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Turkey Leg Confit – Make Ahead for an Easy Thanksgiving Day

The links in these recipes are for products that I use and recommend.  

Turkey confit is an indulgent preparation that turns a humble bird into a culinary masterpiece. Unlike the roasted turkey that graces many holiday tables, turkey confit is cooked slowly in fat (preferably duck fat), resulting in meat that is incredibly tender, moist, and infused with flavor. In this post, I’ll guide you through the steps of making turkey confit and share why this dish is so extraordinary.

What is Turkey Confit?

The word ‘confit’ is derived from the French word ‘confire’, which means “to preserve”. The confit cooking method was originally a means of preservation in the days before refrigeration. Meats were salted and then cooked at a low temperature in fat, and subsequently stored in that fat, creating an oxygen-free environment (before canning was discovered) unsuitable for most bacterial growth (see note below). Long ago, a family would keep a large vat of confit (game birds, chicken, pork, rabbit and even fish) in the larder and pull a piece or two as needed for a meal over a period of months.

Turkey confit, therefore, is turkey legs that have been seasoned, and then slowly cooked in fat at a low temperature. The result is a dish that’s incredibly rich and fall-off-the-bone tender.

Why Turkey Confit is Amazing

  1. Texture: The slow cooking process tenderizes the turkey meat to perfection. The meat is soft and can be easily shredded but with a slight crispness to the skin that is utterly delightful.
  2. Flavor: Cooking turkey in its own fat or a mixture of fats allows the flavors to marry and intensify over the hours of cooking, creating a depth of flavor that roasting often can’t match.
  3. Versatility: Turkey confit can be used in a variety of dishes – from sandwiches and salads to tacos, breakfast hash, and pasta. It’s not just for Thanksgiving!
  4. Preservation: While not as necessary today, confit is an excellent method for preserving turkey. The fat used for cooking acts as a seal that can keeps oxygen from reaching the meat the meat and spoiling it. This means that you can prep your Turkey legs for Thanksgiving well in advance and pop them in a hot oven 30 minutes before the meal for utterly perfect, fall-of-the bone, crispy-skinned turkey legs.
  5. Simplicity: Despite the lengthy prep and cooking time, the process is very hands-off. Once the turkey is prepped and in the oven, it requires little attention.

How to Make Turkey Confit

Making turkey confit is a simple yet rewarding process. Here’s a step-by-step guide to making your own.

Ingredients:

  • Turkey legs (thighs and drumsticks)
  • Salt
  • Sugar
  • Curing Salt (optional)
  • Herbs and Spices

Instructions:

  1. Seasoning Turkey: Weigh the turkey legs to calculate your salt and sugar. Use 10 grams salt (including Curing Salt#1 if using) and 2.5 grams sugar/brown sugar per pound plus herbs and spices as you like. Mix all the seasonings in a bowl first and then rub the turkey legs all over. The salt not only seasons the meat but also acts to draw out moisture, which helps in the preservation process. Don’t skimp on this part – the salt is crucial for both flavor, texture and food safety.
  2. Resting: Once seasoned, lay the legs in a single layer in a dish, cover with plastic wrap, and refrigerate. Let them sit for 3 days, turning over once during this time. This resting period allows the salt to penetrate the meat and work its magic.
  3. Rinsing: After the resting period, rinse the turkey legs under cold water to remove excess salt and pat them dry with paper towels.
  4. Preparing the Fat: Heat your chosen fat in a pot that’s just large enough to fit the turkey legs in a single layer. Warm the fat over medium heat until very warm 185-220 F (not frying temps).
  5. Cooking the Turkey: Preheat your oven to 185-200°F (93°C). Once the fat is warm, ladle it or pour it very carefully over the turkey. Make sure they are completely covered. If not, add more fat or oil until they are. Slide a wooden spoon or spatula down between the dish and the turkey to release any trapped air bubbles.
  6. Slow Cooking: Place the pot in the oven, uncovered, and cook for about 8 hours. This low and slow process is the key to confit.
  7. Checking Doneness: The turkey is ready when it’s incredibly tender to the touch, practically falling off the bone. With a sterile fork, stab the meat. The fork should slide right out with no resistance.
  8. Cooling and Storing (Optional): Allow the turkey to cool in the fat, then store it in the refrigerator submerged in the fat for up to a couple of weeks (or months if curing salt was used and it’s properly handled and stored). Alternatively, you can transfer the turkey to vacuum seal bags and ladle in some fat.
  9. Finishing: When ready to serve, remove the legs from the fat and wipe off excess. For crispy skin, sear the legs in a hot skillet or roast in a 450 F oven for 20 minutes or until golden brown and heated all the way through. Alternatively, turkey confit can be removed from the bone shredded and pan-fried for tacos or breakfast hash, or turned into rillettes for an appetizer.

If you are interested in making confit, you may find relevant and helpful tips on my post for duck conft.

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Turkey Confit

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  • Author: Kara Taylor- Home Cooks Guide
  • Prep Time: 3 days
  • Cook Time: 8 hours
  • Total Time: 80 hours
  • Yield: 2 turkey legs confit 1x
  • Category: Charcuterie
  • Method: Baking
  • Cuisine: French
  • Diet: Gluten Free
Print Recipe

Ingredients

Scale

10 lbs turkey legs (4–5 legs)

88 grams (10 Tablespoons Diamond Crystal Kosher) salt 

12 grams Pink Curing Salt #1 (optional, add this amount more of reg. salt if omitting)

24 grams (2 Tablespoons) brown sugar

Optional Herbs and Aromatics

4 grams (1 teaspoon) whole peppercorns

10–12 sprigs fresh thyme (no need to pick off the leaves)

5–10 fresh sage leaves

4 6″ inch sprigs of fresh rosemary

5 garlic cloves, crushed

zest of half a lemon/orange

Instructions

  1. Seasoning Turkey: Mix all the seasonings in a bowl and then rub the turkey legs all over. 

  2. Resting: Once seasoned, lay the legs in a single layer in a dish, cover with plastic wrap, and refrigerate. Let them sit for 3 days, turning over once during this time. 

  3. Rinsing: After the resting period, rinse the turkey legs under cold water to remove excess salt and pat them dry with paper towels.

  4. Preparing the Fat: Heat your chosen fat in a pot that’s just large enough to fit the turkey legs in a single layer. Warm the fat over medium heat until very warm 185-220 F (not frying temps).

  5. Cooking the Turkey: Preheat your oven to 185-200°F (93°C).  Arrange the turkey legs in an over proof casserole dish/hotel pan or pot.  They fit snugly in a single layer with at least 2 inches of free space above.  Carefully ladle or pour the warm/hot fat over the turkey. Make sure the legs are completely covered. If not, add more fat or oil until they are.  It’s ok to mix duck fat and olive oil if you are in a pinch.  Slide a wooden spoon or spatula down between the dish and the turkey to release any trapped air bubbles.

  6. Slow Cooking: Place the pot in the oven, uncovered, and cook for about 8 hours. This low and slow process is the key to confit.

  7. Checking Doneness: The turkey is ready when it’s incredibly tender to the touch, practically falling off the bone. With a sterile fork, stab the meat. The fork should slide right out with no resistance.

  8. Cooling and Storing (Optional): Allow the turkey to cool in the fat, then store it in the refrigerator submerged in the fat for up to a couple of weeks (or months if curing salt was used and it’s properly handled and stored). Alternatively, you can transfer the turkey to vacuum seal bags and ladle in some fat.  If you are not using the curing salt, you need to make an effort to cool this down quickly. See note below.

  9. Finishing: When ready to serve, remove the legs from the fat and wipe off excess. For crispy skin, sear the legs in a hot skillet or roast in a 450 F oven for 20 minutes or until golden brown and heated all the way through. Alternatively, turkey confit can be removed from the bone, shredded and pan-fried for tacos or breakfast hash, or turned into rillettes for a delicious appetizer.

Equipment

Notes

Curing Salt and An Important Food Safety Note:

Curing salt is used to prevent botulism, a deadly toxin caused by the bacteria C. Botulinum that grows in room-temperate anaerobic, non-acidic environments.  It also gives the meat a rosy hue and cured meat flavor.  I like using curing salt, for peace of mind and because I think the meat tastes better with it. 

If you are concerned about nitrates or don’t want to purchase a special ingredient that you will rarely use, it is technically not necessary for food safety in this recipe provided that after the confit comes out of the oven, it passes through the danger zone (140-42 F) within 4 hours.  In my past life, when I was a licensed meat processor, I spent a lot of time logging cooling temps and times for charcuterie and I can tell you that cooling a vat of confit within this window is not as easy as it sounds.  Simply leaving the confit out on the counter to cool will not be sufficient for this size container to get the temp through this zone quickly enough.  If you put it directly in your refrigerator, you will warm your fridge, and the top layer of fat will solidify and insulate the interior.  You will need to leave it out in a cold garage for 2 hours and then transfer it to a not-too-full fridge.  Otherwise, please use the curing salt. 

Another option for quick cooling is to put the turkey leg in a vacuum seal bag while still hot/warm (use sterilized utensils and handle carefully as it is fragile when hot) with some fat, seal it, and then submerge the sealed bag in ice water.

How To Cook Meat Part 2: Slow Roast, Smoke, Braise and Confit

Image of meat on a cutting board with the Blog Post Title.

When the temperatures outside drop, there is nothing I crave more than a pot of slow-braised meat. Whether it’s beef bourguignon, braised lamb shank or osso bucco, there is simply nothing better on a cold winter’s day than coming home to a house that is filled with the smells of cooking and warmed from the oven.

I spent a decade as a meat processor, charcutier, chef, and caterer. I consider meat cookery my specialty and the low-and-slow methods described in this post are my favorite to make. I love the transformation of ingredients, the layers of flavor, and the richness of the dishes produced by Slow Roasting, Smoking, Braising, and Cooking en Confit. I also love the practicality of being able to start a dish in the morning, focus on other things all day, and have it done for dinner time. Or to be able to cook large quantities of meat for a party the day or two before the event, reheat it, and not worry about it getting overcooked or dried out while it sits in the chafing dish.

This post does not contain recipes. This is a cooking lesson, an overview, a guidelines, that can be applied to any dish you plan to make with these methods. There are links to recipes, so check those out for more specifics.

In How To Cook Meat Part 1, you learned about the “High Heat – Low Temp” methods of cooking meat: Grilling, Roasting, Sautéeing, Frying, and The Reverse Sear. In all of these methods, you use a high cooking temperature to achieve a relatively low target meat temperature between 120-165 F depending on the cut and your personal preferences. In these methods, you rely on the Maillard effect of browning for flavor.

