Bon Appétit's Brad & Chris Answer Thanksgiving Questions From Twitter

Hey, guys, I'm Brad Leone from Bon Appetit.

I'm Chris Morocco from Bon Appetit.

And we're going to be answering some questions

off the old Twitter and, yeah, let's have some fun.

Let's get going.

[Both] This is-- Thanksgiving Support.

First question.

First question.

This is from @rossf78.

I'm cooking turkey for the first time in years.

Should I dry brine or wet brine?

I have a bottle of Sweetwater Spice Turkey Brine

in the cupboard just in case.

You take that Sweetwater Spice

and throw it right over your shoulder.

Over the shoulder.

You do yourself a real nice dry brine.

Brining a turkey, specifically dry brining,

does a couple different things.

So it's introducing salt into the turkey,

and it's also ultimately going to help you dry out the skin.

So you're going to get deeper browning,

you're going to get more flavor,

and you're going to get crispier skin.

You want it to be delicious, not just on the outside.

Some of the turkeys I've had at Thanksgiving

where you slice it and it's salty and tasty on the outside,

but real dry. Nothing inside.

No seasoning on the inside.

And when you brine for at least a day,

I mean, you can do it for 12 hours if you need to,

you're going to penetrate all the way through.

It just really is kind of a game changer.

Yup. Next question.

Freshbluntz, @freshbluntz, best potato for mashed potatoes?

I kind of can't stand a starchy potato as a mashed potato.

Anything in the Yukon family is what I go to.

Golden Yukony family for sure.

All right, coming in from @HopeDealer101.

How do you prepare Brussels sprouts?

My favorite way to do Brussels sprouts is if,

you know, like I love them deep fried,

but that's usually impractical for most.

The next best thing, high temperature roast,

just lightly coated with oil.

Halved. Halved.

Gotta nip. Nip.

So I like to nip, you know, right.

You nip.

Fall off the little shaggies.

I dip.

And then I like to half right there on the bone there.

So what, we'll put them in a bowl,

we'll toss them a little olive oil, some salt.

Little tossy-toss.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, there we go.

So we wanna place these facedown so that we get...

You know, if you put it on like that,

you're only going to get a little bit of surface area

that's going to pick up a little bit of browning

on that rounded end.

Now we got this nice, little, flat face.

You put that down there, the whole thing picks up color.

And then in the oven they go.

What temp you got there? 450.

450, high heat, find out--

I may say we'll check on them in 20 minutes.

Give them a little toss if we need to.

I'd imagine they're going to take 30.

Here's what I'm feeling for the Brussels sprouts.

Yeah, talk to me. Can we talk?

Talk to me.

I want little saucepan, melt some butter,

maple, hot sauce, salt.

Why the saucepan?

Just so that the butter can melt,

and then we can do another toss-toss

of the Brussels sprouts, like, we can, you know--

What if, 'cause these are going to come out rippin' hot,

we got our butter, you got the other things you mentioned,

right back in the big bowl. In the big bowl, yeah, yeah.

Melt it right in there, no saucepan.

No saucepan. Okay, okay.

No saucepan.

All right, I'll get the bowl.

[claps] That's what we're looking for!

As you get them, dump them right in here.

All right.

Nice, nice, all right, great job.

Boom, in goes the butter.

All right, and we're going to put in a little pinch

of black pepper too.

Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Microplane the garlic.

And then, what you thinking, a little maple?

Yeah, and hot sauce.

Almost like you were doing like chicken wings.

That's good.

Whoa, hello, nice!

Ooh, I like that, Chris!

Have you done that, ooh, it smells good though!

Doesn't it?

I think the garlic was inspired.

Just like the little punch.

[Both] Mmm!

Yeah, Brussels sprouts, nailed it!

Boom.

[shouts excitedly] Next question.

Katrina Bonin, @katlbff5.

Do you use butter or shortening in your pie crust?

Butter.

Personally, I prefer shortening.

I like the texture better and I think it holds up better

when you're cutting the pie.

The flavor can't be better.

No, the flavor is not better.

And that's what I wanted to say.

I would highly encourage you

to kind of try all butter crusts again.

