The Ultimate Thanksgiving Dinner | Tasty 101

If you're buying a fresh turkey, you want to buy it at least two days in advance. If you're buying a frozen turkey, you're going to want to buy it five days in advance. When buying your turkey, you want to plan on leaving about a pound and a half per person. If you're cooking for a large crowd, you're better off getting two smaller birds instead of one massive one. With a bigger turkey, it's going to take so long to cook. By the time the whole bird is cooked through, the outside is going to be almost inedible. The safety concerns you want to focus on when thawing your turkey in a fridge is making sure that you're first putting your turkey on some sort of baking tray to catch any juices if they leak through the bag. Also, keeping it on the bottom will ensure that there's nothing below it. You don't want raw turkey juice all over your fridge. With a fresh turkey, you still want to buy it early because the refrigerators at the grocery store are much colder than what you have at home. And it's still going to be pretty solid, so you want to make sure that it's totally defrosted in your fridge for a day. If your turkey is frozen, there's two ways to defrost it. One, you could do it in the fridge. You could also do a quicker method by sticking your turkey in a big sink or even a cooler and filling it up with fresh cold water every 30 minutes until it's totally defrosted. You should allow about 30 minutes to thaw for each pound of turkey. A day before you're going to cook your turkey, you're going to want to brine it. There's two different kinds of ways to brine. The traditional method is to wet brine, which basically means sitting your turkey in a saltwater solution. We're going to do a dry brine, which just means we're just going to rub salt all over it. It's a little bit less wasteful and also easier to do. First things first, you're going to measure out the amount of salt you need. You're going to want to take a look at the weight of your turkey and use half a teaspoon per pound. Before you get the turkey out, you want to get a few things ready to go. Make sure you have a garbage nearby, a pair of kitchen shears, a plastic bag, and a fresh baking tray with a rack on it. So you want to cut the plastic off the bird, making sure not to cut the skin or flesh of the turkey, and remove the turkey from the whole bag. And then take that baking tray away with the bag and replace it with the fresh baking tray with the rack on it. So then we're going to get our bag ready to go, and we're going to start cutting off any excess that we definitely aren't going to use. If there's extra skin around the neck, you can go ahead and cut that off, and then turn your bird around. And if the turkey legs are secured in that plastic holder, go ahead and release them so that you can easily get into the cavity. So then you're going to reach in and grab any innards or a bag of giblets. And some people use these for gravy, but in this recipe we're not going to, so you can just discard them. And then using this disposable paper towel, dry off your bird by patting it on all sides and all the crevices. Lift the legs, lift the arms, and make sure the whole bird is dry so that the salt will stick to the skin. So you can start by just sprinkling the salt all over the bird. And again, you're going to want to get under all the arms and all the crevices, in the cavity, on top of all the skin. Turn the bird over, just salt the entire thing to make sure that it's coated entirely in salt. And then you're going to put it in the fridge uncovered for one day. If you're going to brown any longer than that, you're going to want to cover it with cling film until a day before. And then you can take off the cling film and let the skin dry out. And this process is going to work as a flavor enhancer. It's also going to allow the meat to hold on to more moisture and dry out the skin so it's nice and crispy. You're going to want to start prepping your turkey for cooking a few hours before you want to serve it. But again, that's going to largely depend on the weight of your turkey. Before you get your turkey out, you're going to make a butter mixture. And you can put whatever you want in here. You want to start with some softened butter. We chose to go with fresh sage, chopped garlic, dried thyme, and dried rosemary. We used a smaller amount of dried thyme and rosemary because those are quite strong. It's going to be a much more powerful flavor than fresh herbs. And then you're going to mash all that together. You can do this a day in advance all the way up to just before you prep the turkey. And once that's all ready to go, just leave it off to the side in preparation for your turkey. So to roast your turkey, you can use one of the more traditional roasting pans. Or you can use one of the one-time-use aluminum trays. They're cheap. They're easy. It's also great if you don't have a lot of storage in your kitchen. Just put a baking tray underneath it for support. A lot of roasting pans will come with this rack, but we're actually not going to use it. It doesn't allow for great air circulation underneath the turkey and leaves for a soggy bottom as well as longer cooking time. So first, we're going to cut off the wingtips. And you're going to feel for the joint and then cut right in the middle of that. And then put the wingtips into the roasting pan to use for the gravy. And next, we want to cut off the wishbone. And this is going to make your life a lot easier when you're carving later. And the easiest way to do that is to cut off any extra skin so you can see the wishbone. And you'll see kind of this white outline that looks like a wishbone. And then you're going to get in with a little paring knife. And you want to cut the flesh on either side of the bone. Slowly work your way from the tip all the way down to the two legs. And then you can go in with your finger and kind of tug at it. And it should come loose. And if it's still pretty stuck to the bones, you can also use kitchen shears to cut it loose. And then you can kind of get your hand in there and twist the top off. And once you release the wishbone, you can throw that in the roasting tray as well for gravy. And then you can move the roasting tray aside for now to make more room. And then turn the bird so that the legs are facing towards you. If your turkey came with one of those plastic holders, we want to get rid of that before we cook it. So you can kind of reach in there and give it a good tug. And it should come out pretty easily. So now you want to start loosening the skin from the breast to make room for some butter. And you're going to peel the