Here, in Part 2, I will teach you how to Slow Roast, Smoke, Braise, and Confit. These Low Heat-High Temp methods rely on building and layering flavors throughout the cooking process. Low cooking temperatures over an extended time bring the meat up to a relatively high target meat temperature of 180 F or above. These methods are easy, dare I say “foolproof”? They utilize economical, tough cuts of meat and achieve more complex flavors in the final product. You will not need a probe thermometer or any other gadget to achieve perfection. The secret ingredient with these methods is time.

Part 2: Low Heat – High Temp Cooking.

Slow Roasting, Smoking, Brasing, and Confit

Low Heat – High Temp Cooking is what we use to achieve meat that is fall-off-the-bone tender. Think pot roast, pulled pork, delicious smoked pork ribs, duck leg confit, braised lamb shanks, chashu pork for ramen, and osso bucco.

The methods used for this type of cooking can be dry heat (roasting or smoking) or wet heat (braising, confit) but the goal is the same. What defines this type of cooking is the goal of reaching an internal temperature between 180-205 F; the point at which connective tissue breaks down into gelatin.

These cuts are tough and full of collagen-rich connective tissue. At temperatures above 180 F, this collagen turns into gelatin and melts into the meat fibers and the broth that make up the braising liquid, giving the finished dish a full-bodied, deeply savory quality.

The long cooking times of 4-12+ hours ensure sufficient time for salt and flavor to permeate the cut of meat through osmosis. Creating a dish that is fully seasoned all the way through.

Let’s get started…

Tough fatty cuts of meat with mirepoix vegetables. Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

Step 1: Select and prepare your meat

These are comfort foods. The cuts best suited to these low-and-slow methods are tough and economical cuts, a selection that harkens back to the days when we used whole animals butchered on the farm:

  • shanks and hocks
  • knuckles
  • Osso Bucco (shank cross-sections)
  • oxtail
  • neck
  • pork shoulder
  • chuck roasts
  • pigs feet and ears
  • Poultry legs
  • Whole birds
  • pork belly
  • ribs
  • brisket
  • bottom sirloin flaps

Once you have selected your cut, salt (or cure) the meat. Ideally, 1-2 days ahead of time, use about 3-4 grams (or 1 heaping teaspoon) of Diamond Crystal salt per pound, plus any other spices you would like to use. If you are curing your meat, follow a recipe and its specific timeline. For braises, I keep the seasoning simple. Usually, I simply salt the meat ahead of time, and then I add all the other flavors to the braising pot during the cook. For roasts and smoked meat, I use flavorful rubs. Here are some of my favorite flavor combos:

For Pork or Chicken

  • brown sugar
  • salt
  • pepper
  • ancho
  • mustard powder
  • minced onion
  • minced garlic
  • squeezed orange/lemon/lime
  • oil
  • achiote paste
  • salt
  • pepper
  • cumin
  • toasted fennel seed
  • black pepper
  • lemon/orange zest and slices
  • sage
  • rosemary
  • garlic
  • red pepper flakes (optional)
  • herbs de Provence
  • honey
  • black pepper
  • garlic (fresh or powder)
  • mustard (powder or prepared)

For Beef, Lamb, and Venison

  • Rosemary (ground or fresh)
  • Garlic (powder or fresh)
  • Mustard (powder or prepared)
  • Black pepper
  • Pepper
  • Garlic
  • Citrus Zest (optional)

Once seasoned, leave the meat uncovered in the refrigerator for 1-2 days. A longer time is best for larger cuts. Just before cooking, pat your meat dry with a piece of paper towel. Don’t rub all the seasoning off; just gently pat away any excess liquid. If you will be smoking this meat, leaving the meat uncovered to dry will help it absorb smoke flavor by forming a pellicle. If you are roasting or browning it before a braise, it will help sear the outside.

Step 2: Cook Your Meat

Whether you are using a dry heat or a wet heat cooking method, there are 3 very basic and intuitive concepts to keep in mind.

  • The lower your cooking temperature, the slower your cook time. Conversely, the higher your cooking temperature, the faster your cook time will be.
  • The internal temperature of the meat will never be higher than your cooking temperature. So, if your finishing temperature goal for a smoked brisket is 205 F, you could in theory set the smoker to 205 F for 48 hours and still end up with a brisket that is 205 F. Now, at that length of cooking time, it may be dryer than you want it and you may have blown through $100 in smoker pellets, but the temperature would be 205 F.
  • The larger the piece of meat, the longer your cooking time will be. Stew meat cut into 1-inch cubes will cook much faster than a 4 lb piece of chuck roast.
  • The meat is done when it pulls cleanly away from the bone (if bone-in), and when a fork inserted into the meat pulls out effortlessly with no resistance.

With all of these methods, the meat will pass slowly through the temperature range of 90-130 F. At these temperatures, enzymatic processes accelerate and exert a tenderizing effect similar to that of dry aging meat.

Slow Roasting

This is a dry-heat method in which meat is cooked in the oven at temperatures of 180-325. This is a good method for large fatty cuts like beef short ribs, baby back ribs, pork belly, and brisket. Anything you would cook slowly on a smoker can be cooked slowly in an oven. The only difference will be the smoke flavor or lack thereof.

You can literally just throw a well-seasoned piece of meat on a sheet pan at a low temperature (180-200), forget about it for most of the day, and end up with a mouth-watering final product for dinner, but if you want to put in a minimal amount of effort for maximum return, you may choose to wrap the meat in tin foil once it has achieved a browning of the exterior, perhaps with sauce, cut onions and other vegetables that will be served alongside it. Putting a water reservoir in the oven will help keep the meat from drying out.

Smoking

Smoked Pork Ribs, sprinkled with green onion on a plate.
Fall-off-the-bone perfectly smoked ribs!

You can use your smoker for high-heat methods covered in Part 1 or for low-and-slow cooking. But in this section, I’m talking about low-and-slow smoking with cooking temperatures between 180-325.

I use a Traeger Smoker and Grill and I love it. I use it all the time. But no matter which smoker you have, the principles here will be the same. Just follow your specific smoker instructions for the preheating and pellet/wood requirements.

You will get the most “Smoke” at the lower end of this temperature range. For ribs, pork butt, or brisket, I wrap them in tinfoil about half way through the cooking time. There’s a lot of debate out there about whether to wrap the meat, so play around with it and see which method you like best. I wrap mine.

You can smoke a large piece of meat like a pork butt or brisket overnight at 180-200 F and then continue cooking it all day at those temperatures for an 18-24 hours smoke. The result would be an amazing smokey and tender delicious piece of perfection. I typically do not do this because occasionally, when my smoker is in the lowest temperature range and especially when it is very cold outside, it will turn itself off. If this happened overnight, you could end up holding a large piece of meat in the danger zone for many hours, losing a lot of time on your cooking and possibly the whole thing. Or, if you live in colder climates, you could wake up to find a solid, frozen piece of meat on your smoker.

FOOD SAFETY NOTE: If you do smoke meat overnight, make sure it is a whole muscle that has not been rolled and tied (NOT meatloaf, uncured sausages, porchetta or pancetta, or stuffed pork loin). The extended time the meat will be in the danger zone could create conditions for botulism poisoning in some products. Make sure your pellets are fully stocked so you don’t run out in the middle of the night. Most cuts can be started in the early morning and ready for dinner.

You might be thinking that this is all very vague, like “how long do I smoke a pork shoulder for pulled pork?” You want specifics! I get it. Truth be told, though, it just depends. The flexibility and intuitive nature of these methods are what I love most about them.

For instance, you can cook a pork shoulder for pulled pork in 8 hours around 250-300 degrees or you can cook it for 12 hours at 180 for the first half and 225 for the second half. If your cooking temperature is the same as the target meat temperature, you really can’t overcook it. You can, however, undercook it, and that is the biggest mistake people make with these types of cuts. You know the meat is done when the meat has pulled away cleanly from the bone, and a fork inserted in it meets little or no resistance.

If it’s 3 pm and you just realized you want to cook ribs or pot roast for dinner, resist. You are better off just salting it and waiting till tomorrow to cook it… or using an Instant Pot or Pressure Cooker.

How to Braise

Chashu pork in braising pan with cooking liquid, ginger and green onion.

With braising, you submerge the meat in a cooking liquid and cook it just below the boiling point (185-212 F depending on elevation) for 3+ hours. Braising is my favorite method. It is the intersection of meat cookery and soup making. Two of my favorite things to do. All summer I look forward to cooler weather so I can start braising again. I love that I can start a braise in the morning before my kids are up; all day long, it will fill my house with the tempting smells of the dinner to come. In the afternoon I’ll add some vegetables, and by 6pm I’ll have a deeply satisfying meal with layers of complex flavors on the table, all with relatively little effort. Often a one-pot meal.

With low-and-slow dry-heat methods you want to use fatty cuts, with braising you can use cuts that are leaner but still full of connective tissue and if there’s bone marrow in them, that’s a plus. The cuts I use most often for braising are lamb shanks, pork or beef osso bucco, ham hocks, and chuck roasts. Other cuts that work well are poultry legs, short ribs, and ham.

As with all of these methods, there is a lot of room for flexibility and variation, but these are some general steps to achieving a perfect braise:

  1. Salt and season your meat. Let sit and dry (uncovered in the fridge) for 1-2 days ideally. If you season right before, that’s ok too.
  2. In your brazier or dutch oven, thoroughly brown the meat on all sides in oil, fat, or butter at medium-low heat. The tendency is to skip over this part or to do it quickly. This is really the only browning you’ll be getting, and that flavor is essential to the final dish. I’ll spend 20-30 minutes browning a pot roast.
  3. Remove the meat and add the vegetables and aromatics you will use to season the broth. These vegetables will be discarded or will just melt into the broth. These are not the vegetables you will be serving alongside your meat. I will typically add some combination of onions, garlic, tomato paste, dried chilis, and sometimes carrots and celery that I will later strain out. Sauté these until you get some caramelization.
  4. Stir in about 1/2 cup – 1 cup of liquid to deglaze the pan. Brandy, whiskey, wine, beer, sake, vodka, vermouth and broth all work well. Reduce this by half. You could also skip this step.
  5. Add the meat back in. Add water, broth, tomato sauce, and other liquid seasonings to come 1/2-3/4 up the meat. Add more salt, spices, and herbs. Heat this liquid to a low simmer. Taste it and adjust. Keep in mind that the salt from the meat will meld with the broth and vice versa, so you’ll want to do your salt fine-tuning at the very end.
  6. Transfer the pot to the oven. If cooking at 250 F or above, leave the lid ajar or off. If cooking between 180-250 F, cover it with the lid.
  7. About 1-2 hours before you plan to remove the meat from the oven, add the vegetables you plan to serve alongside it. Some combination of these: small potatoes, beans, carrots, celery, peppers, turnips, parsnips, beets, mushrooms, onion, leek, cabbage, and fennel. Leaving the vegetables in large pieces will allow them to cook for 1-2 hours. Dicing them small, they will only need to cook for about 30 minutes. The more vegetables you add, the more it will lower the broth’s temperature and slow the cooking.
  8. Once the meat is fork-tender, remove the dish from the oven. Let the meat rest in the liquid for 20 minutes or longer before serving it. Cool and store the leftovers in the liquid.