I just think the flavor development you get,

even if the crust can be a little bit harder to work with

is worth it. But that,

especially in your cultured butter, I mean,

Ooh you can't beat that.

No, you can't.

I love answering questions.

[laughs] This is from Emily Becker.

Do you put celery in your stuffing?

[Brad] Yeah!

Hard yes.

Hard yes! Hard yes.

There's something about celery

and its ability to cut through.

It just has so much flavor.

It really cuts through yeah

and brings a really pleasant vegetal note,

yup

which you kind of need to counterbalance all the fat,

all the starch in the form of and it's just...

whether cornbread or regular bread.

Nick, @nicholas_scot93.

Why are people so convinced I'm going to start

a huge fire deep frying a turkey?

As if I'm accident prone...

I don't know maybe you are.

Maybe your friends know you

and they're just looking out for you

because it can be very dangerous.

Maybe they know something we don't.

The most important thing is...

Because, yeah, you're dealing with a decent amount of volume

of very hot oil.

Get on the internet or go down to your store or something,

and get a deep frying turkey kit.

Get something high end

You want a like a high cylinder, not real wide

Don't go using your twine that's been in the garage

for 30 years to lower it into yeah, yeah, yeah, no

350 degree oil, chain

so it breaks and splatters all over the place, on your face.

You wanna get the nice stuff with the little thing,

the nice, if you going to do it, do it right.

Great, next question Nick.

This is from Lana Petrie,

How many sticks of butter do people go through

on Thanksgiving while cooking?

I'm on stick 10 and not slowing down.

Yeah you wanna stock up. Get yourself a pallet,

all right... yeah

The last thing you wanna do is run outta butter.

I like to use dried chickpeas- kabuli Chana

as pie weights when I am blind baking pie crust.

What do you use?

I acquired a bin full of, uh, quarter inch

stainless steel ball bearings, machine grade...

They weight about twenty pounds.

They're fantastic Yeah

Uh, they hold heat really nicely...

Hm-hm

And because they have, you know,

it's steel, it's pretty heavy...

A little expensive. They're an investment.

A little expensive, but you know,

but they last forever... If you're a baker.

Yeah, uh this is from Vanessa North...

Yeah, heart, heart, heart it says.

I don't have brandy for my cranberry sauce and am

honestly thinking of just using tequila instead

because I doubt anybody will actually notice.

Am I the literal worst?

No, you're fine.

Why not just like drink it instead,

you know? Take a shot and

get back to work. Yeah.

Fivver This is Fiver I would've

said, but maybe Fivver.

All right, Thanksgiving Question: how do you keep your

turkey moist while roasting?

It has everything to do with, like, what not to do, right.

Right, right, right. Do not

overcook your turkey,

do brine your turkey.

I feel like there's this whole thing, like oh, if I baste

it, if I spoon liquid over it, then like that's somehow

getting liquid I'm not a baster

Inside the turkey. Yeah, I don't baste.

And if you're thinking that it's going to...

Put any type of moisture back into the turkey, I mean,

Not going to happen. I feel very comfortable

saying that its not doing that

Shut it down. at all.

You need to rest you turkey, a whole decent size

There we go. at least an hour.

Its going to be ripping hot for an hour.

Honestly, yeah. And two hot to carve.

Two hours even. Let it hang out.

Let it hang out.

Next question.

Can someone please explain to me how you spatchcock

a turkey.

Yeah, alright, I guess so. Yeah.

We're basically just, what, cutting the backbone out.

Same way you spatchcock a chicken, you're going to

cut the backbone out and you're going to open up and flatten

Just got to crush it out. The bird.

I got one, caught one!

So board, big board. Big surface area.

On a wet towel or something so that it doesn't

slide around. And then boom.

We're flying now. We flipped it right over.

You can almost see there's like lines, yeah?

Yep.

We're just going to follow those.

All right I'm going to give it a go.

Sorry I just sort of assumed you were going to do this.

I don't mind. But I'm here for support.

Whoa, that goes through actually relatively easy.

Nice.

Second side, a little trickier.

