and chopped green onions. Serve with rice.

Asian, Starch, Vegetables

For the Love of Cooking » Baked Vegetable Egg Rolls

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Find the recipe for these vegetable egg rolls here: For the Love of Cooking » Baked Vegetable Egg Rolls. The only thing I did differently was to use Napa cabbage instead of savoy.

It looked too easy, but I really didn’t want to get into frying egg rolls, if for no other reason than the mess of frying. They were great alongside the Mongolian Pheasant of the previous post, crunchy and full of vegetables. Since the pheasant dish was sweet, I made a lighter dipping sauce (below), more like one for dumplings.

Now I’m thinking of other things to bake in those egg roll wrappers.

Carrots, water chestnuts, bean sprouts
Cooked filling
Sprayed with vegetable oil
Baked in my ugly pan
Baked Egg Rolls Served with Mongolian Pheasant

Dipping Sauce

  • Servings: 3-4
  • Difficulty: easy
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Recipes for dumpling dipping sauce vary—some use rice vinegar, some don’t; some use sesame oil, some don’t. But they all use soy sauce. I made my dipping sauce in the same proportions as I would if using with dumplings, a small bowl of it that was about a cup of liquid:

1/2 cup soy sauce

1/4 cup rice vinegar, unsweetened and unseasoned

2 teaspoons white sugar

1 teaspoon ginger, grated

1 clove garlic, grated

1 sliced green onion

Optional: a teaspoon of hot sauce and a little water (I did not add these)

Stir until the sugar is dissolved and set aside. If making ahead, add the onions just before serving.

Asian, Game

Mongolian Pheasant

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I’m using the ubiquitous copycat recipe for Mongolian Beef that presumes to replicate a recipe from the P. F. Chang restaurant (to which I have never been), but with pheasant breasts.

This is not a low sugar version, but I tried one of those a couple of weeks ago and it was bland and disappointing, so I’m making it today as it is meant to be made, with more sugar than I should be eating for dinner. There is a paleo version of Mongolian Beef that uses raw honey instead of brown sugar, but, take it from a diabetic, sugar is sugar. Read this article about “healthy” sugar and view the funny graphic that pokes fun at famous people who know nothing about sugar, but still give advice about it. If it’s too much sugar for you, make something else. If you are going to eat it, but shouldn’t, just skip dessert and be good tomorrow. I ate a normal-small portion with two vegetable egg rolls (next post).

Served with Mongolian Pheasant
Served with Mongolian Pheasant

Mongolian Pheasant

  • Servings: 2-3
  • Difficulty: easy
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Sauce:

2 teaspoons vegetable oil

1/2 teaspoon ginger, grated

1 tablespoon garlic, grated

1/2 cup soy sauce

1/2 cup water

3/4 cup brown sugar

  1. Heat the 2 teaspoons of oil over medium heat in small saucepan.
  2. Add ginger and garlic, stirring briefly until fragrant.
  3. Add soy sauce, water, and brown sugar, stirring until sugar dissolves and the mixture comes to a boil. Boil for a few minutes until thickened. Thickened must be a relative term here, because I boiled the sauce for more than five minutes and saw no evidence of thickening. In the end, it didn’t matter, but if you want more of a sticky sauce, I would leave out the 1/2 cup of water, gradually adding it to the boiling sauce until it reaches the desired thickness. Maybe 1/4 cup of water would work more quickly. Eventually, you could boil out the water, but it took much longer than recipes for this copycat dish suggest. Perhaps some people have no sense of time.
  4. Set saucepan aside.

Pheasant:

1 cup vegetable oil, for frying

1 lb pheasant breasts, sliced in 1/4″ strips

1/4 cup cornstarch

2 -3 green onions, sliced diagonally into one-inch lengths

  1. Coat pheasant strips with cornstarch and set aside while making sauce.
  2. In large frying pan, like a chicken fryer, or wok, heat the 1 cup of oil until hot over medium-high heat.
  3. Add strips of pheasant so that pieces do not touch. Working in batches, fry until lightly browned—this will happen quickly—then remove to platter until all the meat is browned.
  4. Pour off oil and return meat to pan. Stir in sauce and green onions and cook, stirring, for 2-3 minutes, until all the meat is coated.
  5. Serve with rice or noodles or neither if those extra carbs don’t suit you.

My husband loved it from the first bite, but then sugar and salt are tied for his top favorite food group. I think meat is a close second.