Cranberry Maple Glazed Turkey with Gravy

If one lives in the US it is nearly impossible to avoid eating turkey in November. On the fancy artisanal side local birds become available. On the economic end the prices drop to levels too ridiculous to pass up.

The intent was to smoke the bird until the morning of the event, when it was determined that the smoker was no longer operational, at which point simplicity became even more a priority than ever.

There is a near-infinity of turkey recipes; most of them require starting early. This maple glazed one from Taste of Home looked both tempting and hard to mess up. Nor did it require stuffing, rubbing, brining, or otherwise having foresight or ingredients that weren't already on hand.

• 1 large bird of Butterball variety (which come pre-brined).

• 1 cup cranberry sauce, canned, chunky (smooth is likely to have worked just as well (and yes recipe says 3/4 of a cup, but it came out a bit more, so no problem.)

• 1 cup maple syrup

• 1/2 cup walnuts, halved (the recipe called for 1/4 finely chopped)

• salt, even though the recipe didn't say so, but you know better than to omit it.

• y'all are welcome to "pepper to taste", too, if you aren't inviting the pepper-averse Gargoyle over for a meal.

• a sprinkling of ginger, because upon sampling the sauce mix really called for one more flavor to brighten up the combination

Walnuts were gently whacked with the flat side of a meat tenderizer, which, as expected, caused them to be crushed into something resembling a fine chop without too many of them escaping off the cutting board.

The bird was placed into a roasting pan breast up.

The rest of the ingredients were mixed and glopped onto the bird, and largely stayed on top of it rather than dripping right off.

A bit of char just adds character, right?

The turkey was then cooked at 325 until the meat thermometer beeped on turkey setting, and set to rest.

The step of periodically basting the turkey was omitted on account of 1. forgetting to do that and 2. not finding the turkey baster. Oops. The result was that the sauce on top charred a bit.

But, verdict: the bird was a perfect texture and gorgeously juicy and not particularly hurt by lack of basting.

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Drippings Gravy

The bottom of the roasting pan contained some fat, some caramelized walnuts and quite a bit of liquid, which the Gargoyle impulsively spooned out a small taste of. It was every bit as delicious as one would expect the mix of cranberry and maple to taste.

It felt imperative to preserve and utilize this sweet goodness. Searching for "how to use turkey drippings" produced an infinity of gravies, so that was obviously the way to go.

As a disclaimer, gravy is not a thing that the Gargoyle normally likes, and therefore has neither the idea of how this is supposed to go nor how it's supposed to come out.

The most sensible instructions for converting drippings into gravy came from the Betty Crocker website.

All the liquid got scooped up and transferred into a gravy separator, because evidently that's a thing we own. The solid chunks were more or less left in place on the bottom of the roasting pan.

The roasting pan was placed into the stove, such that one end of it occupied the largest burner in the front, which was turned on. The contents were encouraged to migrate to that end of the pan.

Per Betty's very particular instructions, a quarter-cup of the liquid part of the drippings were re-introduced into the pan. A quarter-cup of flour joined it.

A whole lot of whisking happened.

Further seasonings were considered, but found unnecessary, because the drippings had a strong and distinctive flavor and plenty of salt already.

The instructions then called for thinning the goo with a liquid of one's choice, which is traditionally a broth, but when given the opportunity to incorporate wine, the Gargoyle will incorporate wine.

So, 1/2 cup of chardonnay was added, and the result was stirred and sampled. So far so good. Then, a second 1/2 cup wine was added, the result was stirred and sampled, and the intensity of the flavors that appealed in the first place were now significantly toned down. Therefore, no more wine was added despite the recipe calling for another full cup of liquid.

At this point the result was definitely much denser than a gravy ought to be - possibly somewhere around the texture of peanut butter. The Human Spouse graciously promised not to report this to gravy police.

Verdict: notwithstanding non-conformance to gravy standards, this substance - let's call it a gravy spread - was an excellent condiment to augment the flavor of the turkey, which was juicy enough that it didn't need anything in particular to augment its texture.

The spread remained the original texture after refrigeration.