skin up a little bit and then use your fingers to release the skin from the breast. And you can also use a rubber spatula instead of your hands. Just be careful that you don't pierce the skin. And putting the butter under the skin is going to keep the breast moist as well as keep the skin crispy. And it also means we're not going to have to baste the bird because we have the butter already trapped in here. And that will, again, result in crispier skin. Once you're happy you have enough of the herb butter under the skin, you're going to rub the rest of the butter all over the remainder of the bird. And similar to the other steps, you want to make sure you're getting in every crevice, lift up the legs, turn it over, fully season the bird and the herb butter. If you have any remaining butter, you can rub a little bit of that inside all around the cavity as well. And instead of stuffing, we're going to put just a few aromatics in, but not too many that it's going to block the airflow. And this will give it a little bit of extra flavor while leaving plenty of room for hot air to flow through during cooking. And then with the rest of the onion, you can chop that up, throw it in the roasting pan with a chopped up carrot and a little bit of celery as well for flavor. And then empty a carton of chicken broth into the roasting pan as well. And then to avoid any mess on the way to the oven, you can place your rack on top of the roasting tray just to avoid any dripping in your kitchen. And then any juices that came out of the turkey when you were buttering it can go in as well. This isn't a super traditional gravy, but it's going to give you tons of flavor and all the drippings from the cooking of the turkey will drip into the roasting pan and flavor the gravy as well. You want to place the roasting pan on the lowest rack of your oven. And then with the turkey on that baking rack, you're going to put that directly on the oven rack right above the roasting tray. We baked our turkey at 325 for about two hours. But what you're really looking for is to make sure that the turkey is reading at 165 degrees Fahrenheit before serving it. But take it out of the oven when it reaches 160 degrees Fahrenheit. And while it's resting, the temperature will continue to rise an extra five or so degrees. It's a good idea to start checking it about 90 minutes in. The turkey is going to cook a lot quicker in this method because you haven't stuffed the cavity and there's more airflow all around the bird. You're going to rest the bird for about 20 to 30 minutes before you start carving it. And juices might still flow out of it a little bit. So it's a good idea to put this on a baking rack just to catch any of those juices. And in the meantime, you can finish off the gravy. So then we're going to take out all the larger pieces that we can grab with tongs. And then you're going to strain the gravy over a pot. And then at this point, you're going to bring this to a boil and reduce that and let it thicken. This stock is good to use as is, and it'll soak right into the turkey. But if you want it a little bit thicker, ladle a few spoonfuls into a small bowl filled with two tablespoons of flour and really beat it to make sure that there's no lumps. And then you can kind of gradually stir a bit into the gravy. And as the gravy boils, that's what's going to trigger the flour to thicken the sauce. So wait till it boils first before you decide if you need more. To keep it warm while you carve, you can put it on a very low heat on the stovetop at this point and just stir it every few minutes. You can put it in a gravy boat at this point. You can put it in a thermos even to keep it really warm. Or you can just reheat it right before you serve it, giving it a quick whisk to smooth it out again. So first, we're going to transfer the turkey onto a large cutting board with a lip to catch any juices. To stabilize the bird, you can release the legs from the body. And then that will make it a little bit easier to carve it. And to do that, you're going to find where the leg kind of meets the breast. Cut down that line and kind of follow the same line. And you don't have to cut all the way through at this point. You're just kind of going to get it started. You can use your hands to pull the leg and the thigh off the carcass. At this point, the hip joint should pop out pretty easily. And to make it even more stable, you can tuck that leg underneath the wing bone. To cut off the breast, you're going to find the breastbone, which is right down the middle. And then you're going to cut just on the side of that. You can go almost straight down, kind of following the line of the breastbone. And this should be pretty easy, since we did that work earlier of removing the wishbone. You're going to cut down as far as you can. And then if you need to release it, you can cut horizontally right by the wing and release the breast from the carcass. And when you were pulling the legs, if you weren't able to release the hip joint from the carcass, just go through at this point and cut all the way through that joint and release any extra skin or meat that's still connected to the carcass. And we'll put this aside and finish cutting it later. The wings can be a little tricky as well. To release the wings, you're looking to find where the shoulder meets the breast. If you're having a lot of trouble with it, you can just actually use your hands to release the joint. And then once you kind of pop it out, then you can use your knife to finish the job. So if you had any remaining breast meat that you weren't able to get off when you cut the breast off the first time, that'll come off when you remove the wing. Don't throw this away just yet. Inevitably, there's going to be a little bit of meat left on the carcass. After dinner, you can always get the remaining meat off of there and you can use that for leftovers later or use the whole carcass in a soup. We'll start with the breast. And what we're going to do is get it back on your cutting board. What you're doing here is cutting across the grain and that'll make it more tender. And also it's going to give everyone a piece of the crispy skin instead of that one lucky person if you were to cut slices off the bird. And you can set those aside on your platter. And for the leg, we're going to cut the drumstick off of the thigh. What you're trying to do is cut through the joint, which should happen pretty easily, but it's kind of difficult to find. So you can kind of do an exploratory cut and get through the flesh so you can see where you're going. And you can kind of wiggle your knife to find it. If it's really difficult, you should