How to Cook en Confit

Confit is a method of poaching seasoned or cured meat in fat! Sounds amazing, huh? It is! Even more amazing is how practical it is. The cooked meat is cooled in the fat that it is cooked in. The fat forms an airtight seal that preserves the meat for months under refrigeration. In fact, it “ripens” and develops more complex flavors in the weeks after it is made. To use the confit, simply grab a piece of the meat from the vat where it is stored, put it in a skillet, and brown it in the oven or on the stovetop.

Duck leg confit is the most well-known confit, and it’s one that I made often during my time as owner/chef of The Farm Table. I was once told by a customer that my duck confit rivaled Bouchon’s, a Thomas Keller restaurant. That was one of the best compliments I have ever received!

You can confit anything. I’ve made many variations of pork belly confit, tuna confit in olive oil, and turkey confit… Generally, you make confit from small portions of meat. Tough cuts of meat you will cook low and slow to break down the connective tissue. Leaner, more tender cuts (like turkey breast or tuna) you may cook to a lower internal temperature, between 140-165 F.

60 lbs of Duck confit, hot out of the oven.

Cooking en confit will produce an incredibly silky, flavorful meat. Aside from the decadence of meat prepared this way, there are also some very practical benefits to this method. You can make a big batch of duck legs or pork belly and have it on hand for the weeks or months that follow as quick, ready-made “prepared” food for busy weeknight dinners.

You can make a big batch of meat ahead of an event and reduce your prep the day of. In the past, I’ve made turkey confit for Thanksgiving. The turkey was done the week before the main feast, making the prep for the rest of the meal a cinch. The turkey only took about 20 minutes to reheat, and the skin was super crispy and delicious.

Another benefit is the by-products you end up with. The first one is aspic. This is a concentrated, heavily seasoned jelly that can be stirred into broths, potted meats, paté, or warm vinaigrettes. The other byproduct is seasoned fat. Whether duck fat or olive oil, it can be reused to sauté, drizzle on bread, or make the next batch of confit. You can use the same fat for several batches of confit until it becomes too salty. I once had a meal in Missoula, MT, where the restaurant made a “tomato” confit with sage and then used the sage-y olive oil as a bread dip with fresh cracked black pepper. It was simple and surprising, and nearly 15 years later I still remember it.

These are the steps to making confit:

  1. 2-4 days before cooking, season the meat with about 8 grams of salt per pound (or 2 teaspoons Diamond Crystal Salt) plus any other seasonings you would like. Garlic, whole black peppercorns, cloves, fresh thyme on the sprig, sage leaves, rosemary, etc. If you are making a big batch and plan on storing it for more than a couple of weeks, you may want to use curing salt as well. 1 gram per pound. Leave the spices whole, garlic crushed (not minced), and fresh herbs on the stem. This makes it much easier to rinse them off later.
  2. Halfway through the seasoning time, turn the meat over so the bottom becomes the top, and redistribute the brine (salty juices) that has formed at the bottom of the container.
  3. At the end of the seasoning time, rinse the spices off the meat and allow the pieces to dry on a rack or by patting them dry with a paper towel.
  4. In an oven-proof container, place the meat in a single layer or double layer. If you can’t fit it all in two layers, you need to use a larger container or use 2 containers. You want the meat to fit snug in the container. The more empty space you have, the more fat you will need to cover the meat. This adds to the cost.
  5. Preheat the oven to 180-200 F.
  6. In a saucepan, heat the oil or fat to about 150-200 degrees. Keep in mind that the fat won’t” boil”. If you heat it to the point where there is a lot of movement in the fat, you are probably close to 350 F, and it will fry and splatter in the next step.
  7. Pour the hot fat over the meat. It needs to completely cover the meat. How much oil you need will depend on the size of the container and how tightly packed the meat is. As a general guide, though, plan on 1 quart of fat for every 5 lbs of meat. Gently slide a spatula or wooden spoon down the sides of your oven-proof container to get the air bubbles out.
  8. Cook the meat in fat, uncovered, in the oven until done. I cook duck legs in the oven at 180°F for approximately 12 hours (overnight). For pork belly confit, 8 hours at 200 F or 4 hours at 250 F works well.
  9. Remove the meat from the oven. Set a strainer over a storage container. Use a sterilized turkey baster to suck up all the aspic from the bottom of the container, then squirt it into another container. Retain this for another use or discard. If you keep it, I recommend straining it, You may need to prop the confit dish up at an angle by placing a rolled-up towel under one end. Or see the note below and skip this step.
  10. Allow the meat to cool in the fat. Refrigerate it until ready to use.
  11. To use the confit, grab pieces from the vat using clean, gloved hands or sterilized utensils. Reheat. You can also make easy rillettes (potted meat spread) using confit, aspic, and fat.
  12. Place the vat back in the oven for a couple of minutes to melt the fat and reseal the confit. If you use olive oil, this step isn’t necessary.

NOTE: You may choose to transfer your meat to a different (sterile) storage container or vacuum-seal it into user-friendly portions. If you do, simply transfer the meat to the container or vacuum-seal bag once it has cooled to room temperature, then ladle the fat off the top to cover the meat in the new container or vacuum seal bag, careful to leave the aspic in the bottom of the cooking vessel. In vacuum-sealed bags, you only need about 1/2 cup of fat in each bag. If you do this carefully, the aspic will stay on the bottom, and when you have transferred all the meat, you can pour the rest of the liquid through a sieve and reserve it for another use. Vacuum sealing is my preferred method for storing confit. Always store it in the fridge.

Low Heat-High Temp Recap

In High Heat-Low Temp cooking, you are trying to reach an internal temperature between 120 F-165 F. In the low-and-slow cooking methods of Low Heat-High Temp cooking, you are striving to reach an internal cooking temperature between 180 F-205 F. Notice that nothing good happens between 166-180 F. This is the dead zone. If you missed hitting 165 F on your roast chicken, you might as well open a bottle of wine, put your feet up, and let it keep cooking until it reaches 185 F.

You don’t need a thermometer to know when meat cooked this way is done. There are visual tests. It’s done when the meat pulls cleanly away from the bone (when bone in). Chicken legs will wiggle easily in the hip socket. And a fork inserted into the meat meets little to no resistance and pulls out easily.

The best cuts to use for slow cooking are tough, economical cuts with lots of fat and connective tissue. No matter the method of cooking, meat should always be seasoned in advance to allow the salt to permeate the whole cut of meat. And the meat should be dry when you start cooking it.

Don’t rush it! With these methods, the worst thing you can do is undercook the meat.

First published in 2023. Revised in 2026.

Special Sauce! Cajun Remoulade Recipe

Picture of Shrimp tossed with Cajun Remoulade over a bed of lettuce and tomato.
A simple summer salad of shrimp and cajun remoulade.

This Cajun Remoulade is one of those sauces that always found a way onto my menus at the restaurant, no matter what season. The “special sauce” on my Cajun Muffaletta sandwich, the perfect accompaniment to salmon cakes, and the secret ingredient in Cajun Shrimp Endive Spoons. At home, I’ve served this sauce alongside fried catfish, boiled shrimp, and tossed it with cooked chicken for a quick chicken salad with a kick. If you like spicy, you’ll find a ton of uses for this sauce. And if you don’t like spicy – simply cut out the hot sauce, and you’ll still find a ton of uses for this sauce!!

Remou-what?

A Remoulade (re-MOO-lad) is essentially a cold mayo- or aioli-based sauce with minced ingredients stirred in. Common ingredients often added to remoulade include minced onion, pickles, pickled peppers, bell peppers, capers, olives, garlic, celery, horseradish, fresh herbs, and spices. A Tartar Sauce is a remoulade.

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Cajun Remoulade Sauce Recipe

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  • Author: Kara Taylor- Home Cooks Guide
  • Prep Time: 10 minutes
  • Total Time: 10 minutes
  • Yield: 2 cups 1x
  • Category: Sauce
  • Method: Stir
  • Cuisine: Cajun
  • Diet: Gluten Free
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Description

This versatile cold sauce with a kick compliments cold cuts, fried foods, seafood, and chicken.  As is, this recipe packs a punch, but you can dial down the heat by reducing the hot sauce and cajun spice.

Ingredients

Scale

1 1/2 cups mayonnaise

1 1/2 Tablespoons Dijon Mustard

1 1/2 Tablespoons Ketchup

1 1/2 Tablespoons Parsley, minced

2 1/4 Teaspoons Hot Sauce (like Tabasco or Crystal)

2 1/4 Teaspoons Lemon Juice

1 1/2 Garlic Cloves, minced

1/4 cup Shallot or Onion, minced

1 Celery Stalk, minced

1 Tablespoons Capers, minced

3/4 teaspoon Cajun Spice

1 teaspoon Paprika

Pinch of Ground Black Pepper

Salt to taste

Instructions

Mix all ingredients together.

Store refrigerated for up to 2 weeks.

First published in 2021.

Citrus Buttermilk Panna Cotta Is The Perfect Summer Dessert

Buttermilk Panna Cotta with fresh seasonal fruit, an easy no-bake summer dessert.

Panna Cotta is an easy, custard-like, no-bake, no-fuss dessert. Served with fresh seasonal fruit, it is perfect for summer. In Italian, Panna Cotta means “Cooked Cream”. Unlike other “cooked creams” such as creme brulee, flan, and pastry cream, Panna Cotta is thickened with gelatin instead of eggs and/or starches. The result is a delicate silky texture and a mild flavor that can be adapted for any occasion and requires only about 10 minutes of active prep (plus some passive time as it sets in the refrigerator). A basic Panna Cotta is made with less than 5 ingredients, and is gluten-free and egg-free for those with allergies.

