Delicious Food Guides and Recipes for Every Occasion
Indulge in a world of tantalizing food guides and recipes that will elevate your culinary experience to new heights. In other words, whether you’re gearing up for Thanksgiving, hosting a holiday party, or seeking creative ways to use leftover ham, our extensive collection is your ultimate culinary companion.
Your Ultimate Thanksgiving Turkey Guide: A Roadmap to Turkey Perfection
Firstly, prepare for Thanksgiving like a pro with our comprehensive guide to cooking the ultimate turkey. Download our complimentary Thanksgiving Turkey Cookbook and Guide to ensure a stress-free and mouthwatering holiday feast. From selecting the ideal bird to expert cooking tips, we’ve curated everything you need to make your Thanksgiving turkey an unforgettable triumph.
Five Flavorful Ways to Elevate Your Turkey
Take your turkey game to the next level with these five tried-and-true flavor-enhancing techniques. To do so, unlock the secrets to achieving a succulent and exquisitely seasoned turkey that will awe your guests. From infusing aromatic herbs and spices to basting with delectable liquids, these methods will elevate your turkey to new heights of gastronomic delight.
Thanksgiving Turkey – When is it Done? A Foolproof Guide to Turkey Doneness
The moment of truth has arrived: Is your Thanksgiving turkey perfectly cooked? Bid farewell to uncertainty with our concise guide to determining turkey doneness. Learn the telltale signs that signify your turkey is flawlessly cooked and poised to steal the show on your Thanksgiving table.
Ham Appetizers for Holiday Entertaining: Irresistible Delights to Delight Your Guests
Elevate your holiday gatherings with an array of tantalizing ham appetizer ideas that will tantalize your guests’ taste buds. From delectable puff pastry bites to savory cheese squares, these finger foods are a breeze to prepare and guaranteed crowd-pleasers. Impress your guests with these effortless and mouthwatering ham appetizers.
Cured or Uncured Ham: Decoding the Difference
Demystify the distinctions between cured and uncured ham. Gain insights into the diverse varieties of ham and unravel the unique benefits and flavor profiles of each. Certainly, discover the rising popularity of uncured ham and explore its healthier alternatives. Empower yourself with the knowledge to make an informed choice when selecting the perfect ham for your holiday feast.
Indulge in our extensive collection of food guides and recipes that will inspire and empower you to create culinary masterpieces for every occasion. Most importantly, elevate your cooking skills and leave a lasting impression on your loved ones with these delectable dishes that will awaken their taste buds to a world of pure delight.
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Your Ultimate Thanksgiving Turkey Guide
Download Your Free Thanksgiving Turkey Cookbook and Guide!
Are you getting ready for Thanksgiving?
For many, the shopping, menu planning and decorating is enjoyable and nostalgic. For others, knowing how to choose, prepare and cook the centerpiece of the Thanksgiving meal is daunting. And, sometimes you are pretty sure you know what you are doing, you just need a little help!
We believe preparing your Thanksgiving turkey should be fun — and at gThankYou, we are here for you and your team!
(more…)Five Ways to Add Flavor
Turkey by itself — especially the breast meat — doesn’t have a ton of flavor and can run a little dry. For the best-tasting, juiciest turkey, most birds need a little help.
Here are the most popular ways to add richness, spice and excitement to your Thanksgiving turkey.Photo via Indulgy.com
Thanksgiving Turkey – When is it Done?
The appointed hour has arrived: it’s time for you and dozens of your relatives and friends to gather around the dining room table, stretched out to its full capacity for the most celebrated meal of the year –Thanksgiving. But, like a weary child from the backseat during a cross-country trip, one question nags at you: Are we there yet? Am I sure the turkey’s done?
For cooks who are afraid of disappointing all their aunts, uncles and cousins on a national holiday, here is a quick list of tell-tale signs that your Thanksgiving turkey is ready for its grand entrance.
Ham Appetizers for Holiday Entertaining
A holiday ham doesn’t have only one part to play in your end-of-the-year celebrations. Check out these great ham appetizer ideas for passing around at family gatherings — all finger food and easy to execute.
Ham Appetizers You Won’t Be Able to Pass Up
Ham and Cheese in Puff Pastry
From Ina Garten, The Food Network.
This is one of my all-time favorite holiday appetizers. It starts with premade puff pastry and comes out of the oven bubbling and delicious. (I especially like it because it doesn’t involve filling little individual quiche cups or wrapping dozens of shrimp in bacon. Who has time?)
You can vary the cheese — cheddar is great for a more kid-friendly version, as is part-skim mozzarella — and any hard cheese could substitute for Gruyere. Yum!Cured or Uncured Ham?