probably just pick up your knife and try a different area. Or once you've cut most of the meat, you can use your hands to just kind of pop the joint off. Now you can put the drumstick on the platter. And with the thigh, we're going to cut the meat off the bone. You can turn the thigh over and see where the bone is and then cut on either side and then just cut that into bite-sized pieces. And for the wings, you're just going to cut through this joint. So you're just going to cut off the skin and any meat that's on there. And then you can use your hands to release the flat from the wing. And once you pop the joint, you can use your knife to cut through any remaining skin or meat. And you can cut off any extra breast meat that was left on the wing. Now that you have all the meat on the platter, you can kind of rearrange it and make sure that it's nice and presentable. And you can put the nicer parts with a nice brown crispy skin on top, maybe the kind of more random pieces underneath that. And as a nice finishing touch, you can add some fresh sage if you have any leftover for color, maybe some lemons. It's going to be a nice way to cover up any imperfections, but also just add a nice kind of bright freshness. Cooking a turkey can be a daunting task, but this recipe is great because it's so simple, it's low maintenance, and it's really delicious. Now's the best part. You get to douse it in gravy and everyone can tell you how delicious your turkey is. Mashed potatoes are a must, especially when it comes to the holidays. It's basically the side dish that keeps on giving. Am I right? Surprisingly, there are quite a few mistakes when it comes to mastering the art of mashed potatoes. We went through about 20 pounds of potatoes to bring you the ultimate creamy, super smooth mashed potatoes. They're seriously so good. You're going to want to lick the plate. There's two types of potatoes, starchy and waxy. For mashed potatoes, you want a starchy potato. A potato with higher starch and low moisture will yield a fluffier inside. We're using Yukon Gold potatoes. They're actually somewhere in between a starchy and a waxy potato. They're harder to over mash and have a foolproof creamy texture. We're going to peel the potatoes before boiling. Some people like to leave the skin on their mashed potatoes, which creates a little bit more texture, but for really creamy, silky smooth mashed potatoes with a uniform texture, it's going to work a lot better with the skin off. Quick tip. To keep your potatoes from discoloring and oxidizing as they sit out, place them in a bowl of cold water while you work. After you've peeled your potatoes, cut them into one inch cubes. This way they're going to cook more quickly and evenly. Add your potatoes to a pot of cold water and add a very generous pinch of salt. This is going to help build the layers of flavor as the potatoes cook, which means you'll need less salt down the line. Now we're going to bring the potatoes to a soft boil over high heat. Once you've reached a soft boil, reduce the heat to low and simmer for about 12 minutes. You'll know your potatoes are ready for mashing when they're fork tender. Go ahead and remove the pot from the heat and drain the potatoes through a colander. At this point, you're actually going to place the potatoes back in the pot over medium high heat and stir them around for two to three minutes. That's just going to release any excess moisture. At the end of this, the potatoes should be super dry. When it comes to mashed potatoes, most people use a potato masher or even a fork. Some people use a potato ricer for a more uniform texture, which we're also really big fans of. If you don't have any of those tools and want to get a similar result, you can use a fine mesh sieve. Place the boiled potatoes in the sieve and use a spatula to gently push them down. I'm not going to lie, this definitely takes more muscle and is more time consuming, but the potatoes are going to be so silky smooth and beautiful, it's really worth the effort. Whatever you do, do not use a food processor or a hand mixer. This is going to overwork the potatoes, creating a gummy-like paste. And let's be real, no one wants that. Now, it wouldn't be mashed potatoes without adding some butter. You want to use unsalted butter because it allows you to control the amount of salt in your mashed potatoes. We made so many variations of mashed potatoes and taste tested all of them. We tried cold butter, milk, melted butter, sour cream, cream cheese, heavy cream. And after all that, we decided to stick with melted butter and heavy cream. While some people do like sour cream and cream cheese, we found that the flavor really stood out and took away from that uniform consistency and texture that we were looking for. Quick tip, you always want to add your butter before adding any cream or milk. This is going to ensure that the texture of the potato remains firm before being softened by all that cream. If you add your butter and your cream all at once, it's going to create this really soupy texture, whereas if you go gradually, it'll be nice and smooth and creamy. So remember how we talked about building flavors? This is another time where you're going to season it with salt. Add your heavy cream to a small saucepan over medium-high heat. This is also the moment when you can enhance the flavor of your mashed potatoes. We're going to add some rosemary sprigs and garlic, but you can get creative with other herbs and ingredients as well. Bring the heavy cream mixture to a simmer. Once it's simmering for a few minutes and that cream is getting really infused with flavor, you're going to strain out the garlic and the rosemary through a sieve and then add just the cream to the potatoes little by little until they're fully incorporated. Remember, if you add all the heavy cream at once, it's just going to become a soupy mess. As you fold the heavy cream into the mashed potatoes, you're going to see this really smooth texture start to come together. I mean, it's so beautiful. It's that easy. Your potatoes are finally ready to serve. So because it's tasty, we're going to top it with more butter. We're also going to add some freshly ground black pepper, some chives. You can really experiment with your toppings, but this is a pretty classic preparation. Or if it's that special time of year, pass the gravy, baby. I mean, come on. What's not to love? And there you have it. The creamiest mashed potatoes you've ever laid eyes on. Or in our case, our taste buds. Ooey gooey and packed with delicious melty cheese. Nothing says comfort like a homemade mac and cheese. And today we're going to show you how we make our