The recipe below uses grapefruit zest, buttermilk, and cream. You can use any creamy base. Coconut cream Panna Cotta with lime zest served with fresh mango. Almond Milk Panna Cotta with Rose Blossoms. Milk and Honey Panna Cotta with Fresh Figs and Pistachio. Just some ideas. The possibilities are endless. Here’s the master ratio to use if you want to branch out and experiment:

Panna Cotta Master Ratio (1 cup yield)

1 cup creamy liquid

1/2 teaspoon powder gelatin dissolved in 1 Tablespoon Water

2 – 3 Tablespoons sugar

Using Gelatin

Powdered unflavored gelatin is one of those ingredients that most home cooks don’t have on hand. Here’s a pro tip for you. Go get some (unless you are a strict vegetarian, in which case, this post probably isn’t for you). It has so many uses in the kitchen not to mention the many health benefits of incorporating gelatin into your diet.

I add gelatin to hot savory liquids and broth to create instant Cheater Bone Broths. A little gelatin adds viscosity to pan sauces. It stabilizes whipped cream and meringues. I mix gelatin in with my coffee grounds when I brew coffee for an extra silky brew that is packed with collagen. You can make healthy fruit juice gummies and fruit juice jello, a fun kitchen project for kids. And you can turn creamy substances into Panna Cotta, a silky semi-solid custard-like dish that melts in your mouth.

For the most part, using gelatin is a no-fuss kitchen technique. However, there are a couple of things to keep in mind when making desserts (or savory aspics) that you want to hold a gel when chilled or at room temperature.

  • Bloom the gelatin by dissolving it in water for 5-10 minutes prior to using it.
  • Don’t boil the gelatin.
  • If you want to reduce the sugar in a recipe you may need to increase the gelatin amount slightly as there will be more “available water” for the gelatin to bond with. You can always try the recipe as is, and if it doesn’t gel, bloom a little more gelatin, rewarm the mixture, and add the bloomed gelatin to it, then chill it all again.
  • Be aware that some alcohols, acidic ingredients, and fruit enzymes can mess with the gelatin’s ability to hold a gel. If you are troubleshooting or want to get creative and know what you can and can’t do, this is a great in-depth article about using gelatin in desserts from Serious Eats. 6 Unexpected Factors That Can Ruin Your Gelatin Desserts.
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Citrus Buttermilk Panna Cotta Recipe

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  • Author: Kara Taylor- Home Cooks Guide
  • Cook Time: 10 minutes
  • Total Time: 10 min + 3 hrs to set
  • Yield: 4–6 servings 1x
  • Category: Dessert
  • Method: Stove top
  • Cuisine: Italian
  • Diet: Gluten Free
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Description

This Panna Cotta is light and delicate and perfectly complements fresh seasonal fruit.  I use grapefruit zest in this recipe.  You could also use orange, lemon or lime zest or a combination of citrus.

Ingredients

Scale

1 3/4 cup heavy cream (or sub any creamy liquid such as coconut, almond, or soy milk)

1 1/4 cup buttermilk

1 teaspoon vanilla

zest of one grapefruit (or lemon, lime or orange)

1/2 cup sugar

1 1/2 teaspoons unflavored gelatin

3 Tablespoons water

Instructions

Bloom the gelatin in the water and set aside.

Bring the cream, sugar, vanilla, and zest to a low simmer. 

Remove from the heat. Add the bloomed gelatin and gently stir until dissolved (about 30 seconds to 1 minute). 

Slowly add the buttermilk while gently stirring.

Pour into your molds (see note below).

Transfer to the refrigerator to chill for 3 or more hours.  If you plan on chilling overnight or longer, gently press plastic wrap onto the surface of the panna cotta to prevent a film from forming.

Notes

This recipe batch makes 1 (8 inch pie pan size)- 6 (4 oz ramekins) molded Panna Cottas.

If you plan on serving this inverted onto a plate (as pictured in this post), lightly oil your molds so it doesn’t stick.  You may need to invert the mold over the plate and just wait a minute for it to slowly drop out.  Don’t rush or force it.

Originally published in 2021. Updated in 2026.

Street Corn Pinwheels for the Grill or Campfire

Image of Street Corn Side Dish or Appetizer. Spiced and buttered corn is cut cross wise in 1-2 inch sections and sprinkled with queso fresco and cilantro.
Flavorful bite-sized street corn, perfect for a shared summer appetizer.

Nothing says summertime like sweet corn off the grill. This dish is inspired by Mexican Elote and seasoned with chili powder, lime, cilantro, and queso fresco. These Street Corn Pinwheels make the perfect party appetizers or a BBQ side dish, and they are great for my kids’ tiny hands too!

The tinfoil pack cooking method outlined in the recipe makes for easy cooking on the smoker, grill, oven, or campfire. If you are scaling the recipe up for a large party, you can spread the corn directly on the grill rack over medium heat and cook until slightly charred and tender. Add all the delicious spices, cheese, and cilantro just before serving.

I served these Corn Pinwheels on the restaurant’s summer menu for years. It was a super popular item, and with corn costing less than $1 per ear, we couldn’t go wrong from an ingredients cost standpoint 😉. Whether you are serving your family at home or a dinner party of 30 people, this is an easy and fun appetizer or side dish that won’t break the bank.

Take it camping!

Tinfoil pack cooking is made for camping. You can prep this at home before your trip and throw the tinfoil pack in the cooler with the chopped cilantro and the crumbled queso fresco, bagged separately. After your day of sun, hiking, and fishing, it is ready to simply throw on the grill or the campfire. No mess and no hassle. For tips and tricks on Camp Cooking, check out this post: 9 Pro Tips and Recipes for Camp Cooking.

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Sliced Street Corn on platter

Street Corn Pinwheels Recipe

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  • Author: Kara Taylor – Home Cooks Guide
  • Prep Time: 5 minutes
  • Cook Time: 20 minutes
  • Total Time: 25 minutes
  • Yield: 15 bite sized pieces 1x
  • Category: Side Dish
  • Method: Grill, Smoker or Campfire
  • Cuisine: BBQ
  • Diet: Vegetarian
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Description

These Street Corn Pinwheels are seasoned with lime, cilantro, chili powder, cumin, and queso fresco and perfect for an appetizer or summer BBQ side dish.

Ingredients

Scale

3 ears of corn, de-husked and sliced into 5–6 slices each

1 1/4 teaspoons salt

1 T ancho chili powder

1/2 t ground pepper

1/2 t cumin

2 T lime juice

1/2 t lime zest

1/4 t cayenne (optional)

4 T butter

1/2 cup crumbled queso fresco or cotija 

1/4 cup cilantro leaves to garnish (optional)

Instructions

Mix all of the ingredients together except for the cilantro and queso fresco (or cotija) and place in a foil packet with the seams tightly sealed.

Cook on 350 for 10 minutes, flip the packet over and cook for another 10 minutes.  If you don’t have a way to gauge temperature, cook it for 3-5 minutes after the foil packet puffs up.

Remove from the packet onto a serving dish, sprinkle with the crumbled cheese, and cilantro.

Alternatively, you can spread these out on a grill and cook until slightly charred and the kernels are tender.  Toss into a serving bowl and sprinkle with all the remaining ingredients just before serving.

Enjoy!

How To Cook Meat Part 1: Grill, Roast, Sauté, Fry and The Reverse Sear

Meat is often the most expensive dish on the table and the main focus of the meal, and so cooking it can feel high stakes (or should I say high steaks?). It can be intimidating and expensive to play around and practice with. Over the course of my kitchen career, I have had the opportunity to hone my meat cooking skills on over a million dollars of product. I have found that all meat cookery can be broken down into two primary methods. What I call “High Heat – Low Temp Cooking,” covered in this post, and “Low Heat – High Temp Cooking,” which I cover in How to Cook Meat, Part 2.

I hope that this How-To Guide will make it easier to understand and shorten the learning curve for my Home Cooks readers. There are no recipes in this post. This is an in-depth guide that you can apply to any dish you make.

Part 1: High Heat – Low Temp Cooking. An overview.

Grilling, Roasting, Sautéing, Frying and The Reverse Sear

High Heat – Low Temp Cooking is what we use to achieve a steak cooked medium-rare, chicken breast cooked to juicy perfection, a moist and flavorful hamburger.

The cuts used for this method are lean, tender cuts. The methods used for this type of cooking tend to be high-heat methods: grilling, frying, sautéing, and roasting. What defines this type of cooking, though, is not the method or the cut but the goal: the goal of reaching a specific target temperature between 120 F and 165 F.

The high heat methods of cooking cause the meat to brown on the outside (the Maillard effect) and develop characteristic meaty aromas, and then we aim to stop the cooking at the ideal temperature for your specific cut of meat and your personal preferences. Cooking the perfect steak or Thanksgiving Roast Turkey requires mastery over many variables, including preparation, the size of cut, cooking temperature, resting time, and carryover cooking. Over time and practice this becomes intuitive.

Let’s get started with the first step, Meat Preparation.

Step 1: Prepare your meat

The first step to a perfectly cooked piece of meat is proper preparation, which includes selecting the right cut, seasoning, drying, and tempering. The High Heat methods are best for lean, tender cuts. Here’s a list of cuts best suited for this style of meat cookery.

  • chicken breast
  • duck breast
  • steaks
  • pork loin roast
  • pork chops
  • all seafood
  • sausages
  • hamburgers
  • Roast turkey
  • Roast whole chicken
  • Ribeye Roast
  • Striploin Roast

I do not recommend rinsing meat off. This adds moisture, which prevents browning, and it splashes and spreads raw meat bacteria around your sink and kitchen.

Season your meat and let the seasoning sit on it awhile. Longer for larger pieces. Salt seeks equilibrium through a process called osmosis. This means that it will travel from salty areas (the exterior of your meat) to less salty areas (the interior), carrying with it any other seasonings you have mixed in. The bigger the piece of meat, the longer it should sit with the salt and other spices on it. For individual steaks, 1 hour is good, but I often season those just before I cook them. For a whole chicken, a pork loin roast, or a beef roast, 5-24 hours is ideal. Leave whole chickens or roasts uncovered on a rack over a sheet pan in the refrigerator. This helps dry the outside and encourages browning.

How much salt should you use? 2-4 grams (or 1/2-1 heaping teaspoon of Diamond Crystal Salt) per pound will result in perfectly seasoned meat. In addition to the salt, other spices can be added at this time. Whatever you like. A couple of my go-to spice blends for beef are:

  • rosemary powder
  • garlic powder
  • black pepper
  • mustard powder

OR

  • cumin
  • ancho powder
  • garlic powder

For chicken or pork:

  • herbs de provence
  • honey
  • black pepper
  • garlic (fresh or powder)

Just before cooking, pat your meat dry with a piece of paper towel. Don’t rub all the seasoning off; just gently pat any excess liquid.

