Thanksgiving is an emotional holiday. People travel thousands of miles to be with people they only see once a year. And then discover once a year is way too much.
Johnny Carson
Get outta here with your traditional turkey recipes! While I do love me some turkey, eating the same recipe for 30+ years and experiencing food while traveling has me itching for more ways to season and cook a turkey for Thanksgiving. Last year I did some travel-inspired dessert dishes, but this year I’m focusing on the main event, the bird itself.
North America
Travel on down to Mexico via your taste buds with this mouth-watering recipe. Did you know turkeys are native to North America? Talk about eating local. This recipe features a smoky and slightly spicy taste that will be a crowd pleaser. Serving this dish will introduce a ton of flavor that is sure to steal the show. Want it spicier? Just add your favorite spices and sauces to make the recipe your own!
This looks way more complicated than it actually is. The most time-consuming part is the sauce prep which should only add about 20 minutes total to your time. Plus it’s way healthier than gravy!
South America
Your turkey needs a little pep, pepián de pava that is. Pava is Spanish for turkey and oh man Peruvian turkey is a special form of heaven. You get a little slice of history with your meal as this is a traditional dish mostly associated with Trujillo, a small city in Peru.
The turkey is seasoned with your regular herbs and spices like red onion, leeks, garlic, tomato, etc. Umm.. where does the heaven come in to this recipe? The sauce. It’s in the sauce which is more like a paste packed full of ground roasted peanuts, sesame seeds, chili peppers, and turkey stock. The turkey is cut into small pieces and simmered in the sauce until tender. Is your mouth watering yet? Mine is.
There are a ton of variations on this recipe, so have fun with your seasonings and ingredients!
Europe
The lengths of the internet I went to just to get a recipe based off of a description on a food blog website is…wild. Turns out, Croatian chestnut stuffing recipes are not a common thing to search for recipes for and my results were disappointing. Until… I started searching in Croatian. Do I speak or read this lovely language? I do not. This brings me to my next level of internet sleuthing. I used Google Translate because I am that dedicated to bringing you this recipe out of the sheer stubbornness of my brain and how good this stuffing looks.
You might have to do some guesswork, but who doesn’t love a little recipe experiment during the holidays? Good luck, my friends.
Ingredients: Sorry I have no idea what “dag” or “dl” means. If anyone speaks Croatian and is reading this, please help me. Luckily, this is savory so you can measure with your heart and it won’t turn into something scary in the oven.
- For 4 people:
- 2.5 kg of young turkey
- 1 kg of Lovran maroons (chestnuts)
- 50 dag of veal
- 10 dag of butter
- 3 dl of sweet cream
- 1 dl prosecco
- 1/3 dl cognac
- 1/3 dl of rum
- 20 dag of bacon
- 2 dl of oil
- 4 egg yolks
- 2 bay leaves
- marjoram
- salt and pepper
Instructions:
Remove the entrails from the turkey, wash them, dry them with a cloth and salt them inside and out. Cut the skin of maroons (chestnuts) and roast them on high heat. Peel off the peel and skin from roasted chestnuts and mash 3/4 with a fork. Mix the crushed chestnuts with sweet cream and simmer for ten minutes in melted butter. Clean and cool the remaining quarter of the chestnuts. Mix stewed and roasted chestnuts, add ground veal, stir in egg yolks, cover with cognac, rum and prosecco. Add salt and mix all the ingredients well. Stuff the turkey with this mixture, and sew the opening with thread. Place the turkey in a pan and sprinkle with bay leaf and marjoram. Bake it for two hours in an oven heated to 200 degrees C. Add water to the roasting sauce, boil, strain and serve.
Africa
Sick of seeing the same old sight of a turkey in a baking pan for Thanksgiving? Shake things up with your presentation and flavors with a Nigerian turkey stew. While stew isn’t the traditional way to enjoy this gobble-icious fowl, it’s well worth the effort and your in-laws saying “where’s the turkey?” or “who eats stew for Thanksgiving”. They will immediately retract their statements when you feed them this tasty dish.
One of the best things about stew is its versatility. Want to add veggies? It’ll taste great. Want to pour it over a side dish? You can do that. Want to eat it by itself? Perfect. You do you. Mix and match however you choose.
Asia
Now wait a minute. You can combine two iconic components of Thanksgiving into one dish? AND you don’t have to cook an entire turkey for hours on end and panic that you won’t be able to make everything else on time because your oven isn’t big enough for a turkey and the side dishes you want to make? Problem solved. I present to you the ground turkey and green bean stir fry. No more will your turkey and green bean casserole be separate entities. Rejoice in the marriage of two icons. (I realize I’m very extra on this blog post and I love it. Living my best sassy life over here.)
In case you think ground turkey at Thanksgiving is blasphemous (not sorry), here’s a bonus recipe featuring another wonderful Asian-inspired turkey recipe for your cooking pleasure.
Australia
My blog post was going so well up until this point. Australia isn’t known for Turkeys, Thanksgiving, or a really distinct culinary experience. They’ve produced some incredibly talented chefs, many of them have fantastic TV shows. Way to go Australia! My solution? You get a great turkey recipe from one of those Australian chefs, Curtis Stone. It’s the best I can do.
Fun story, this Australian chef came up with a Cajun-inpired roasted turkey. It looks divine. There’s also bonus gravy and roasted veggie dish recipes. Time to celebrate!
Antarctica
Luckily, you don’t need a recipe for this one. Any one can do this. For a taste of Antarctica and its frigid cuisine, leave your turkey in the freezer until freezer burned or frostbitten. Throw away. Proceed to a restaurant or call for takeout somewhere above freezing.
Curious Artifact 