favorite baked mac and cheese. Countries across Europe were creating versions of this dish dating back to the Middle Ages. There's even a recipe in a 14th century Italian cookbook for sheet noodles cut into squares and sprinkled with grated cheese. While serving as a diplomat in France, Thomas Jefferson tried the French version and loved it so much, he requested that his enslaved chef, James Hemings, recreate it. Historians believe Hemings should be given the true credit for bringing this dish to life. Just like Hemings, many other enslaved chefs set the culinary example across America and often aren't credited for it. Hemings' dish was served in 1802 at a state dinner. The dish grew in popularity from then on. So how do you make mac and cheese? There's only one place to start, and that's the noodles. There's so many options when it comes to pasta. There's radiatore, fusilli, cavatelli, shells, and probably the most commonly associated with mac and cheese, elbows. We recommend any short curly pasta. We've decided that our favorite pasta for mac and cheese are shells. They're just the perfect size and their shape allows you to get a beautiful burst of sauce with each noodle. So let's get cooking. We're going to boil the pasta in well-salted water for two minutes less than recommended on the package. You want the pasta to have a slight bite because it'll actually finish cooking in the oven. When it comes to mac and cheese, there are two types of cheeses we need. A melting cheese, which adds to the texture, and a flavored cheese, which adds to the taste. So what is an ideal melting cheese? American and Velveeta are both great melting cheeses because they have sodium citrate in them, which as it melts gives this creamy, gooey texture. Mozzarella is also a good melting cheese because it's super creamy and makes great cheese bowls. But for our melting cheese today, we're going with American. And what makes a good flavored cheese? A few that are great for flavor in your mac and cheese are fontina, which has a buttery and fruity flavor. Gruyere, which has a sweet, nutty, earthy flavor. Smoked gouda, which has a meat-like flavor. Havarti, which has a sweet, herby flavor. And cheddar, which has a bold and bright flavor. We've chosen sharp cheddar as our flavor cheese. This gives you the best of both worlds and creates the cheesiest, creamiest, and gooiest mac and cheese. You always want to shred the cheese yourself because the pre-shredded cheese from the store is usually coated in additives that make it harder to melt. Now, we all know mac and cheese is only as good as its cheese sauce. We're gonna start ours by adding some butter to a pot. Once it begins foaming, we'll add some mustard powder and cayenne and toast them for about a minute. Seasoning the dish at this step will really help to add depth of flavor. The spices will bloom and become aromatic, which will enhance their flavors and boost their intensity. Now, while you can season your mac and cheese with anything you want, we're keeping our recipe pretty simple. The bit of heat from our spices will help cut through the richness of the cream sauce, providing some nice balance. Now to add our liquids. The three most common liquids people use for mac and cheese are usually milk, heavy cream, and evaporated milk. The biggest difference between the three liquids is their water content. We found the combination of whole milk and heavy cream gave the best flavor and creamiest mouthfeel. Once our liquids come to a simmer, we'll add an egg. This will give the mac and cheese a custody-like texture that helps the sauce bind to the pasta really well. Just be sure to temper your egg by adding a little bit of the warm milk mixture first. That way, we don't end up with scrambled eggs. Let's add our cheese. Now, this is the tricky part because while extremely satisfying, things can go very wrong here. Some cheeses melt differently than others, causing the fat and oil to begin to separate, resulting in a grainy sauce. But we've designed our mac and cheese to be foolproof. Since we aren't using a roux, our mac and cheese sauce won't crack. Another way to ensure your sauce won't crack is by adding cornstarch. Adding it directly to the cheese mixture rather than creating a slurry will help the sauce thicken more evenly and prevent clumping. And the key to evenly melt the cheese and ensure proper emulsification is to add the cheese off of the heat. Keep stirring while adding the cheese handful by handful. You'll know your sauce is done when the cheeses have melted smoothly and it's slightly thickened. While the mac and cheese bakes, the sauce will continue to thicken. So we wanna make a super creamy sauce to start so that when it's finished baking, we don't end up with a dry mac and cheese. We'll add our cooked shells to our cheese sauce and coat. Wow, I'm drooling. Let's add this to the baking dish and top with more cheese. We found that the combination of cheddar, mozzarella, and Parmesan cheese creates the most delicious and satisfyingly golden brown and crispy top. It's time to bake. We're focusing on the classic baked version. Baking mac and cheese allows you to get that crunchy cheesy top and the best corner pieces. Some people cover their mac and cheese with foil to help prevent the dish from drying out while it's in the oven. We've made the ultimate saucy mac and covered our entire dish in cheese so we don't need to cover it with anything additional. Since we want a crispy top to compliment our saucy mac, we wanna finish the dish under the broiler. The oven alone will help the topping melt, but the broiler will give it that iconic golden brown and crispy top we're after. It's the moment we've all been waiting for, but hold on. Before you sacrifice the roof of your mouth for this ooey gooey goodness, make sure to let your mac and cheese rest for at least five minutes. This will allow the sauce to set up a little and achieve its maximum creaminess. With mac and cheese, the opportunities are endless. You can have it as a side, in a bread bowl, or simply as is. It's filling, warm, and comforting. This mac and cheese is as gouda as it gets. Shell yeah. Dinner rolls are actually a super sexy, super satisfying, and honestly like one of the better parts of a big banquet meal. It's a very easy introduction to dough, an introduction to bread, but dinner roll is basically like your fourth utensil, right? So you have your fork, your knife, your spoon, and then you have your dinner roll, and that's what's gonna help sop up all of like the really best parts of your dinner. So respect it. There's a bunch of different types of flour out there. You've got the whole wheat that