Much of what we know of ham is the cured city or country variety that you simply heat and serve. But lately, I’ve been seeing more ham labeled “uncured” on grocer’s shelves. What’s going on?
Uncured ham is also called fresh ham. It’s the same cut as cured, but not embellished with any of the brine and smoke or other flavorings the more common city hams and gourmet country hams. It even has a light pink or grey color, as you would expect in uncooked meat. It requires a little extra preparation and cooking time than its cured counterparts. Here’s a good explanation of ham types from the City Cook.You could infer that uncured hams are a healthier alternative. Many are labelled organic or natural. And with uncured hams you won’t get any of the nitrites or nitrates used in many cured hams – a controversial addition for some. Fresh hams are described as far less salty, too, even if you brine the pork yourself. (more…)
How to Cook, Glaze and Carve a Holiday Ham
Few centerpieces are more anticipated than a perfectly pink holiday ham, glazed with a spiky coarse mustard and sweet fruit preserves, and sliced into lovely petals.
But if you’re cooking a ham for the first time, getting from the package in the grocery store to that beautiful Christmas Day dinner-table picture can seem like a daunting journey. So, for the newbie, this is our ham primer.Choosing and Cooking Your Ham
Start with a cured or smoked (precooked) ham. (You can definitely make a fresh one, but today let’s leave that to the more experienced cooks.) (more…)
How to Flavor a Christmas Ham
Preparing a Christmas ham, especially if it’s been conveniently pre-smoked or cured for you, is about the easiest thing you can do for a centerpiece. But that doesn’t mean you can’t add a little something to it—namely, a sweet, decadent glaze to make your ham that much more delicious.
Here are four tips from food bloggers we love on how to make your Christmas ham even more dazzling this holiday.4 Ways to Glaze a Holiday Ham
1. Blackberry- and mustard-glazed ham, from The Cottage Home
With just four ingredients (blackberry preserves, whole-grain mustard, apple cider, and a precooked ham), this holiday entrée couldn’t be simpler. Blogger Lindsay reports that it’s “a great crowd-pleasing ham … even my husband, who would much prefer some type of red meat, absolutely loved it.”
(more…)Credit Curtis Stone
The #1 Best Tasting Way to Prepare Ham
A nicely cooked ham is beautiful to behold. But how do you prepare the absolute, #1 Best Tasting Ham?
Borrowing advice from the ham-savvy Serious Eats Food Lab, it’s easy:
1) Buy the right ham, and
2) Don’t screw it up.
Fair enough.
But, seriously, ham needn’t be a complex dish. With these simple tips, you’re guaranteed to have success. (more…)3 Holiday Ham Glazes to Delight Your Taste Buds
Helping your holiday ham taste its best!
Sometimes foods with distinct flavors need counterpoints to bring out the best taste combinations. Whether it’s strong coffee in barbecue sauce, a pinch of hot pepper in Mexican cocoa, or a splash of balsamic vinegar on a bowl of freshly sliced strawberries, these culinary marriages will delight your taste buds!
Such is the case with ham. . . salty, smoky, and succulent it pairs wonderfully with sour fruit (pineapple, orange, cranberries, currants, rhubarb), sweet elements (brown sugar, maple syrup, honey, even cola!) and spices (cloves, mustard, (more…)Find Your Perfect Thanksgiving Turkey
By mid-October, the supermarket checkout aisle is full of magazine covers, each boasting a glorious, burnished brown Thanksgiving turkey — so juicy and tempting, you can almost smell the savory aroma while you dig out your debit card.
And indeed, it’s not too soon to start thinking about stuffing (should it have bacon this year? Probably!), your other side dishes — and of course, the holiday centerpiece: a beautifully roasted turkey.
Before you choose a bird, check out these five tips to keep in mind as you plan your holiday meal, whether you’re serving 25 assorted aunts, uncles, and cousins or a simple Thanksgiving turkey feast for two. (more…)One Ham Bone, Three Great Soup Recipes
Just like I’ll fight (nicely, of course) the other cooks at the Thanksgiving table for possession of that flavorful turkey carcass — such a great way to make stock — I do the same at Easter for the leftover ham bone.
These rainy April days are the perfect time to take that ham bone out of the freezer and put it to good use for some great tasting and heart warming comfort food.
Bean soups especially benefit from a long simmer with a leftover ham bone, whether or not there’s much meat left on it. If there is, that’s just a bonus; slice it off at the end and add it to the soup.
Allow at least two hours for each of these home cooked soups, and know that they’re just as good (more…)Comfort Winter Soups | Recipes for Recovering
Something has been going around my office, church and social circles, and it’s not a funny Facebook meme. Everyone seems to be coming down with a strange cold-flu hybrid, an exhausting, hacking, miserable illness that takes a good week to work its way out.
