A Wild Thanksgiving Feast
We have assembled an exquisite, smokey Thanksgiving feast, featuring smoked wild turkey stuffed mushrooms, smoked carrots with feta and honey, smoked hasselback potatoes with rosemary and garlic crema, smoked wild turkey roulade and, to top it all off, a smoked pecan pie. Did we mention that these dishes are smoked?
Country music artist and wild game chef Justin Adams assembled multiple unique recipes to inspire turkey hunters to try something new this Thanksgiving. Add one, two or all of these recipes to your Thanksgiving menu this year for flavor-packed deliciousness.
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Wild Turkey Stuffed Mushrooms
The appetizer — the start of the meal, the party, the celebration. This is a wild turkey take on a classic appetizer, utilizing ground wild turkey that’s mixed with cream cheese, parmesan, garlic and stuffed perfectly inside a mushroom. It is then smoked or baked to perfection. There’s zero waste here, as we’re going to chop up and sauté the mushroom stems before adding garlic and the remaining ingredients into the cap. This will be a perfect starter for your Thanksgiving dinner or any party that needs a delicious appetizer.
Ingredients
- 1/4 pound of ground wild turkey
- 1 pint of cremini mushrooms, washed and stems removed and set aside for later use
- 3 cloves of garlic, minced
- 1 eight-ounce package of cream cheese. Placed on counter an hour before cooking to come up to room temperature
- 1/4 cup grated parmesan
- 1/4 teaspoon onion powder
- 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper (optional)
- Salt and pepper to taste
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- Optional: Panko breadcrumbs and fresh chopped parsley for topping
Instructions
- Wash and remove stems from mushrooms. Dry mushrooms and set aside. Finely chop the stems that you removed.
- Preheat the smoker to 350 degrees.
- In a large skillet, brown the ground wild turkey over medium-high heat until cooked through. Remove from pan and set aside.
- Heat olive oil in a skillet over medium heat. Add chopped mushroom stems and fry until moisture has evaporated. A few minutes before the evaporations, add the garlic and stir to cook, careful not to burn.
- Stir in ground wild turkey, cream cheese, parmesan cheese, onion powder, cayenne pepper, salt and black pepper. Stir to combine. The mixture will be very thick
- Use a spoon and fill each mushroom cap with the cream cheese mixture and place on an oiled cookie sheet.
- Top with panko breadcrumbs and bake in the smoker for 15 minutes or until golden brown.
- Top with freshly chopped parsley and serve!
Carrots with Feta and Honey
It is a relief when I’m at Thanksgiving or a dinner party and there is a side dish that isn’t just covered in cheese, starch or cream. Now don’t get me wrong, those are some of my favorites, but to have some contrast on my plate and the option for something fresh is just a nice gesture to my appetite.
This recipe utilizes fresh carrots that are tossed in honey and lemon and smoked until they are fork tender. The best part of this dish? The feta, parsley and remaining sauce that’s drizzled on over after cooking. Plus, this dish looks beautiful, so it’s definitely an eye pleaser on the table for any occasion.
Ingredients
- 1 pound of carrots, washed and dried
- 3 tablespoons honey
- 1 tablespoon lemon juice
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 1/2 cup feta cheese
- Chopped parsley
- Salt and pepper to taste
Instructions
- Preheat smoker to 350 degrees.
- In a bowl, mix and combine honey, lemon juice, olive oil, salt and pepper. Toss or brush the carrots with half of this mixture. Reserve the other half for later.
- Place carrots directly on the smoker and cook for 30-35 minutes.
- Remove carrots and toss with remaining honey and lemon mixture.
- Top the carrots with feta and parsley and serve.
Hasselback Potatoes with Rosemary and Garlic Crema
I love potatoes. You can literally do just about anything and everything with them. Breakfast, lunch and dinner can have potatoes. They are incredibly cheap and provide so many options with how they can be cooked. For this side dish, I’m going to do a method called Hasselback. Hasselback gets its name from the Swedish restaurant Hasselbacken, which first served this dish in 1953. The restaurant gave this dish its name, but some might say its origins date back to Jenny Akerstrom’s 1936 cookbook. Either way, this method of cooking gives the potato an artful look as well as allowing more surface area to get crispy and the inside to reach maximum fluffiness.
Also, by cutting the potatoes in this way, you’re able to get the butter into more areas, adding incredible flavor to each bite. Smoke these in a cast iron skillet, as you’ll want them to cook together and let that butter continuously meld with the potatoes, a butter bath, one could say. I’m serving this with a very simple rosemary and garlic crema.
Ingredients
For the Potatoes
- 2 pounds of potatoes, about 6-8 medium sized russet or Yukon golds, washed and dried
- 1 stick of unsalted butter, melted
- Your favorite seasoning blend
- Chopped parsley for garnish
For the Rosemary Garlic Crema
- 1 tablespoon butter
- 3 cloves garlic, minced
- 1 tablespoon rosemary, fresh or dry, removed from stem and minced
- 1/4 cup heavy cream
- 1/2 cup sour cream
- 1 tablespoon parmesan cheese, shredded or grated
- Salt and pepper to taste
Instructions
- Preheat your smoker to 350 degrees.