Not too bad. Little trickier,

and be careful with you hands because,

I've been cut a bunch of... you do not want to cut yourself

on a serrated knife Turkey stays put,

you know, the knife is always cutting down towards

the board, not like laterally,

Scalpel. not towards Chris.

Boom, there you go. Boom.

Turkey back bone.

Sometimes a little scoring just helps it kind of break,

helps that keel bone to crack open.

Ah, a little relief strip. Not so much there,

like yeah, like right there.

Just to kind of flatten it up, open it up,

because you have to pop the breast bone to get it to be

able to flatten properly.

Cute! Not bad.

Flip, flip it over.

So now the whole thing, you've taken like a very three

dimensional package and turned it into a much more

two dimensional, Spatchcock city.

two dimensional package How easy was that?

No big deal.

Next question.

Who has the energy to go Black Friday shopping?

You should be in bed barely alive nursing your hangover

with a gallon of tryptophan Tryptophan

still coursing through your veins like everyone else

the day after Thanksgiving.

I don't know if I buy the whole turkey tryptophan,

it makes you tired.

Isn't it like This is like so

all kinds of stuff? Overblown, its in all kinds

of stuff.

Its in, you know, certain dairy products like cheeses,

its in other meats. Pork.

Pork, absolutely.

Like even more than turkey.

In fairness yeah, so like tryptophan,

you feel the effects more when you're consuming things

with tryptophan that are high, like in carbs.

Dude, the whole tryptophan thing I think, is like completely

overblown. Yeah.

And we should just like, let it go.

BMarshall898, I wonder if she was born in ninety-eight?

That's when I graduated from high school.

Well Chris...

That's just horrifying.

Anyone every smoke a turkey?

So many recipes give such an array of cooking times.

Yes, and yes.

Its a hundred percent dependent on temperature.

Yeah. I mean the smoke,

that's effecting aroma, but that's not actually

what's cooking your meat.

What's cooking your meat is the temperature inside

the smoking environment.

Its a smokey oven. The smoke adds flavor

Right, its a smokey oven.

So, you know, if you're doing at, you know,

two hundred and fifty degrees, its going to take

a lot longer than if you're doing it at three hundred and

fifty degrees. Exactly.

And I mean smoked turkeys are fantastic.

So, I mean, if you have the ability to do it,

I would certainly try it.

Definitely dry brine before. Dry brine and smoke,

game change.

Fantastic.

Next day, cold cuts, forget about it, open up a deli.

Alright, so this is from Sarah,

I need to make a non-pumpkin dessert for Thanksgiving

next week, and I'd prefer not to make a pie crust.

I'm agonizing here.

Any suggestions?

Make a chocolate cake, that's what honestly, personally,

nine days out of ten you give me a good chocolate cake,

like the one, you know,

we made? Oh yeah.

Yeah the easiest ever chocolate birthday cake.

I'm sorry like, that is the perfect dessert,

there is no better ring cake, okay?

How are vegan mashed potatoes?

Not good.

Like is it possible to recreate the creamy deliciousness

without butter and evaporated milk?

Get a little creative and, you know, make...

They sell all kinds of alternative, like dairy products.

Yeah like... Vegan sour cream,

or I don't know, try folding that in with a little salt and

some olive oil or something.

Why not just be potatoes? What's wrong with a

crispy potato, you know what I mean?

Like you can do, like, the crispy, the gold,

burnished potato nuggets, like based on English style

roast potatoes. Well don't they make

Delicious, take that and do Just make those.

[Brad] Something else. Just make those.

[Brad] They're better than mashed potatoes anyway.

Has anyone tried maple syrup as a glaze for carrots?

Yes.

Any good?

Yeah.

Normally I do honey mustard but have a vegan-

but have the vegan-

[Both] The vegan.

coming this year.

Carrot, maple, good things. Salt

[Brad] Yeah. Absolutely.

Jennifer Leslie Boettcher.

Hashtag Thanksgiving, grocery shopping dilemma,

when a recipe calls for butter, how do you decide between

salted and unsalted?

I can tell you unequivocally if its an Bon Appetit recipe,

which you should unequivocally be using,

it will specify salted versus unsalted.