Marinades

A marinade is a flavorful liquid that the meat is submerged in to tenderize it and add seasoning. They typically contain acidic ingredients like vinegar, wine, citrus juice, or buttermilk, which tenderize the meat; oil to carry flavor; and salt and seasonings. I don’t tend to use marinades often, especially for beef because I find that it takes away from the natural meaty flavors while leaving the exterior overly tangy. Besides, we are cooking tender cuts here that don’t need tenderizing. I do make an exception for buttermilk-marinated fried chicken, which I love! Marinades add moisture and flavor to the meat but reduce browning.

Brining

A brine is a heavily salted liquid that the meat is submerged in for a period of time. Through osmosis, salt from the brine penetrates the meat, flavors it, and draws extra water into it as well. A standard brine formula is:

  • 1/2 – 1 Tablespoon of Diamond Crystal Salt
  • 1/2 Tablespoon Sugar or Brown Sugar (to round out the harshness of salt)
  • 1 Cup of Water
  • Any other aromatics you want (peppercorns, garlic cloves, herbs, etc)

I have done a lot of brining in the commercial kitchen, especially for large cuts like whole pork loin, hams, and whole turkeys. It works great for distributing flavor all the way through the roast and results in a juicy finished product. I do not like brining at home, though. Without the large bins and adequate fridge space of a commercial kitchen, I find brining to be messy and clumbsy, especially for larger pieces like a whole chicken. If you brine smaller cuts like pork chops, it’s easy to overdo it and end up with unpalatably salty meat. I find I am able to get very similar results from dry salting (also called “dry-brining”), and because I rub it with the total amount of salt I want in the finished product, it will never end up oversalted no matter how long it sits.

Tempering

“To temper” meat means to remove it from the refrigerator and let it come up to room temperature prior to cooking it. You’ll probably find a lot of blogs and chefs that suggest pulling steak or turkeys out of the fridge 30 minutes before cooking it. Well, 30 minutes doesn’t cut it for a piece of meat of any size. It takes a surprisingly long time to change the internal temperature of a piece of meat at ambient room temperature. I don’t bother to temper small cuts and steaks. However, I always temper large roasts like turkeys and beef roasts, not for 30 minutes but for 3- 6 hours (with salt on them, of course). Intuitively, it makes sense to me to raise the internal temperature for a more even cook. I’ve cooked a lot of good roasts this way, and it’s now a habit for me.

That being said, Kenji Lopez of Serious Eats makes a compelling argument against tempering meat in his post 7 Myths About Cooking Steak That Need To Go Away. So, it’s your call on whether or not to temper your meat.

*If you are thinking “doesn’t leaving meat out for 3-6 hours increase the growth of foodborne pathogens?” the answer is yes and no. It takes much of that time for the surface temperature of the meat to cross over 45 F and after that, yes, bacteria present on the meat will grow very slowly on the surface for the last hour or so. But then you are going to cook it, and the surface of the meat will be exposed to temperatures of 200-500 F or more for the duration of the cooking time, so any bacteria would be destroyed during cooking. The biggest danger is cross-contamination of your work surfaces, so make sure you let your meat temper on a pan or in a container to prevent the juices from running all over your counter or cutting board.

Step 2: Know your target temperatures

Everyone has heard that chicken and turkey should be cooked to 165 (this is actually not true; read on). You may not have thought about temperature, though, when cooking hamburgers and sausages on the grill. But there is an ideal temperature for these, and it’s 155-165. You know it when you’ve passed it because your sausages split open, spraying their flavorful juices all over your grill, and your burgers end up dry and crumbly. The first step in cooking a great piece of meat is knowing your target internal temperature.

FDA Guidelines

(If you pull your meat off the grill at these temperatures, you will end up with dry, overcooked meat)

  • Poultry 165 F
  • Ground Meat (non-poultry). Hamburgers/ Sausages/ Meatloaf/ 160 F
  • Beef, Veal, Lamb, Pork 145 F (3 min)
  • Fish 145 F

Home Cooks Guide Meat Cooking Guidelines (Finished temps, including carryover cooking)

  • Poultry (breast) 155-165 F (hold for at least 1 minute, this happens without trying)**
  • Poultry (thigh) 175-200 F
  • Ground Meat (not poultry) 155-160 F (hold for 3 minute, this happens without trying if using a high heat cooking method)
  • Beef, Veal, Lamb (not ground) 115 very rare- 140 F medium well
  • Fish 120-140 F
  • Pork Loin or Chops 145 F

*Making food safe by controlling for Salmonella (which in turn controls for most other foodborne pathogens) is a function of temperature AND time AND fat content. The higher the fat content, the longer the time at a given temperature to kill salmonella. At the highest fat content for poultry 12% (most poultry is lower in fat, making these numbers the safest/most conservative), you can control for salmonella by holding chicken or duck at:

  • 145 F for 14 minutes
  • 150 F for 4.5 minutes
  • 155 F for 55 seconds
  • 160 F for 17 seconds

That’s right, you can cook poultry to only 145 F, and as long as you hold it there for a while, you are all good! That “holding time” is generally accomplished during “carry-over” cooking, which I’ll discuss in the next section. Or if you are cooking a Whole Turkey, it happens in the oven as it passes from 145-160F. Which means by the time it reaches 160, it has already spent the necessary amount of time above 145 to kill Salmonella. Now, if this just blew your mind or if you think I’m crazy to suggest cooking chicken to a temperature less than 165 F, or if you just want to geek out on the science of heat and foodborne pathogens, check out these other sources:

Thermal Tips: Simple Roasted Chicken—Cooking Chicken to the Correct Temperature

TIME-TEMPERATURE TABLES FOR COOKING READY-TO-EAT
POULTRY PRODUCTS (page 16)

All that being said, most people will not enjoy the texture of poultry chicken cooked to 145 F. It is still nearly transparent and somehow squishy and crunchy at the same time. But a chicken breast cooked to a finished temperature (after accounting for carryover cooking) of 155-160 F is truly perfect. Chicken or turkey thighs, however, are still bloody at this temperature and are best cooked to 175 or above. This presents special challenges when cooking a whole bird.

While I’m talking about poultry I want to make a note about duck. Duck breasts behave more like a red meat when cooking them and so a lot of chefs, including myself, opt to cook these to a more medium temperature, around 130-140 F. The theory is that the salmonella would be on the outside of the muscle and would be killed during the cooking process. That being said, there is some risk involved in doing this, on par with eating raw egg in aioli or caesar salad dressing or a really rare steak. I tend to take risks with my food choices and life in general… more than average. It is important to assess your own risk tolerance when cooking and choosing what to eat and if you are pregnant or have a compromised immune system it is recommended that you air on the side of caution.

Step 3: Plan for Carry-Over Cooking

One essential concept to understand in order to cook the perfect chicken, turkey, roast, or steak is “carry-over” cooking. When you pull a steak off the grill or your turkey out of the oven, it does not immediately start cooling off. The internal temperature continues to increase for an amount of time, while the exterior begins to cool off. This cooking, which happens after the meat is removed from the heat, is called “Carry-Over” cooking.

The amount of time and the change in temperature that you will get from carry-over cooking depends on 2 things: how big the piece of meat is, and how hot your cooking temperature is. The bigger the piece of meat, the longer it will cook after being removed from the heat. The hotter you cook it, the greater the temperature change will be. After years of cooking, this becomes instinctual. But you don’t have to rely on instincts; you can rely on a leave-in probe thermometer. I still use a probe thermometer for large roasts.

Chef Trick

If you don’t have a thermometer, here’s a nifty chef trick to gauge doneness. Rare feels like the pad of your thumb with an open hand – soft and relaxed muscle. Medium Rare feels like the pad of your thumb when you touch your thumb and index finger together – still soft and relaxed but a little less so. Well Done feels like the pad of your thumb when you touch your thumb and pinky finger together – very firm. This works better with cuts of meat where the muscle fibers are cut as cross sections – like most steaks. It’s a little harder to gauge when the muscle fibers are longitudinal, like on a whole tri-tip or a whole pork tenderloin.

You learned above that you can pull chicken at 150 F, provided it remains at that temperature or higher for about 5 minutes. Carry-over cooking for a roast chicken is about 10 minutes which means that if you pull it at 150 F it will remain above 150 F for 10 minutes (plenty safe) and will likely max out around 155-165 F depending on how hot your oven is. On the other hand, if you followed the FDA Guidelines and pulled the chicken out at 165 F, it would remain above 165 F for 10 minutes and end up at a final cook temperature of approximately 175 F after carry-over cooking. This is a dry overcooked bird! So plan for that carry-over cooking.

Steaks on a hot grill or skillet will also continue to cook after pulling them off, but for a much shorter amount of time than a large roast because it is a smaller cut of meat. If you cook a steak in a hot skillet, it will continue to cook for about 3 minutes after you pull it off, and its internal temperature will increase by about 5 degrees. Therefore, if you want a rare steak, with a target temperature of 125 F, you should pull it when it is at 120 F and let carry-over cooking finish it off.

Step 4: Choose your cooking method

If you want a piece of meat that is evenly cooked, use lower heat (250-350 F). If you want a piece of meat that is seared on the outside and rare on the inside, you want to use high heat (400-500 F) and make sure your grill or pan is preheated before adding your meat. As a general rule of thumb, the larger the roast, the lower the heat should be for an evenly cooked piece of meat.

Roast

Like the grill, this is another dry-heat method that is done in the oven. Roasting happens at temperatures above 375 F and anything under that is considered baking, but a lot of the time, the terms are used interchangeably. I use the oven only for larger roasts like a whole turkey, chicken, or Rib Roast, and for braising, which I’ll cover in Part 2. I would also use this method if I were cooking chicken breasts for, say, 20 people on a sheet pan.

Many ovens have a Convection setting. I recommend using it for everything except cakes. Convection speeds up cooking and ensures more even heat distribution by circulating air in the oven. Keep in mind that if you are following a recipe, convection is like adding 25 F to the cooking temperature. So if a recipe calls for baking at 350 F, you would adjust that to 325 F if using convection or plan to shorten the time. My recipes are always on convection unless I specify otherwise.

Always preheat the oven first. Use a leave-in probe thermometer so you can avoid opening the oven door to check on your roast. You can cook steaks, pork chops, and chicken breasts in the oven, but I rarely do. I would rather grill or pan fry these cuts.