has the bran in there. You've got almond flour, all these different gluten-free options nowadays, we're gonna use all-purpose. When you're starting out making bread, all-purpose is a great one to start with because it is so refined. It's very predictable. It's gonna give you the result that you're after. Yeast. So there's like three standard ones you can get in the U.S. and around the world. They're called different things in different places. You have active dry, you have instant yeast, and you also have fresh. Here we have all the different tests for yeast to see what would the result be in the bread. Could we really taste or see a difference in the rising in terms of speed, how big the dough's got, all of that. So we bloomed the fresh and the active dry. We did not bloom the rapid because it is not recommended to do so. We all used the exact same amount of ingredients. We used the flour from the same bag, but all of ours were different levels of soft. The instant was super hard. The active dry was kind of the mama bear of them. It was like kind of the in-between and the fresh was like super soft. So because we wanna have a little bit more control over our dough, we wanted to use active dry. So to wake it up, we're gonna put it in a liquid and the sugar and butter are gonna act as food for the yeast. To make our blooming liquid, we're gonna start with some warm milk. We're gonna add a little bit of warm water and melted butter. To that, we're gonna add sugar. Sugar is gonna be the main thing that's gonna give our yeast some food to really quickly start to work. In goes our yeast. We're gonna stir it to make sure that the granules can evenly dissolve and be mixed in evenly with all those ingredients. So we're gonna leave that for about five minutes and it should look something like this. If you don't see anything close to this, you should throw everything away and start with some new yeast. Your yeast might be old or dead. So once you've bloomed our yeast, we're gonna set it off to the side. In goes the flour and the salt and we're gonna just super quickly incorporate the salt into the flour. Again, so it doesn't like hit a huge block of salt when the yeast goes in. We're gonna add an egg to this dough that's gonna further enrich our dough. It's also gonna give us a little bit of color, a bit of extra flavor and a bit of oomph. Add it to our bloomed yeast mixture and then just quickly as you can, pour it into the flour and we're gonna use the same knife just to hydrate as much of the flour as quickly as I can. So once I'm getting it to a roughly kind of shaggy dough, I can pour it out of my bowl without making too huge a mess onto a clean floured surface and really start to make this into a dough. This dough is definitely on the wetter side so you wanna keep a little bit of bench flour and that just means a little extra flour around to add to your dough as you go to make it a little bit easier to work with and so that it's not too wet. The cool thing with bread is that wetter is better unlike pastry which you want to be on the drier side. So it's pretty fun to work with, it's pretty easy to work with as well but if it's really sticking to your hands or to the surface, all you need to do is add a little bit more flour and it'll be much easier to work with. And depending on like how old your flour is, how big your egg is, I mean there's so much that's going in here, you're probably gonna need more flour than you think. Before you go too far, get all these extra bits off your hands from when you first start rolling because no matter what, like you're gonna have a little bit of those scraggly bits on your hands. So get those off and start incorporating those into your dough early so that you don't have like big scraggly bits later on. Again, because you're gonna be kneading for a good 10 minutes or so, those will pretty easily be incorporated into the dough but if you wait too long then you'll just have like a big chunk. So kneading. This is one thing that I think people tend to underdo almost always. So if you're doing this by hand, I promise you it's like almost impossible to over knead. If you are using a stand mixer, it is possible and what will start to happen and will kind of fall apart. It'll just turn almost like liquidy and that means that you've just overworked the gluten and you over kneaded it. But by hand, trust me, you're probably under kneading it. What I like to do is I like to roll the dough on top of itself and then push it out. Rotate, fold it over itself, push again. Rotate, pull over itself and push. So you can just continue to do this. I like to work kind of in a bit of a ball shape, always making kind of the shape of a roll. And once I'm getting the dough to a place that I kind of like, I'm actually gonna switch to this heart method. It just makes it a little bit more efficient. So you just roll it back and then by the time you've come down towards you, it's in the shape of a cylinder almost. And then you roll the other way. So you're making sure that you're really evenly kneading out the dough and not totally exhausting one of your arms. And to tell that you've kneaded enough, a really easy thing to do is to pull off a piece of the dough and make a little bit of a window pane with it and stretch it out. If it doesn't tear, you can actually see those strands of gluten that have developed. And that should give you a pretty good indicator that your dough is ready to rise. Or you can push into the dough and if it bounces back at you, you've developed enough gluten and the dough is ready to sit. Once we're ready, we're going to oil a bowl, put our dough inside of it, make sure that's covered in the oil as well so it doesn't stick. And then cover with cling film to rise in a warm area. And then to get all of the dough and flour and everything off the bench, these bench scrapers are amazing and such an easy like cook's tool. You should definitely get one. As this cling film kind of fogs up, that's actually all this gas being released that we talked about. That's the yeast working. So all of that rising in that dough is creating that little bit of like condensation within the bowl. So this is actually a rise. The proof is going to happen after it's doubled in size. If you want a slow rise, you can put the dough in your fridge. Whereas if leaving it out in a warm place, it'll happen a lot quicker. With active dry yeast, it should double in size in about an hour. Take off the cling and pop. So we punch it pretty much just because it's fun, but also because we're going to turn out the dough and even out all those bubbles in the dough. So I'm going to knead it again for a few minutes