I think its a matter of control, right?

We call for unsalted just because we want people to be

like very deliberate about how much salt they're adding,

Right And different brands of

butter may have different amounts of salt.

It becomes very hard to control.

I think just get a good unsalted butter,

and you can just salt it to taste.

Yeah.

Thanks for calling Jen.

This is from Eila Johnson.

Nice name Eila Yeah, real nice.

How many sides do you typically have on your

Thanksgiving table?

Any must haves each year?

Yeah Do you have like a go to?

I don't have a go to number but man I'm a little upset

if stuffing or dressing, I... that better be there.

Yeah. You know?

Cranberry sauce, for sure. I love cranberry sauce.

Give me the jelled, in a can.

Why are we not eating cranberry sauce year round?

All the time?

I need gravy.

Some kind of a potato.

I love a little salad.

There should be salad or some vegetable, but like,

I don't have something where I'm like oh man,

if like grandma's green bean casserole isn't on the table,

its just not Thanksgiving, like I don't care.

How do I thicken gravy?

The most common would probably be a rue,

you know. which is what, when you have

a fat. a fat.

Usually butter. Usually butter, not always.

And you bring that, you get that warm and then you just

whisk in flour. Flour.

And that becomes a thickening agent.

Very classic in Cajun and French cuisine.

Sure.

You can make a corn starch slurry.

That's a great way to just bump up the thickening.

Its definitely the easiest.

What do we want to do?

I know we got a couple gravies What else we got?

That we can thicken up.

So, we're in gravy land, because we got some loose gravy.

We got one right here, look at this, don't even have to...

[Brad] Whoa. Look at this.

You don't want to pour that

on a turkey. Yeah that's loose

So lets make a rue

I want the butter to melt and I don't want to brown it.

[Brad] You don't want to brown it.

Whammo. Yep.

At least a tablespoon of flour,

per quart. Per quart.

Its starting to foam up Bubbling, foaming.

So, the reason you don't want to add flour,

loose flour directly into your gravy, is that its going to

clump up, and you're going to have lumps.

Its also because its in a raw state, so you really want

to kind of toast the flour a little bit,

just so you get the little bit of,

that nuttier kind of characteristic and a little bit of

that raw floury-ness to kind of dissipate.

Alright we're going.

So like, I do, just like one shot, boom, right in,

and like kind of whisking.

Don't fall into the trap of not boiling your gravy,

and then thinking that it needs more thickener.

That's a very good point, it is a heat activated...

Yeah, and then you bring it up and then all of the sudden,

you've got glue.

Look at that, yeah it wants to coat the spoon now,

so that looks good.

It does look good.

A few more minutes of simmering, and that's good to go,

season it up.

So the rue works pretty easy, pretty straight forward.

There's another method like we were talking about

having that corn starch slurry.

Same deal, you don't want to just sprinkle it into

your liquid because its going to disperse unevenly.

So for two teaspoons of corns starch,

I'm probably going to add a tablespoon or so of water.

Do we have to use water?

Could we just use this?

Why introduce more liquid if we're trying to thicken?

I'm just thinking out. No, no, this is amazing

You cracked the code. Right?

Makes sense in my old peanut brain sometimes

Yeah, for sure man.

All right, I mean I don't see why it wouldn't work, right?

So that is our slurry right?

Its the consistency of heavy cream

Yeah. You don't want it to be

a paste, you want it to be fluid.

The reason being that you want this to disperse evenly,

and very quickly.

And again, heat activated?

Heat activated, so I would say you want this,

its okay for this to be warm when you add it,

you do not want this to be ripping hot when you add it,

because it will start to set and activate the corn starch

And you'll get in ribbons

Yeah yeah yeah. You'll have like,

some weird...

But you want velvet throughout.

Yeah, exactly, so whisk..

[Brad] Oh yeah. Boom.

So we're going to crank the heat up on that,

Again, these techniques Let this simmer

Very old

Heat activation, yeah.

Very old, very old school.

Alright Jason Kobus,

Is gravy just turkey yogurt?

No.

[Both Stammering Words]

What does that even mean?

Oh my God.