Some Special Attention For Whole Roast Turkey and Chicken

The challenge to cooking the perfect whole bird is that the breasts want to be cooked to a drastically different temperature (155-165F) than the thighs and legs (185 F). Really, the legs would benefit from the low-heat methods of Part 2, while the breasts are more of a target-temperature type of cut. This gets progressively more challenging the larger the bird. You are better off cooking 2 8lb turkeys than cooking 1 16lb turkey (that being said, I’m going for a giant bird this year- cause… I like the challenge!).

So what do you do about this conundrum?

This is how I cook my whole birds

Place it directly in a preheated cast-iron skillet or sheet pan, NOT on a rack in a high-sided roasting pan. Get rid of those roasting pans too while you’re at it; you don’t need them for anything. This way the heated metal from the sheet pan or skillet will be in direct contact with the thighs, greatly speeding up their cooking time. The high sides of the roasting pan, with the rack, actually insulate the lower part of the bird, aka the thighs, and slows the cooking down for that part.

If the bird is large, I might cover the breast with foil for the first hour or so. I cook large birds at 200-250 for the bulk of the cooking and then will remove the bird from the oven when the breast is around 120-130 F, turn the oven up to 400 or so, place the bird back in the oven and cook for 20-30 more until the breast is 150 F and the skin is golden. Once the breast temps at 150 F and the thighs should be at 175 F or higher, make sure to let the bird rest for a good 20 minutes.

For smaller birds like whole chickens, I simply cook them directly in a cast iron skillet or in my brazier at 400 F until the breast reaches 150 F and then I remove and rest for 10-15 minutes so the finish temp is around 160 F. Perfection.

Another method that works great for whole birds is smoking them. I have smoked many turkeys on my Traeger. Because the temperatures are low and the heat source is on the bottom, the thighs always cook much faster than the breast. It’s perfect.

Sauté

Sautéeing is a great method for most seafood and thin cuts of meat like butterflied chicken breast. Other ingredients like garlic, mushrooms, peppers, etc are often added to the sauté pan along with liquid to finish off the dish with a pan sauce; check out my Chicken Marsala recipe for an example of this process.

To sauté, first, preheat your pan. Get it really hot. Then add 1-2 T oil right before adding your meat. When the pan is hot enough, the oil will immediately start dancing around. Add your seasoned-dry meat to the pan and give it a quick swirl around. This will help with sticking. Let it sit for a couple of minutes without moving it, then flip it, cook for a couple of minutes longer on the other side until the desired doneness. If your meat sticks to the pan, turn the heat off and leave it alone. It will release on its own in a couple of minutes.

For most things (except eggs) you really don’t need a non-stick pan. But if you are going to use one, I recommend a ceramic coating, a well-seasoned cast iron or carbon steel pan. These will not flake off forever chemicals into your food.

Fry/ Pan Fry

Frying is when you heat oil to 300-375 F and submerge a piece of meat in it. The larger the piece of meat, the lower the oil temperature you’ll want and the longer it will take. A bone-in chicken breast will take around 15-20 minutes. Fried shrimp will take less than 5 minutes. Though I love, love, love fried chicken, I almost never use this method at home. It’s messy and uses a ton of oil, which I don’t have in mass quantity in my pantry. You can strain and reuse fry oil a couple of times, which helps with costs but adds to the mess and hassle. If you are going to fry at home, I recommend a large cast-iron pot for even heating.

Pan-frying is the offspring of sautéing and Deep Frying. You use less oil than deep frying but more than sautéing; about 1/8″ or 1/4″ deep in the pan. The meat is not fully submerged; it needs to be flipped in order to fry both sides. This method is definitely more manageable at home than deep frying. This is a great method for fish, steaks, pork chops, and breaded chicken or pork cutlets.

Grill

Assorted sausages on the grill.

Preheat your grill. Once your grill grate is piping hot, set your seasoned meat on it. If you are cooking a fatty piece of meat like a hamburger, you may want to turn off the burner directly below the meat or push the coals to the other side, as fat drippings will cause the flame to flare up. Leave the meat undisturbed for a couple of minutes, then flip it over and repeat until it reaches your desired doneness.

Covering the grill will cause your meat to cook faster and more evenly, and is best for meat about 1 inch thick or thicker. For flank steak, or shrimp, or a similarly thin cut, there is no need to cover the grill, but you can if you want to, knowing it will speed up cooking.

Sausages on the grill should be cooked at a low temperature so the inside and outside are evenly cooked, but not overly cooked. Check out this in-depth post about How To Cook Sausage.

Reverse Sear

The Reverse Sear creates perfectly cooked meat with a deliciously thick crust.

This is hands-down my favorite method for thick steaks and roasts. The reverse sear results in perfectly cooked meat all the way through with a nice, thick, flavorful crust.

Traditionally, steaks and roasts would be seared and then thrown in the oven, or grilled until done. The idea was that searing first “locked in the juices.” We now know that searing does not lock in the juices. It does taste really good, though, thanks to the Maillard Reaction – the browning that occurs when proteins and sugars are exposed to high temperatures.

When you cook steaks and roasts the traditional way, searing first, you often end up with a thick grayish-overcooked ring of meat just under the seared crust. Oftentimes, 50% of the steak or roast is actually overcooked.

With the reverse sear, you start the steak or roast in the oven or (smoker) at a temperature around 200 F. When the steak is about 20 degrees under your target temperature (use the probe thermometer), you pull it out and sear it in a hot pan. This results in perfectly cooked steak (without the overdone ring) and a really nice crust.

Cooking first at a low temperature not only ensures even cooking all the way through, but it dries the surface of the steak, making it much faster and easier to brown. Make sure your cast iron pan or frying pan is very hot when you add the steak.

I use this method a ton for catering and entertaining because I can do the bulk of the cooking ahead of time, put the roast in a hot box (basically a cooler used only for hot items), let it rest in there for hours, and then sear it off on-site just before serving! I have served thousands of people perfectly cooked, perfectly crusty sliced beef using the reverse sear method.

Step 5: Give it a rest

One of the biggest mistakes people make when cooking meat is serving it immediately after cooking it. Meat should rest for at least a couple of minutes after carry-over cooking is complete. The larger the roast, the longer it should rest. A turkey or rib roast should rest for 20-30 minutes after coming out of the oven. As meat cooks, the muscle fibers tighten and squeeze the juices out. If you cut into the meat at this point in the process, the juices will quickly run out, and your meat will be drier and tougher than it should be. Once cooking is complete, the muscle fibers start to relax and reabsorb the juices.

High Heat-Low Temp Recap

You made it to the end. You now know everything I know about cooking meat! Here’s a quick recap to tie it all together for you.

For High Heat – Low Temp Cooking, you are using high heat methods to reach a specific, relatively low, internal temperature of the meat between 120-165. Here are the steps:

  • Select tender, relatively lean pieces of meat.
  • Season your meat ahead of time. Leave uncovered before cooking to dry.
  • Pat the meat dry before cooking.
  • Always preheat your oven, grill or skillet.
  • Use a probe thermometer, especially for large roasts.
  • Factor in Carry-Over Cooking
  • Let the meat rest before serving it.

Now, go forth and cook great meat!

The Best, Perfectly Tender Smoked Pork Ribs

Fall-off-the-bone perfectly smoked ribs!

Few things are better than spending a summer day slow cooking meat on the smoker. These ribs are simple to make and fall-off-the-bone tender. I use a dry-rub recipe in this recipe. If you don’t have one of these spices in your pantry, there’s no need to rush off to the store. You can sub or omit it (except the salt). The most important ingredient in this recipe is time! No short-cuts allowed.

The Easiest Way to Make Perfectly Smoked Ribs

Season your meat.

As a general rule, I like to season any large pieces of meat that I’m going to cook the day before. This allows the salt to penetrate to the interior of the meat. But sometimes I fail to plan ahead, and that’s ok too. I like a dry rub on my ribs, and I add the sauce after they come off the grill. Try it with this delicious homemade Southwest BBQ Sauce or your favorite store-bought one.

Smoke Your Ribs Low and Slow

I use a Traeger Smoker and Grill. I’ve used several different electric smokers over the years, and this one is the best! Whatever smoker you are using, prepare, and preheat it to the “smoke setting” (about 180 F) based on the manufacture’s instructions.

Place the ribs directly on the grill racks, bone-side down, unwrapped, and smoke them for 4-5 hours, spraying (or mopping) every 2-3 hours with a vinegar-water mix (cider vinegar, white vinegar, or red wine vinegar).

Wrap the Ribs in Foil and Increase the Heat

Wrap the ribs in tin foil and tightly seal the edges. Increase the heat of your smoker to 250 F, and continue to cook for another 3 hours. That’s about 8 hours of total cooking time!

Take a peek at the ribs, the meat should have pulled back revealing the clean ends of the bone, and the meat should be soft to the touch. They should look like this:

Finished Smoked Ribs in Tin Foil
Finished Smoked Ribs

If you stabbed them with a fork, the fork would pull out easily. If the meat is still firm, it’s not done! Keep going! Remember, keep the grill closed while cooking as much as possible. Resist the temptation to watch it cook.

Once you are confident that the meat is done, remove it from the grill. Keeping it wrapped, let it rest for about 10-20 minutes. Then it’s ready to serve with your favorite sauce.

If you don’t have a smoker…

If you don’t have a smoker, you can make delicious tender ribs in your oven! Start the oven at 180-200F and bake uncovered for 2 hours, spraying midway through with the vinegar-water mix. Turn the oven up to 250 F, wrap in foil, and bake for another 3 hours. If you want to add a smokey flavor, you can use smoked salt in place of salt or add some smoked paprika to the spice mix. I’m not a fan of liquid smoke because of the artificial color in it.

Chef Tip

Whenever I’m going to run my smoker all day, I like to load it up. The Best Dry-Cured Bacon, and Dry-Cured Ham can be cooked at the same temperature as these ribs if you want to maximize your productivity. Cook both of these to an internal temp of 140-145F.

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Smoked Pork Ribs, sprinkled with green onion on a plate.

Smoked Pork Ribs

5 Stars 4 Stars 3 Stars 2 Stars 1 Star 5 from 5 reviews
  • Author: Kara Taylor- Home Cooks Guide
  • Prep Time: 10
  • Cook Time: 8 hours
  • Total Time: 8 hours 10 minutes
  • Yield: 1 rack of ribs 1x
  • Category: BBQ
  • Method: Smoker
  • Cuisine: American
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Description

These fall-off-the-bone tender ribs are seasoned with a dry rub and a robust smokey flavor.  This recipe features a basic dry-rub recipe.  You could certainly play around the spices or do a wet marinade if you like.  The most important ingredient here is time!