and kind of even out the different texture within the dough. And then we're going to cut it into pieces. So if you want super exact dough balls, you should definitely invest in a scale and weigh them out. Another trick, if you want really even sized bread rolls is to always work in halves. So the easiest thing for me is I just continue to cut things in half. So I have this big piece. I'm going to cut this piece in half and just continue to cut these pieces in half. And for me, it's easier to make them into round balls again. Again, just to make sure that I'm being super, you know, precise with my cut to get even sized bread rolls. So now that we have our dough divided into its pieces, it's time to shape them into their cute little rolls. So before I even start shaping it, I'm going to start to knead the little pieces. So you can do a few different things. You can knead it the same way that we were talking about before and press it into a little disc first and then take the outer pieces and push them into the center. But what you're really trying to do when it's all said and done, regardless of whatever technique that you use, is you're trying to make the bottom of the piece that you're rolling taut. So what we really want is to gather all the outside pieces in the middle and then make the top of it taut. So what I'm doing here is I'm using my hands to kind of pinch from like the middle of the roll to the very bottom. And when I do that, I'm also rotating my hands. So every time I'm doing that, I'm squeezing the bottom and making sure that I'm making the top taut and making all the ugly pieces be on the bottom. So take your time with shaping. You've gotten it this far. Make sure that they're really beautiful when it's all said and done. But this is also something that you can definitely outsource. I always get made fun of at Tasty because I'm always trying to give people jobs to do. But if you have a whole bunch of people coming over, this is definitely an easy way to get everyone involved. And playing with dough is very satisfying. There's just something about it that's very soothing and very soulful in some ways. So there's no one who's gonna say no. I mean, it's so fun to do. So once we're happy with all of our shaped dough, I'm gonna place them on a parchment-lined baking sheet. And you want them to be a little bit far, but not too far because I really want these to touch a little bit. That's the dinner roll look. Like, you gotta have it. I know you're eager. You've gotten these all in their perfect shapes, but they need to rise just a little bit more. So the first one was the rise, and now our rolls are going to proof. We're gonna cover it up with cling and then let it sit for 30 minutes, an hour. We want them to rise again. We've been a little bit, like, needy with the dough. You guys have had, like, too much time together. So now the dough needs a little bit of space before it'll really perform. And look how pillowy those are. I mean, seriously? Like, look how much they've risen, and they're not touching, but not too much. Last thing. So if you watched our pie episode, we tested a whole bunch of different washes to put on dough before it goes in the oven. And honestly, egg is just super easy and classic and gives you a really great shiny brown. And for that dinner roll shine, like, you need an egg wash. Take your time. Like, these are delicate little babies at this point. So if you come in real hot with that brush and just, like, really poke them, they will deflate a little bit. Now, this is totally optional, but we are going to top ours with a little bit of sea salt, mostly because I just can never get enough salt. Season high. The higher you go, it'll be a more even distribution. If you season too close to the roll, it'll all kind of get in one clump. I'm sure you've experienced that before. We tested a few different temperatures. So bread, ideally, doesn't need a pretty high heat, but these are little baby rolls. So we did have to throw back the heat a little bit. We ended up with 375. Wow. And that gives us, like, the perfect amount of brown while cooking the rolls through. Freshly baked bread is just one of those things that, I mean, the crumb on this, the texture here. I mean, you could sleep on this. It's like a pillow. I mean, look at that. It's got a great, sweet, savory flavor on the inside. You've got the sesame seeds. You can do garlic butter. You can do, I mean, anything. Or you can do nothing and just sop it up with some gravy or butter or jam or... It cannot be overstated how much this fourth utensil will contribute to your next dinner party. All right, guys. It's that time of year again. It's pie season. You want the iconic comfort, classic, the fat, the fruit, the texture, the crust, all of it. I mean, pie has it all. We tested, like, a million of them. I'm kind of sick of pies, but I'm not sick of pies because even after making, like, 20 of them, like, at the end of the day, I still just want to eat pie. The thing with pie is you really have to nail the pie crust. And don't be intimidated. It seems like it's something that's going to be difficult to work with, but honestly, it's just three things, fat, flour, and water. The thing about using, like, a liquid fat, like a coconut oil or olive oil or something like that is, honestly, I find it so hard to work with. Just stick to butter or a solid fat. So we did test shortening, butter, and a combo of those two things. We did a taste test. We did, like, a tender test and just, like, an overall how was it to work with. We found that shortening does tend to give you a little bit more on the flaky side, but it doesn't taste as good. And the combo was good. It was, you know, a good compromise. We don't love the idea of doing combo if it's not going to give you, like, a huge change in results. Butter is not only going to give you a great flavor, but a great texture. And if you're going to do all this work, you want it to taste as good as it possibly can. So as you know, here at Tasty, we love a secret ingredient. And to do that, we added a little bit of egg yolk into our water. We found it really gives it just, like, that added richness that you really, really want when you're going for kind of that ultimate holiday pie. And we're also going to add ice water to our egg yolks. We'll literally be taking the tablespoons of water from a cup of ice water just to make sure that your water is as cold as it possibly can be. This is actually the pastry recipe that I learned in culinary school at Leitz. It just is so good. As you know, always add salt to everything that you do, including sweets, because it is a flavor enhancer. We are putting