Jason, just stop it Jason hold on.

He's not worth your time.

Damn it Jason!

We were having a good run Jason.

So this is from Mess-B-Que, Attempting to ferment some

cranberry raspberry relish.

Maybe I should add a red savina?

Red savina, with a little purple devil emoji.

Yeah, a little heat Hot!

I would definitely mess around with that before you...

Like I wouldn't make one and dump it on the table.

I wouldn't, like, make like five gallons of it.

I think you might be disappointed

Important question: where do people stand on

cornbread stuffing?

I'm a huge fan of cornbread but am out on it as a stuffing

I don't know what that means.

Hashtag my usance, I don't know what that

means either.

So, love cornbread stuffing.

Cornbread because corn flavor just has so much intensity

of aroma and flavor.

You can bring other elements into it, like strong elements.

Like heat, It can take it,

Fat, salt, more than you think

more than you think, like Sort of a flavor sponge

Its a flavor sponge.

Why isn't half apple half pumpkin pie a thing?

I think it would be a nightmare to make.

That... have you ever made a pie before?

Just make two pies. Brad no, no, no.

Like, pumpkin tends to be a blind baked crust with a

custard filling that's set into it, open face whatever.

Apple, you know, traditionally, tends to lean a little

bit more on the double crust.

Two different pies, Two different animals.

Two different moments. Apples and pumpkins here.

Apples and pumpkins here. [laughing]

Exactly, sorry Mark, there's a good reason for this,

we've thought about it.

Why do people hand out raw frozen turkeys

on Thanksgiving?

That [bleep] takes thirty-two hours to defrost.

Ungrateful, my god.

Uh I got to defrost it?

Too bad buddy, say no.

Right, you don't have to take it?

No one told you to take it. I guess.

Go buy a fresh one Look its just,

from like a supply chain stand point,

a fresh turkey has like a much shorter shelf life,

a frozen turkey is good, you know,

somewhat indefinitely Yeah, its a cinder block

But yeah, you have to defrost it, you have to just let

that process unfold. Ungrateful Damoochie!

Not mad, just a little disappointed.

Ooh, Chupacabre Ooh.

Is asking when is the best day to throw away

Thanksgiving leftovers, asking for me.

Oh a week? Why don't you eat them,

[Brad] Before they get there Before they get there,

you know?

How to make nice whipped cream, that's not a question,

is it?

Its a little rough.

How does one make a nice whipped cream, we're going to

show you how.

Cold cream, big bowl.

Big bowl, big whisk.

You can have seven gallons of powdered sugar.

And you take the maple syrup I'll do the maple.

I'm fine with... Because I love maple syrup.

I'm very comfortable with that.

[Brad] Put a little bit of sugar, little pinch of salt,

[Chris] always. Always a tiny pinch.

Look, you can already see its starting to get

a little frothy.

Oh!

Little bit of salt is crucial Crucial,

bring out the flavor. I'm going to add a little

[Chris] bit of more maple. Uh oh.

So, Basically, the whipped cream is done when you can

hold the bowl inverted,

and nothings going to flow out.

[clapping] Bravo!

This is a little bit, you know, soft peak.

Its going to mostly hold its shape but still has

a touch of fluidity to it.

Super soft you can go to medium peaks,

do not go, try to go to stiff peak on whipped cream.

There's kind of no way to even properly do that

unless you're stabilizing it or something.

You can do this a little bit ahead of time.

Yeah, just whip it until its very soft peaks,

and then come back, you know, keep it in the fridge

nice and cold, come back, re-whip it,

you know, ten more seconds, and you're there.

So you can hold it like that for, you know,

an hour, whatever you need.

Alright guys, well thanks for writing in your questions.

Me and ole Morocco here had a blast answering them.

Yeah.

Hopefully, hopefully they invite us again next year,

we can do it again,

this was a lot of fun Yeah exactly.

If we didn't screw it up too bad.

Are you kidding me?

We nailed it. Alright,

I think we nailed it.

Well thanks guys, leave some comments.

Let us know some more things you'd like us to answer,

And maybe we'll get to them.

'til next time Thank you.

[whistle]