Ingredients

Scale

1 rack of ribs (about 3.5 lbs)

1 T (9 g) Ancho Chili Powder

1/2 T (5 g) Ground Cumin

1/2 T (3 g) Ground Mustard Powder

1 T (9 g) Salt

1 T (11 g) Brown Sugar

1/2 T (3 g) Coarse Ground Black Pepper

1/2 t (1 g) Ground Allspice

1 t (1 g) Dried Thyme Leaves

1/2 T (4 g) Onion Powder

1:1 Vinegar-Water 

Instructions

Make the Dry-Rub

In a small bowl, combine the salt, sugar, and spices.

Rub this all over the rack of ribs.  You should do this at least 2 hours before cooking or up to a day before.

Add a 50:50 mix Vinegar: Water to a spray bottle (my preferred method) or a bowl with a basting brush.

Smoke the Ribs

Preheat your smoker to 180 F. I use an electric Traeger Smoker and Grill which I love!

Once the smoker is up and running, add the ribs directly on the grate.  Do not wrap in foil at this time.  Smoke the ribs at this temperature setting for about 5 hours, spraying or basting every 2 hours or so with the vinegar-water mixture.

Turn the smoker up to 300 F, wrap the ribs in tin foil.  Return the wrapped ribs to the smoker.  Continue cooking for another 2 hours.

Remove the ribs from the smoker and let rest for 10-30 minutes before unwrapping them.

Serve with your favorite BBQ Sauce and enjoy!

Originally published 6/26/2020. Updated in 2026.

Easy, No-Fuss Sourdough Focaccia Recipe That Bakes in Just 20 Minutes

I started making this Focaccia recipe over the summer for purely logistical reasons. The timing of the dough was simple and allowed me to be gone all day. It bakes in just 15-20 minutes. Sparing my house from the heat of the oven. Six months later, in the deep of a Montana winter, this is still the loaf I bake most often.

When I was first experimenting with this dough, I forgot about it on the counter all day and found it just before I was heading to bed. It had been in the bulk fermentation stage for a solid 12 hours. Panicked, thinking I had over-fermented it, I shaped the dough quickly and threw it in the fridge. The next morning it had spread out in its pan. I stuck it in the oven, still unsure whether it was ruined. To my surprise, it puffed up beautifully and made an absolutely delicious loaf despite my near-total neglect.

This loaf is light, and airy, with an open crumb and a crust that is toasty and soft to bite through. This sourdough is endlessly versatile. In the summer, I topped it with a layer of thinly sliced tomato and zucchini from the garden before baking it. In the winter, I sprinkle it with a little Maldon Flake Sea Salt. I slice it horizontally for the best sandwiches. I love the ratios of crust to crumb and bread to sandwich filling. I use this same dough for pizza, cutting one batch into quarters, balling it up, and stretching it out thin.

This dough is easy to work into your schedule. I start this dough in the morning. In the evening when I get home from work, I shape it, put it in an oiled pan, cover it and refrigerate it. Then I bake it the next morning. All said and done, it’s about 5-10 minutes of active time, 15-20 minutes of cook time, and 24 hours of passive time. I always make a double batch as this dough lasts 3-4 days on the counter.

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Close-up of a sourdough focaccia slice on a wooden cutting board.

Easy Sourdough Focaccia

5 Stars 4 Stars 3 Stars 2 Stars 1 Star No reviews
  • Author: Kara Taylor- Home Cooks Guide
  • Prep Time: 24 hours / 10 minutes active time
  • Cook Time: 15 minutes
  • Total Time: 0 hours
  • Yield: 1 loaf 1x
  • Category: Sourdough
  • Method: Baking
  • Cuisine: Italian
  • Diet: Vegetarian
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Ingredients

Scale

420 grams (1 3/4 cups) water

80 grams (1/3 cup) active sourdough starter

300 grams (2 1/3 cups) high-protein bread flour

200 grams (1 2/3 cups) wheat flour ( I’ve been use Wheat Montana Prairie Gold that I buy in 50lb bags)

10 grams (1 1/2 teaspoons) salt

Olive oil

Instructions

In a large bowl combine the water and starter.  Stir together so the water turns a milky color.

Add the flours and sprinkle the salt on top of the flour.  Stir everything together first with a wooden spoon and then with your hands.  The dough will be pretty wet.  Cover the tough and leave at room temperature for 8-10 hours for bulk fermentation.  If you have the time, give the dough a couple of turns in the first hour or two.  If you don’t have the time, no worries, it will still make a great loaf.

After bulk fermentation, turn the dough out on a floured surface.  Let it rest for 10 minutes.

Oil a 9×13” pan.  Shape the dough into a ball and place it in the pan.  Rub the surface with olive oil.  Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 8-12 hours.

 

Remove the dough from the fridge and let it sit at room temperature for 30-60 minutes.  Preheat the oven to 500 F.

Stretch the dough as needed to reach the corners of the pan.  Use your fingertips to press down on the surface to help stretch the dough and leave little divots all over the surface.  Sprinkle the dough with flake sea salt (I use Maldon).

Bake for 15-20 minutes.  When it’s done, it will have pulled away from the sides of the pan.  Remove it from oven.  As soon as it is cool enough to work with, remove it from the pan and finish cooling on a wire rack.

Notes

Volume measurements are included for your convenience and for those of you who do not have a kitchen scale.  They are approximate.

The Best Non-Stick Pan is your Grandma’s Cast Iron Skillet.

In 1938 a scientist names Roy Plunkett and his team were attempting to make tetrafluoroethylene gas to be used as a refrigerant, but something went wrong. In place of the gas they intended to make, they found a white film that was uniquely, unnaturally slippery. This slippery film had other interesting characteristics as well – it didn’t appear to break down from harsh chemicals or high heat. What they had made by accident was polytetrafluoroethylene or PTFE (the first known forever chemical). These scientists worked for DuPont. The company quickly patented this new polymer and they were off to the races to find a problem for this solution to solve.

By the 1960’s non-stick pans coated with this substance and sold under the name “Teflon” were widespread in American home kitchens. These pans were marketed as easier to clean and allowed for “low fat” cooking as they required less oil. This was the era of Fat-Free “Cream” and Margarine, after all. My parents’ generation spent nearly their entire lives eating foods prepared in these non-stick pans. After a couple of years of use, the non-stick coating would become scratched and flaky, and the pan was due for replacement.

Fast forward 50-60 years of non-stick cooking and widespread of use of these forever chemicals (PFTE, PFAS, PFAS, PFOAS) generally, and we now know that this material is absolutely horrible for us and impossible to get out of the environment. Nearly 100% of Americans have these chemicals in their bloodstream. They are found in every place we look for them, from municipal water supplies, ground and surface water, in rain drops, milk (human and cow), in soil, in fish and meat and plant tissue.

Before Teflon, uncoated Cast Iron (and it’s cousin Carbon Steel) was the preferred material for cookware. Cookware made from these iron alloys develops a non-stick coating the more it is used and “seasoned”. It gets better with time, heavy use, and a little love. A well-cared for cast iron pan can last hundreds of years, passing from one generation to the next with the rich history of family meals and traditions bound up in the metal.

Unlike many modern pots and pans with plastic handles and polymer coatings, Cast Iron cookware can be used at any temperature and in any method of cooking – in the oven, on the burner (gas, electric and induction), or in a camp fire, and you can deep fry in it. It will not crack, melt, scratch, or off-gas toxic fumes. Cast iron cookware retains heat extremely well and cooks food evenly. With all the benefits of cast iron, it is a wonder that home cooks were so quick to give it up when Teflon coated pans came around – I guess therein lies the power of marketing and novelty.

In truth, there are two minor setbacks to cast-iron cookware. First, it is heavy. Cooking with cast iron will keep you strong into old age. Second, it requires special care to prevent rust. This actually isn’t a big deal at all, and if rust does happen, you can fix it. I find the benefits of cast iron greatly outweigh the minor inconveniences. For the last 10-15 years I’ve been on a quest to find the best PFAS free non-stick skillet. I’ve tried ceramic, granite and daimond coated pans and I have found that all the alternative non-stick options still wear out with a couple of year (which I find unacceptable for cookware). I’ve recently replaced all my non-stick pans with Cast Iron and Carbon Steel, and I’ll never go back.

How to care for your cast iron

Caring for cast-iron cookware is not difficult, but it is different from caring for other cookware. The care instructions here for Cast Iron also apply to Carbon Steel pans. The main difference between the two is that Cast Iron is heavy and retains heat very well. Carbon Steel is much lighter, more responsive, and retains less heat.

Seasoning your Cast Iron

Cast Iron cookware needs to be “seasoned” and a well seasoned pan is a non-stick pan. Most newly purchased cast irons come fully seasoned and ready to cook in. They are then seasoned continuously when you cook in them with oils or fats and non-acidic foods like bacon, fried chicken or sauteed dishes. Occasionally throughout their long lives, and if you ever need to rehabilitate an old, poorly cared-for cast iron, you will want to re-season it. This is easy.

First, clean your cast iron (using only water and a scrubbing pad with no soap residue) and wipe it dry with a towel. I use a metal chain-mail scrubber for my cast iron. Then rub the pan all over, top and bottom, and the handles, with a neutral oil (avocado, vegetable, etc). The oil should evenly and thinly coat the pan. Bake the pan upside down at 300 F – 350 F for about 1 hour. Repeat this process a couple of times. Let the pan cool in the oven. Your pan is now seasoned.

Cleaning your Cast Iron

There are a couple of methods for cleaning your cast-iron cookware, depending on what is cooked in it.

For foods that leave a film or residue (like scrambled eggs, gravy, cornbread, etc) – allow the food to dry on the pan until it becomes flaky and separates from the pan – this may take a day or so. Use a metal or plastic scraper or spatula to scrape the food off into the garbage. If the pan looks clean after that point, rub with oil and return it to its drawer. Otherwise, rinse with water and rub clean with a chain mail scrubber. Dry it with a towel and coat it with oil. Put it away.

For foods that don’t leave any residue other than some leftover oil or butter (pancakes, quesadillas, etc), simply wipe the cast iron out with a paper towel while it is still warm and put it away. Cleaning really doesn’t get much easier than that.

Most importantly – make sure the cast iron is dry when you are done with it. Leaving it rinsed in a drying rack is not sufficient. Do not soak it.

How NOT to mess up your Cast Iron.

An image of a rusty cast iron pan.

There are only 3 simple things to remember when caring for your cast iron.