in cold, cold, cold cubed butter. We have to keep everything as cold as possible always. So you're going to go in, and you're not going to use your palms. You're going to use your fingertips as much as you can, because your palms are warmer than your fingertips. So you're just really trying to take the big chunks of butter and rub them into the flour. So we're going to kind of coat the flour with the butter. Once I'm happy and I have all the butter is pretty well incorporated in the flour, I'm ready to add my liquid. We're going to use our judgment here, and just kind of as quickly as we can incorporate the liquid with the fat. This is still looking pretty dry. So I'm going to go to the drier bits of the bowl and incorporate more of that egg yolk water mixture. How you can test that is you put some together in your palms. And if it's staying together in a little dough ball, then you're good to go. So once I'm happy that all the liquid's incorporated, I think that I have a good amount of moisture in here. Dump it out onto our clean work surface and start to bring it together. Get it into like a nice ball, if you will. There's no like dry floury bits. There's nothing crumbling off of it. It's going to be a lot easier if you make it into a disc. It's going to be much easier to roll it out into a circle later. So I'm going to wrap it up with cling film. We're going to put it back in the fridge and let it chill out for a second. This is going to let the flour and everything relax. So the thing about pie crust is it gets harder to work with the warmer that it is. So if your fat is getting really, really warm, it's going to be hard to roll out and work with. And what you're going to first do, flour the surface. You're going to flour the top of the pastry dough. Kind of push down on the dough, starting from the bottom to the top and smush, smush, smush. And it just kind of spreads the dough out before you start rolling. Every now and again, we're going to give the dough a quarter turn. That's just going to help ensure that we have a nice round dough. And it's also going to make sure that we're double checking that our dough is not sticking to the surface that we're working on. Always smush the cracks back together whenever you see a big one forming because it's only going to get worse. You want to roll it out to like an eighth of an inch. Roll it out way bigger than your pan is. You can put your pan over the pie crust to make sure that you have enough. So the easiest, safest way to move it is to roll it up on your rolling pin. Here we go. It's not sticking to anything. Voila. We don't want to stretch or tear the dough out. I'm going to lift the edges and almost lower it down in there. And then I'm going to use my knuckles to push it into the corners. And then any big seams, just kind of press them out so they're not overlapping or anything. You want like a really clean side. So first go around and just kind of tuck this excess under. And so you have one kind of cohesive wall to work with, if you will. And now we're going to go and crimp. So we're going to use our knuckle of your left hand or right hand and then the index finger and thumb of your other hand. And just go in and pinch in. So once it's crimped, we're going to chill it down. We want it to be as cold as humanly possible before we throw it into a super hot oven. So now that we have a crust, let's talk pumpkin filling. So when it comes to dairy, when we're looking at a lot of different recipes, a lot of them have sweetened condensed milk, evaporated milk, and then some combo of fresh dairy as well. So sweetened condensed milk, it's got a ton of sugar. It's this like really thick, interesting product. Evaporated milk is a lot thinner than it. It has a little bit of sugar and not nearly as much as sweetened condensed milk. But why not just use a fresh product? We understand it a little bit more. So we decided to go with half and half. We wanted to test three different things. So we wanted to test canned pumpkin as it is, roasting the canned puree. And then we also wanted to try fresh pumpkin. When we were first testing canned roasted, we wanted to put everything in the filling and roast it aside from the dairies. But we kind of made like a pumpkin caramel on accident. There's a little bit more margin of error there. We actually ended up just doing the spices in the pumpkin puree. That gave us an awesome pumpkin flavor. It kind of did the double work of not only roasting the pumpkin puree, but also really just enhance everything that's going into this and make it like a really intense, complex flavor, which is so good and so worth it. Cool. So scrape it all to one side, put it back in your bowl. So we're going to throw in the granulated sugar, the dark brown sugar, just giving us a little bit of that molasses-y flavor. Give it a little bit of vanilla for that flavor enhancer. Three eggs and one egg yolk. And that egg yolk's just for a little bit of extra richness without too much extra moisture. And then just whisk this until it's completely smooth. And it's going to be like this really nice, gorgeous custard. So what we're going to do is pre-bake the pie shell. We need to fold up a big piece of parchment. And then we're going to throw in, we just had like some dried chickpeas that we use. These are our baking beans, if you will. So kind of push them off to the side to hold up the walls and we're good to go. You're going to put this in about like 400 degrees Fahrenheit for about 15-20 minutes or so, depending on the pie dish that you're using. And to know that it's done, pull back the sheet of parchment with the beans inside. And you just want to make sure there's no undercooked or like raw pastry left. So we have our pre-baked pie crust. Let's pour it all in there. Get every little bit. It's gonna be a little bit of bubbles. And what you can try and do is kind of carefully plop it on the table and see if you can get out any of those bubbles. With a lot of custard pies, it's pretty common to start with a really hot oven and then lower it down. And what it's going to do is give us like that really instant heat to get everything started. So I know that this might seem crazy, but roasting a real whole pumpkin and making this into your pie, this is so good. So cut it up, get in big chunks. Don't go crazy with this. All we're really trying to do is get out the seeds and that little pulpy bit in the middle. I'm using a little paring knife. Makes it really easy to get all that stuff out. Get these big chunks onto a parchment lined baking sheet. Have a little fun with it. Just dry roast those suckers in a really high heat. Like, I don't know, 400 for 15-20 