Roast Turkey Breast & Mini Sweet Potato Pies

 

It’s November and few things are more associated with the month than turkey. Except in my family, where we’ve never had turkey at Thanksgiving. We usually do a beef rib roast, which has always been fine in its own right, but as I’ve gotten older and been inundated with visions of beautiful golden roasted turkeys, I start to crave it at this time of year and don’t stop until I break down and go to a diner and get some turkey and mashed potatoes. No more this year! I decided. I want turkey at Thanksgiving. 

Since not everyone in the family is a turkey-lover, I asked my mother to get just a small turkey breast. This way we wouldn’t have spent tons of money or have a lot of meat go to waste if the Great Turkey Experiment failed. Due to many years of watching Good Eats, and going on Cinnamon’s advice, I decided to brine the turkey breast. I mixed a half-gallon of apple juice with a half-gallon of water and two cups of kosher salt and let the turkey sit in the refrigerator overnight. In the morning I dumped out the brine, patted the turkey down with some paper towels, and put it back in the refrigerator to sit uncovered for a few hours (one of the Food Network chefs – I think it was Anne Burrell – said that this would help the skin crisp up in the oven). When roasting time came I slathered the breast with some softened butter and improvised a rub of rosemary, sage, paprika, thyme, garlic powder, salt, and pepper. Admittedly, I wasn’t sure if I should add salt to the rub, but I had always heard that brining doesn’t make meat salty, so I threw it in.

A couple of hours later (I wasn’t really keeping track of time as I had my handy-dandy digital thermometer to gauge the meat’s doneness), this beauty came out of the oven:

After a good 30-minute rest, I picked up a knife and a giant fork and went at the turkey Alton Brown style. Which is to say, instead of cutting off slices of breast, I removed the entire lobe from the bone, then cut that horizontally into slices. The meat that came off that bone was divine – juicy, tender, flavorful, and…well…salty. Oof. It occurred to me that two things could have been at fault here. 1) I shouldn’t have added salt to the rub. Obviously. 2) I brined the turkey for too long. While brines themselves do not make meats salty, over-brining can and a good 10 hours for a 4-pound breast does seem a bit like overkill.

The skin didn't really stay on, but that was a perfection I wasn't striving to reach on the first go.

The saltiness aside, the meat was still delicious and enjoyed by even the most turkey-reticent amongst us. I would say that deems this experiment a success, worthy of repeating for years to come. Just, a little less salt next time.

*

Riding high on my pie feat from a few weeks ago, I decided that I would try my hand at sweet potato pie for Thanksgiving. Pumpkin pies are so common as to be almost boring (although I still love them), but sweet potato pie is sort of its forgotten cousin. I made the pie almost identically to my winter squash pie, roasting the sweet potatoes until soft, mashing them, then letting them cool before adding them to the egg and spice mixture. However, I did make a few changes to make pie a bit healthier. Instead of 1 ½ cups of heavy cream, I used a cup of fat free evaporated milk, in the hopes that this would make the center a bit denser and produce a more pronounced sweet potato flavor. I used Splenda for baking (white and brown sugars), which lessens the sugar content quite a bit, for those with diabetic needs. Finally, instead of making one big pie, I made ten mini pies, cutting the unbaked dough into rounds and fitting them into cupcake tins. 

Mashed, baked sweet potatoes

Sweet potatoes mixed with evaporated milk and spices

On the right you can see the glass I used to create my circles of dough

I forewent the blind baking, as well, and just added the filling straight to the unbaked pie cups (from a large measuring cup, at the oven this time…no more carrying liquid pies across rooms).  About 40 minutes later, I pulled these out:

Once the pies had cooled, I whipped up another batch of my bourbon whipped cream and piped a little bit on top:

 

Pretty, yes, but how did the pies taste? The crust, I must say, was fantastic, so kudos to me on that, but otherwise I’m a little disappointed to say that they tasted exactly like pumpkin pie. They weren’t bad, but they weren’t exciting either. Firstly, I’m not exactly sure that lessening the liquid content of the filling was for the best. Yes, I wanted to be able to taste more of the filling and less of the cream, but with just one cup of evaporated milk, I missed the fluffiness that the cream imparted. I’ll have to play around with ratios of milk and cream and see if I can get the texture I want without loading the pie up with calories. Secondly, while the flavor of the filling was perfectly fine, it was just that: fine. Nothing more, nothing less. I used the standard combination of cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and allspice in the mixture, but the final pie begged for something more, maybe some grated fresh ginger or a sprinkling of paprika for a hint of smokiness (I like it on my mashed sweet potatoes). I’m not sure what, exactly, the pies lacked, but you can bet that I’ll tinker around with it until I get the superb flavor that I want. Sweet potato pie hasn’t seen the last of me.