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Holidays with Ease: A One-Pot Turkey Dinner with All the Trimmings
by Elizabeth Yarnell of www.GloriousOnePotMeals.com
A holiday meal is typically an occasion for breaking bread and sharing the hearth with our family, friends and community.
While not everyone wants to cook for an army during the holidays, there is still something about having a traditional holiday meal that evokes a feeling of celebration and custom. It's not only the combination of foods particular to that holiday ritual that feeds the senses, but also the likelihood that the event offered an opportunity to share the workload increases the bonds of kinship and friendship.
For those passing a holiday alone or with one other rather than a crowd, there can be a sense of deprivation with the loss of the opportunity to partake in the traditional feast of the season of turkey, cranberries and sweet potatoes.
Here is a great solution to getting the meal with all the trimmings without spending hours and hours in the kitchen or facing a week of leftovers. Because it is an "infused one-pot meal," each ingredient maintains its integrity during the cooking process and emerges separate, intact and infused with flavor, rather than merged into a stew or slab as with more familiar types of one-pot meals.
Best yet, you can spend a pleasant half hour or less in the kitchen with your dining companion while you wash, chop and layer the ingredients into the pot. Preparing food offers a great opportunity to chat across the cutting board and gives you each ownership for the holiday dinner success.
Just 45 minutes later, when sitting down to eat together, toast each other, toast the holiday and toast the easy answer to holiday dining: an infused one-pot meal.
One-Pot Thanksgiving Dinner
2 servings
Ingredients
1/2-3/4 lb. turkey tenderloin or boneless breast filets
1/3 cup whole cranberries, fresh or frozen
1/3 cup orange marmalade
1 tsp. lemon juice
1 dash white pepper
1/3 cup shelled walnuts
8-10 pearl onions, peeled, halved
1 med. sweet potato or yam, scrubbed, 1/4" slices
2 cups broccoli florets
Instructions
Preheat oven to 450 degrees F. Spray inside of 2-quart cast iron Dutch oven and lid with canola oil.
Set turkey pieces into base in a single layer, trying not to overlap pieces as much as possible. Lightly sprinkle with salt.
In a food processor or blender, pulse cranberries using chopping blade (shaped like a backwards "S") until berries are in large chunks. Add marmalade, lemon juice and white pepper and pulse two or three times to mix together. Pour in walnuts and continue to pulse until walnuts are roughly chopped and you have a thick, rocky paste.
Drop spoonfuls of cranberry paste onto turkey pieces until only about half is left. Toss in onions and layer in sweet potato slices. Again, lightly salt. Cover with rest of cranberry paste. Top with broccoli florets.
Cover and bake for about 40 minutes. You'll know it's ready 3 minutes after the aroma of a finished meal escapes your oven.
Notes
In a pinch, substitute pulpy orange juice for the orange marmalade. You'll just end up with more "gravy" at the bottom of the pot to spoon over the food when serving. 1/4 cup broth added to the cranberry-walnut paste will also increase the amount of gravy.
The turkey, cranberries and broccoli can all be used fresh or frozen (without thawing) and it won't change your cooking time or most things about your meal, though realize that frozen broccoli tends to emerge softer than fresh. The larger the broccoli pieces the crisper they will turn out at the end.
Add a kick to your meal with 1 fresh or roasted jalapeño pepper, destemmed, seeded and chopped.
About the Author:
About the author: Elizabeth Yarnell is a Certified Nutritional Consultant, inventor and author of Glorious One-Pot Meal:
A new quick & healthy approach to Dutch oven cooking. The Glorious One-Pot Meal cooking technique is unique and patented
(US patent 6,846,504). A Multiple Sclerosis patient and mother of two pre-schoolers, the habit of cooking together with
her husband was formed early in their marriage and is one they still enjoy. Visit Elizabeth at www.GloriousOnePotMeals.com
to sign up for her free newsletter.
Recommended Reading Glorious One-Pot Meals (Spiral-bound)
by Elizabeth Yarnell
Glorious One-Pot Meals: A new quick & healthy approach to Dutch oven cooking provides a patented cooking technique that balances both the need for quick and easy meals with the desire for healthy and tasty recipes. The Glorious One-Pot Meal method is unique in that it allows ingredients to retain their shape and integrity throughout the cooking process, unlike traditional one-pot meal methods such as crock-pot stews, casseroles, and stir-fries. Ingredients are infused with flavors and it makes no difference whether you start with fresh, frozen or canned foods as everything cooks in the same amount of time and emerges moist, tender and perfectly cooked. It’s the ultimate method for making convenient and healthy dinners.
Each Glorious One-Pot Meal contains an entrée, grains, and vegetable side dishes for a complete meal with minimal preparation or clean up. The Glorious One-Pot Meals cookbook includes more than just recipes; readers also receive grocery shopping tips and advice on stocking a pantry and freezer for convenient meal preparation. Glorious One-Pot Meals are perfect for the busy cook because each recipe requires, on average, fewer than 20 minutes to prepare and 45 minutes to bake in the oven.
While there are many reasons for teaching kids to cook -- less expensive than eating out, preserves family heritage, etc, the most important
reason is that by teaching your child to cook, you're giving him a better chance to be a healthy grown-up. Enabling your child with the ability
to appreciate freshness and to transform ingredients into tasty foods opens their eyes to making wiser choices about what to eat...
Holidays with Ease: A One-Pot Turkey Dinner with All the Trimmings
Let's Get Cooking!