- Wash your potatoes and dry them well. For the traditional Hasselback potatoes, you’ll need to slice them accordingly but don’t worry, it’s quite simple. You’ll want to cut them evenly at 1/8’ wide and leave 1/4’ of the potato intact on the bottom. You can achieve this by placing two wooden spoons, I like to use chopsticks, beside the potatoes as you slice them.
- Place the potatoes cut side up in a cast iron skillet.
- Brush and drizzle half of the melted butter all over the potatoes and top with the seasoning of your choice.
- Place in the smoker for 30 minutes and brush the remaining melted butter on top. Continue to bake for an additional 15-20 minutes, or until potatoes are crispy on the edges and soft in the middle.
- Make the crema: Heat the butter allotted for the crema in a saucepan over medium heat. Add the garlic and rosemary and sauté for 1 minute, constantly stirring so it doesn’t burn.
- Add parmesan and sour cream and stir to combine.
- Add the heavy cream and bring to a gentle boil, stirring constantly.
- Reduce heat and stir until thickened.
- Serve potatoes with a dollop of rosemary and garlic crema and top with chopped parsley to serve.
Wild Turkey Roulade
This is the moment you’ve been waiting for, the pinnacle of your Thanksgiving dinner, THE MAIN COURSE! I hope you had enough patience to leave at least one wild turkey breast in the freezer from your spring season, or if you’re one of the lucky few that’s allowed a fall season in your state, then hopefully you have a fresh one.
This is an incredibly simple recipe that will leave your family and friends in awe of the beauty of it. Some call it a rollup, but the correct term for this dish is roulade. It’s a breast that is pounded out thin and then stuffed.
We’re not going fancy here with this dish and calling for a homemade from scratch stuffing, but rather I’m digging deep in the nostalgic part of my brain and going with the tried-and-true box of Stove Top stuffing mix.
We’ll finish the dish with an incredibly simple-yet-decadent gravy made from the pan drippings after you’ve removed it from the smoker and allowed it to rest. This is a dish that I can guarantee will be requested time and time again.
Ingredients
- 1 wild turkey breast, pounded out to about 1/4” thickness
- 1 box of Stove Top stuffing, cooked according to box and left to cool
- Your favorite BBQ seasoning
For the Gravy
- 1/4 cup flour
- Chicken stock
- Salt to taste
Instructions
- Set your smoker to 350 degrees.
- Lay your pounded out turkey breast flat on a surface.
- Spread the stuffing evenly across the turkey.
- Starting at each end and working inwards, roll the turkey up around the stuffing.
- Using kitchen twine, truss your meat so it holds together.
- Spread and rub your favorite BBQ seasoning all across turkey.
- Place turkey in a cast iron skillet and into smoker until a meat thermometer reads 160 degrees, should take about 35 minutes to an hour.
- Remove from pan and place to the side to let cool.
- Heat the same cast iron skillet over medium-high heat.
- When the pan is hot, add 1/4 cup of chicken stock and scrape the bottom of the pan, getting the bits loosened up.
- Slowly add the flour and add an additional 1/2 cup of chicken stock and stir with a whisk.
- Continuously stir the mixture over medium-high heat until it thickens to a gravy.
- If your gravy isn’t thickening after a few minutes, add more flour.
- Remove the truss from the turkey and slice in 1/2” thickness. Top with gravy.
Pecan Pie
To this day, I can still close my eyes and picture and taste my Grandmother Earldine’s homemade pecan pie, amongst other incredible dishes she created. I didn’t know it then, but at the time she was single-handedly creating my love and inspiration for cooking and food. It’s been years since she passed, but she left with a profound love and appreciation for food. It wasn’t only about the meal, but more about the community and love shared around a table. An outlook that, to this day, I practice with my wife and children. This recipe is a classic take on a class dish. For time’s sake (and during Thanksgiving, we need all the extra time we can get), I opted for a store-bought shell, but you can very easily make a homemade shell.
Try not to substitute ingredients on this dish, as they are written and directed to form a perfect dish with a modern twist. I bake mine on our smoker and it gives it a bit of a smoky taste that pairs so well with a big scoop of ice-cold vanilla ice cream. The same way I enjoyed it at grandmas.
Ingredients
- 1 nine-inch premade piecrust
- 2 1/2 cups pecan halves
- 3 eggs
- 1 cup corn syrup, preferably dark
- 1/2 cup brown sugar, light or dark
- 1-1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
- 4 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
- Salt to taste
Instructions
- Remove prepared piecrust from the freezer a few hours before making this to let it come up to room temperature. Set smoker to 350 degrees.
- Roughly chop the pecans and spread evenly inside the pie crust
- Whisk the eggs, corn syrup, brown sugar, melted butter, vanilla and salt together in a bowl. Pour the mixture over the pecans. Sprinkle a few extra pecans on top once your mixture has been added.
- Bake the pie for 50 minutes, or until the top is browned. I like to put a piece of aluminum foil on top after the first 25 minutes of baking to keep the edges from browning too quickly. Remove pie from smoker and place on a wire rack to cool.
- Slice pie and serve alongside a scoop of vanilla ice cream.