minutes till you can really smell them. Again, developing that flavor. We're gonna throw the flesh of the pumpkin into a food processor with everything else that we need. The sugars, the eggs, the heavy cream, the vanilla, the salt, all the good stuff. And give it a whiz. It's not gonna be as smooth and kind of like mush, I guess, as the puree that comes out of a can, which is really nice, actually. Like, it has a little bit more of a bite to it, but it's still like super creamy and delicious. Honestly, with the food processor, do this more than you think because you do want a pretty smooth texture. So once we're to a good place, pour that into your pre-baked crust. If you really want to do something a little bit extra, these steps don't take a ton of extra time and they give you a very complex and very unique take on a pumpkin pie. And same deal. We're gonna do a nice high heat to start and then we're gonna lower it down to finish the cooking. All right, so again, like, we just could not decide between apple and pumpkin, so we gave you both. Guys, there are tons of different varieties of apples. The only thing that you really need to know for this one, like, we're using Granny Smith's because they're easily accessible, got a great tart flavor, they really work well in pies, but if you have different ones in your grocery store, as long as you're using cooking apples that'll hold up to cooking, doesn't matter. For apple pie, we tested three different preparations. We tested fresh apples, putting in macerated apples, which just means they sat in sugar and salt for a bit to draw out the extra moisture. And then we also tested a cooked apple recipe. We found that we preferred the macerated method because we had a lot of good, like, bite still to the apples, but since we took care of a lot of that moisture loss, we didn't have, like, huge gaps in our pie. You have a little bit of a bite, but they're cooked enough that it's not like you're biting into raw apple. And as you're peeling them, it's a really good idea to have a big bowl of water if you have some lemons pop a little in the water too. That'll just keep them from browning. So we're gonna use, like, so many apples because they do have a lot of moisture in them and they are gonna bake down. Core them, cut them into those little cheeks, and then slice them super thinly. So we're gonna macerate these apples, and what we're gonna do is put salt and sugar, which are both desiccants, and that's just a fancy way of saying that they draw out moisture from what they come in contact with. And the salt is not only gonna draw out moisture, but it's also gonna help enhance the flavors that are in there. I'm gonna put in cinnamon here, a little bit of lemon juice. So what we're just adding aside from the desiccants are just a little bit of flavor that'll just kind of marinate a little bit. We're also gonna add half of our cornstarch now. So we're gonna toss all the apples and all this stuff, and we're actually gonna let it sit for about 30 minutes. It's a good idea to stir every, like, 10 minutes or so just so the apples on the top or in the middle can really drain out all that extra moisture. After that 30 minutes, we're gonna let it sit in a colander over another bowl, and we're actually gonna just draw out all that liquid. So we really wanna make sure that we're getting out as much moisture from these apples as we can right now. So as you can see, I mean, look at all this moisture that came out of these apples, like, holy moly. So we're gonna boil this down. There is a bit of cornstarch, so this mixture should thicken up a good amount right away. So we're gonna take the rest of that cornstarch, add a few tablespoons of water to make a slurry so we don't have, like, big chunks of cornstarch, and we're gonna throw our slurry in here and just thicken this up. We don't wanna boil it too much, but we're gonna add a little knob of butter there. So that's gonna stop the cooking process a little bit so it doesn't boil too much. It's also gonna give us a little bit of that extra oomph, that extra flavor and silkiness. Once that butter is pretty much melted in, we're gonna take it off heat. We want it to be kind of the texture of caramel, if you can see here. So it looks like a nice, thick caramel. So coat all the apples with this mixture. Once that's all done, we're ready to build our pie. We're going to roll out a sheet of dough, same as before. Another thing to fancy, with the apple pie, we're actually not gonna pre-bake it because it does need a good amount of time in the oven. You don't have to be, like, super crazy with laying the apples in here, but you do wanna make sure that they're all flat, and if you can, have them be the round side out. Again, just so that we can pack all the apples in here. So every now and then, push them down. This is a lot of apples. We wanna totally pack this guy full. And if there's any extra of that, like, kind of caramel-y filling in there, go ahead and pour it on top of the apples. You shouldn't have a ton left over. And we're gonna put a new sheet of pastry on top of it. Cut off the excess. So we're gonna make sure that we have a really secure seal between the top and the bottom layers. So pinch and fold, pinch and fold. And before you even worry about decorating the sides, you wanna make sure that that's really tight and sealed. Do the knuckle finger all the way around, and then go ahead and do an egg wash. Again, we're just gonna use straight-up egg here. And then for a little extra crunch, we're gonna add this sanding sugar, and that's just gonna give us a nice texture. Fruit pies, and apple especially, has a lot of moisture in there. So we wanna cut little holes so that the steam can get out, so we don't have our pie, like, literally explode when it's baking. And into the oven it goes. Wow! Look how nice that is. The food stylist's trick is to cut a little sliver out first. And don't worry about this one. It's gonna be ugly so that you don't end up messing up the whole pie, and you can get really nice slices. I know it's, like, a lot to do, and there's these little tips and things there, but, like, if you're not gonna do it around the holidays and around Thanksgiving, when are you gonna do it? Look at that. I mean, isn't it just so cool, the fact that it just has so much, like, oomph to it, you know? So whether you're a custard fan or a fruit pie person, we've got two different really awesome pies here. They're not too over-the-top. They're relatively simple. They're definite crowd-pleasers. Go make this pie. Do it for yourself. Do it for the ones you love. Be the champion of this year's Thanksgiving, and bring the pie.