When you’re sick, the last thing you might feel like doing is cooking soups. But if you happen to be the healthy one — or if, like me, you’ve already recovered from the plague and are ready to help your sniffling family or even your coworkers — one of these soups should do the trick.
1. Chicken Noodle Soup
This is the soup I made two weeks ago when I was guzzling NyQuil at night and curling up with tea during the day. Alton Brown uses chicken stock (homemade if you’ve got it), a few savory (more…)What to Serve at Your Holiday Party?
There are so many holiday party options. What about a perfectly browned turkey or a glazed holiday ham, sliced into layers like the petals of a flower. Either makes for a crowd-pleasing main course, ample enough to feed a crowd, with leftovers to spare.
But when you’re hosting a holiday gathering (that isn’t Thanksgiving — turkey has the clear edge there), which do you choose for your centerpiece? What makes better appetizers for a cocktail party?
If your gathering is less than two weeks after Thanksgiving, everyone might be happier with ham. A spiral-sliced, smoked bone-in or boneless ham comes already cooked, so all you have to do is warm it up, glaze it and serve.
Hosting a cocktail party? For appetizers, ham is a little more decadent than turkey.
For example, I served ham and cheese puff pastry squares (recipe by Ina Garten on the Food Network) for my New Year’s Eve party in 2010. They were finger food, easy to make and fantastic with sparkling wine.
If you have picky eaters or anyone who keeps (more…)Thanksgiving Leftovers: Five Fresh Ideas
The turkey has been cooked and carved. The mashed potatoes are packed away, the pie decimated, the football games concluded. The relatives have either decamped for home or are napping, sedated by carbohydrates.
Now comes the best part: Thanksgiving Leftovers!
Leftover roast turkey is a marvelous thing. This year, go beyond even the perfect turkey sandwich with these five simple recipes.
1. Jambalaya from Food52Jambalaya is the ultimate one-pot rice meal, accommodating everything from spicy sausage to shrimp, crab meat and scallops. This version on Food52 incorporates (more…)
Grilling Tips – From Good to Great!
Few things taste more like summer than food cooked outdoors on the grill. It just seems to call for friends, laughter and celebrating being together.
Here are some favorite grilling tips from our expert friends:- Use the Right Equipment…
- A pair of tongs for arranging food on the grill and flipping it when needed. To avoid losing juices during turning, always flip your meat or vegetables using tongs or a spatula, rather than a fork.
- Good quality paintbrushes from (more…)
Turkey – Where Does the Thermometer Go?
It’s that age-old question, where do you put the meat thermometer in a turkey?
You may have spent days looking at recipes, brining your Thanksgiving turkey, and finding just the right ingredients for some amazing stuffing, but if you serve raw turkey at your next Thanksgiving dinner, all that effort will be wasted. (Not to mention a lot of good food!) Fortunately, there’s a very simple way to make sure your turkey is cooked properly – just look in the housewares section of your grocery store for a meat thermometer. Follow the instructions below for proper use and rest assured — your bird will be perfect! Oven-safe or instant-read, a meat thermometer is a good investment in great taste!
Whole Turkey
The tip of the meat thermometer should be placed in the thigh, just above the lower part of the thighbone (but not touching the bone!), pointing toward the body. For the stuffing temperature, the tip of the thermometer (more…)Where do you insert a meat thermometer in ham?
For food safety, a good meat thermometer is an essential kitchen tool. It’s just as important to know how to use it properly. This is the topic of much confusion and consternation. Fret not! We’ll clear it up with a common sense tips on where to insert the meat thermometer in your Holiday Ham.
Tip # 1: Always use a meat thermometer when baking ham. This applies regardless whether you’re baking a partially cooked or fully cooked ham. It will tell precisely when your ham is done avoiding over-cooked, dry hams or undercooked meat – which can cause food-borne illness.
You can’t guess at ham doneness by eyeballing or using general per-pound oven cooking times. Ovens vary too greatly, as to peoples’ eyeball (more…)101 Uses for Leftover Ham
We make egg salad once a year. Bet you guessed that it’s the week following the annual visit from that famous bunny, who leaves colorful, hard-cooked eggs all around our house — in the yard if the snow isn’t too deep.
Likewise, I have favorite recipes I pull out annually following the big Holiday Ham Dinner. I make ‘em once a year and they’ve become almost as much a tradition as what we do on Easter itself.
In my estimation, there are probably about 101 ways to use up a bone-in ham. Boneless, too – although I favor a ham bone to make a rich soup stock.Favorite Leftover Ham Recipes
While I love a thick sliced ham sandwich any day – here are (more…)