  1. Do not let your cast iron get wet and stay wet.
    • Leaving your cast iron out in the rain (easy to do while camping), or washing it with water and forgetting to dry it will cause your cookware to rust in a hurry. It’s crazy how quickly it will rust. The good news is you can fix a rusty cast iron by scrubbing it with a chain mail scrubber (or if it is severly rusty use a wire brush attachment for a drill). Rinse it out several times until the reddish water runs clear, dry it thoroughly and re-season it.
    • Boiling water or cooking soup is no problem for your cast iron as long as it is emptied and dried afterwards.
  2. Do not use soap
    • Cast iron is porous, and soap residue can seep into the metal, causing off-flavors in your food. Rust can be repaired – I don’t know how to fix a soapy cast iron. Now, some people may be offended by the thought of not using soap to clean their cookware. Just remember, food-borne pathogens and viruses are killed during the cooking process. If the surface looks clean, it’s clean.
  3. Minimize cooking foods that are really acidic.
    • Acidic foods like tomato, fruit, and vinegar-based sauces will eat away at the layer of seasoning. Use stainless steel or enameled pots or pans for these dishes, or plan to re-season your cast iron once you have finished.

Comparing Non-Stick Cookware Options

Non-Stick (PTFE/PFAS, Teflon, and similar)PFAS-Free Non-StickCast IronCarbon Steel
2-5 year lifespanCoating warranty for 2-5 yearsCan last hundreds of yearsCan last hundreds of years
Easy to cleanEasy to cleanPretty easy to clean, but must be dried and oiled afterwards.Pretty easy to clean, but must be dried and oiled afterwards.
Increases exposure to forever chemicals and toxic fumes–Increases intake of nutritional ironIncreases intake of nutritional iron
Lightweight and responsiveMedium-weight and medium-responsiveness.Heavy with excellent heat retentionLightweight and responsive
Use only with relatively low heat cooking. May not be suitable for the oven.Use only with relatively low heat cooking. May not be suitable for the oven.Can be used at any temp. and in any method of cooking.Can be used at any temp. and in any method of cooking.

Cast Iron Cookware is extremely economical. The most basic Lodge 12″ Skillet runs around $30 and you will never need to replace it. Compare that to an All-Clad Ceramic non-stick of the same size for $120 or a basic 12″ Teflon-type Vigor pan for $48, both of which will need to be replaced every 3 years and the math is a no brainer. But putting costs aside, there is something deeply satisfying about owning a thing that is changed and improved by your use and care of it. A Cast Iron gives back what you put into it in the form of a perfect layer of seasoning and the joy of effortlessly flipping a fried egg. It will show its disappointment when you slack off on cleaning up after a meal with a bloom of surface rust. But it is forgiving too. You can remove the rust, repair the pan, and redeem yourself. Cast Iron encourages you to pay more attention, and it rewards you for doing so.

Cornbread and Bacon Stuffing for your Thanksgiving Feast.

Cornbread and Bacon Stuffing, ready to bake.

Stuffing is my favorite Thanksgiving side dish. Why do we only eat this once a year? It is not that much more difficult than all other sides. It freezes well and pairs perfectly with a variety of meats like pork, duck, and goose.

If you’re nitpicking, “stuffing” goes inside the bird, and “dressing” is served on the side. Forget that. I call this stuffing and I never put anything inside the bird except for herbs and aromatics, it messes up the cooking. Furthermore, when you cook this outside of the bird, you get crispy bits on top. “Dressing”, as far as I’m concerned, is what goes on salad. So I will be calling this “stuffing” even though I don’t recommend stuffing the bird with it.

“Stuffing” is essentially a savory bread pudding. I have made many, many different kinds of “stuffing” as a professional chef, providing catered sides for the Holidays as well as fancy side dishes on the restaurant menu (wild mushroom and leek bread pudding, sausage and chestnut stuffing, etc). This is the recipe that I come back to year after year to make for my own family. It is loosely based on my Grandma Mignon’s stuffing, passed down by my mother and her siblings. The Okie side of the family. Cornbread adds sweetness, bacon adds salt, and a minced mirapoix, herbs, and lots of butter make this dish super comforting, savory, and delicious. And since I can’t leave any recipe alone, I also add a little apple.

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Cornbread and Bacon Stuffing for your Thanksgiving Feast.

5 Stars 4 Stars 3 Stars 2 Stars 1 Star 5 from 1 review
  • Author: Kara Taylor- Home Cooks Guide
  • Prep Time: 1 hour
  • Cook Time: 45 minutes
  • Total Time: 1 hour 45 minutes
  • Yield: 8 servings 1x
  • Category: Side Dish
  • Method: Baking
  • Cuisine: American
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Description

An adaptation of my grandmother’s cornbread stuffing from Oklahoma. You can’t beat this one.

Ingredients

Scale

2 cups dry white bread, cubed

7–8 cup cubed day-old cornbread (1  8″x8″ pan)

1 medium onion, minced or 1/4” dice

2 celery stalks, minced or 1/4” dice

1 large carrot, minced or 1/4” dice

1/2 lb bacon diced (ideally dry-cured slab bacon, 1/4″ dice)

2 1/2 cups very flavorful chicken/turkey broth (preferably-home made)*

2 T butter

2 eggs beaten

1 T fresh thyme leaves

1/2 T fresh minced sage

1 medium apple, 1/4″ dice

salt and pepper to taste

paprika for sprinkling

Instructions

In a large frying pan, fry the bacon until starting to become crispy and the fat is rendered.  Add onions, celery, carrot and diced apple and sauté until the vegetables are tender, about 5 minutes.

Add the butter, chicken broth, and herbs, and bring to a boil.  Remove from the heat.  Taste the mixture.  It should be so flavorful and delicious that you want to pour yourself a cup of it and drink it down.  Add salt and pepper as needed to get it to that point. See note**

Allow this mixture to cool for about 15 minutes.  Then slowly add, while whisking, a ladleful to the beaten eggs.  Then add the tempered egg mixture slowly back into the broth-veggie-bacon mixture.

Oil/butter a 9″x13″ baking dish.  Spread out the day-old bread, mixing the white bread evenly with the cornbread.  Handle the cornbread very gently, as it will completely crumble into a fine crumb if not handled carefully.

Pour the broth-veggie-bacon mixture over the bread.  Let it sit for 5-10 minutes.  Very gently, with your hands, fold it to evenly distribute all the ingredients.  Sprinkle the top with paprika and chopped herbs.  Let it sit for another 5-10 minutes before baking or for as long as a day or two (if you want to prep ahead of time – always a good idea for Thanksgiving).

Preheat oven to 350 and bake until hot all the way through, when a butterknife inserted into the middle comes out hot.  For a single batch that’s about 30-40 minutes, uncovered, in a 9×13″ baking dish.  For a double batch, that is 45-60 minutes in a 9×13″ baking dish.  If you like a less-dry stuffing, start with it covered with tinfoil and uncover it for the last 10-15 minutes.

Dish up and Enjoy!

Notes

*You can mince the onion, celery, and carrot by hand or chop coarsely and pulse in a food processor until somewhere between a mince and a 1/4″ dice.  I usually use the food processor for this.

** I make unseasoned (no salt) stock/broth at home and always have some in the freezer.  I generally like to use no salt broth because it makes it more versatile for reductions.  I add salt to the finished product.  Store-bought chicken broth may be “reduced-sodium”.  If you are using no-salt or reduced-salt broth in this recipe plan on adding a good amount of salt to this dish.  The brothy mix should be very well seasoned, almost bordering on too salty by itself.

First Published in November 2022.

The best Cranberry Sauce: Spiced Cranberry-Red Onion Jam

The Sauce for your Holiday Table

This jam is tart, sweet, and savory all at once with undertones of rosemary and warm spices. The perfect accompaniment to turkey, pork and duck confit. Jarred up it is the perfect holiday gift to your friends and neighbors, and Thanksgiving host. This is a recipe that you can make well in advance of Thanksgiving, as soon as the cranberries hit the store shelves. So go ahead and check that box off your Holiday prep list.

Cranberry sauce is used to add balance to an otherwise rich meal. I usually find cranberry sauces to be either aggressively sweet or one-dimensionally tart. I prefer fruit sauces that I serve with meats to have savory elements to them: onions, garlic, stock, mushrooms, or herbs.

This recipe is an adaptation to a popular product I made at The Farm Table years ago, Cranberry-Red Onion Marmalade. I have modified and improved this recipe to make it foolproof, easy, safe for the home kitchen and even tastier.

You’ll love this version of cranberry sauce for your Thanksgiving Turkey. It is also delicious with cream cheese and crackers, on toast, with pork, duck, and other poultry, and as an accouterment to cheese and charcuterie platters, especially with pâté, duck rillettes,smoked pork rillettes and creamy cheeses. It can be added to a pan with a little broth or water or booze and butter to make a glaze for pork chops or even butternut squash and root vegetables. You can mix it with some mayo for leftover turkey sandwiches or a delicious chicken salad.

Pro Tip

Use a Tea Ball Strainer in sauces and soups to place whole spices like peppercorns, cloves and other things that you want removed from the final product. Secure the strainer to the handle of the pot with butcher twine to make it easy to retrieve.
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Cranberry-Red Onion Jam Recipe

5 Stars 4 Stars 3 Stars 2 Stars 1 Star No reviews
  • Author: Kara Taylor- Home Cooks Guide
  • Prep Time: 5 minutes
  • Cook Time: 30 minutes
  • Total Time: 35 minutes
  • Yield: About 3 cups 1x
  • Category: Condiment
  • Method: Boiling
  • Cuisine: American
  • Diet: Gluten Free
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Description

This Cranberry Sauce is seasoned with candied red onion, caramel, rosemary, cinnamon, and black pepper.  A well-balanced sauce perfect for your Holiday Table.

Ingredients

Scale

1 tablespoon oil

1 medium red onion

1 lb fresh cranberries

1 cup sugar

1 cup water

4 inch stick of cinnamon

1 teaspoon black peppercorns in a tea ball strainer

1 4 inch twig of fresh rosemary

Instructions

Heat the oil over medium-high heat and sauté the red onion until completely soft and starting to brown on the edges.

Stir in the sugar and continue cooking, stirring occasionally, until the sugar turns a caramel color.

Stir in the cranberries and then add the water, peppercorn tea ball, and cinnamon stick.

Boil until the cranberries burst and the sauce thickens, stirring down to the bottom frequently, about 10 minutes.

Add the rosemary.  Remove from the heat and let the rosemary steep for 10 minutes more.  Remove the rosemary, the cinnamon stick and the tea ball with peppercorns.

Refrigerate until ready to use or can it in 8 oz jars in a water bath for long-term storage/ gifting.  You can double the recipe to make 6, 8oz jars.

First Published Nov. 20, 2021.