During the holidays, I grew up eating orange gravy on my mashed potatoes and turkey. It was so embedded into my family’s tradition that it wasn’t until adulthood I realized this was not a recipe easily found on a Google search!
Tracing the Family Tradition
When my husband and I began hosting thanksgiving at our house, I went on a quest to document my grandmother’s process in hopes of recreating! The blend of homemade broth created from giblets and tomato juice provides a rich umami flavor I can’t quite find elsewhere.
Not realizing how long this recipe has been in the family, Grammy and my Great Uncle Austin, Grammy’s brother, shared the tradition has been passed down for six generations from Louise Fredricka Kipp Mueller, Grammy’s dad’s mom.
Louise came to the US from near Stuttgart, in Boblingen Germany at the turn of the 20th century. After immigrating and working as a housekeeper, she met her husband Charles in New Jersey after he was discharged from the 1898 Spanish American war. Charles was a carpenter originally from Switzerland. Grammy describes Louise as always being prim and proper.
Thank you great great grandma Louise for starting such a tasty tradition!
To learn more about the Mueller family’s early days, check out my Great Uncle’s research titled, The Family History of Samuel Mueller, Jr. and his Descendants: The Journey from Loehningen, Switzerland to St. Joseph, Missouri and Beyond 1845-2012 by Austin Gene Mueller.
Prep Work
Buy a frozen turkey a few weeks in advance. We like to get a turkey big enough for leftovers, such as one that weighs 16-21 lbs.
Make plans to thaw your turkey ahead of time so it’s thawed by Thanksgiving Eve.
This recipe is a helpful mechanism to ensure the bird isn’t frozen on the day of the event. I can personally attest to that being a huge bummer!
Also, be sure to clean out your fridge to make room for the thawed turkey.
Day Before Thanksgiving
On the eve of the holiday, Grammy makes broth. Alternately, you can thaw frozen, pre-made broth or use your favorite store-bought broth. If you have enough on your plate (pun intended) and would rather not make your own, click here to skip to the next section.
Broth
Grammy makes her broth from scratch. Try as I might to cut corners, it’s always the best. Luckily, I was excited to learn it’s actually pretty easy and bonus: helps prep the turkey to make the big day run smooth!
Broth Ingredients
- One celery bunch
- One white or yellow onion
- Celery salt
- Salt and a little pepper
- The neck, gizzards and liver from inside the turkey
Broth Directions
1. Mis-en-place: Chop veggies for boiling.
2. Gather your turkey gear. Line the sink with a trash bag and unwrap your turkey directly in the trash bag. Pull out the innards from the turkey and set aside for the broth. Pour out the blood. Make sure you pull out the plastic holder from the factory that the legs are positioned in and throw away. Clean out the cavity and blot dry with a paper towel if you’re stuffing the turkey.
Place the turkey on a platter covered in plastic so it’s ready to pop in the oven the next day.
3. Boil veggies and innards in a large pot for two hours. Start out boiling then let it simmer.
Season with celery salt and pepper to personal taste.
4. Store broth in the fridge once cooled. Grammy puts the whole pot right in the fridge and calls it night.
If you need room, store food in a cooler with ice.
Thanksgiving Day
We’re ready to make the dressing and cook the bird.
As part of Grammy’s turkey tradition, she uses her broth from the night before to make dressing and add to the Dutch oven for basting the turkey.
In prep for the next steps, the first thing Grammy does in the morning on Thanksgiving is warm up the broth to a slow boil on the stove. Turn off once it’s to a roaring simmer.
Dressing
You can make this with gluten free or regular bread and spice it with your personal taste. Grammy seasons with only two spices: celery salt and pepper.
Dressing Ingredients:
- 1-3 loaves of bread, depending on size of turkey
- A portion of the broth stock from the day before
- 3 eggs
- Celery salt
- Pepper
Dressing Recipe:
1. Brown bread slices in the oven to cook the entire loaf directly on the racks at the same time. Brown bread at 350 degrees F, turn over as cooking. The darker you get the bread, the more flavor you get, but be careful not to burn.
2. Put toasted bread in a bowl and break up into chunks ¼ size of bread.
3. Ladle onions and celery into the toast bowl with just a little bit of the juice. Add three eggs. Mix dressing with hands like you’re making a meat loaf. Once it feels mixed and dry, add broth until it feels moist and sticky.
4. Sprinkle celery salt and pepper to taste.
Turkey Recipe
We’re ready to cook using the “secret” family ingredient: tomato juice!
Be sure to calculate when to start cooking in order to have your meal at the appropriate time. In our family, we start roasting by 9am to eat around 1-2 PM.
Turkey Ingredients
- Thawed turkey
- Dressing used for stuffing
- Butter
- Cooked giblets and neck
- About 32-48 Oz of tomato juice
- 2-4 cups of broth depending on the size of your roaster
- Thread for tying legs
- Foil
Turkey Directions
1. Place the cleaned turkey in a roasting pan with a rack. Grammy uses this lightweight deep Dutch oven with a lid and does not use a rack because it’s best to sit in the juices for flavorful gravy later.
2. Stuff the bird with the dressing. Raise the triangular fatty flap to keep the dressing in the bird.
3. Cut a 10” foil square to slide under the turkey butt and wrap around cavity so dressing doesn’t fall out during cooking.
4. Pull legs so they cross and tie with cooking thread.
5. Place giblets and neck along side of turkey in the bottom of the pan.
6. Butter the turkey with room temp butter, which sticks easier if you pat-dry your turkey. Sprinkle with salt.
7. Pour in the broth. Ideally, you should have already warmed up the broth on the stove so the turkey gets up to temperature faster. Next add approximately half a bottle of 64 Oz tomato juice. Stir. I use about a 1:1 ratio of juice to broth. Grammy says it’s not an exact science but “after a few tries you’ll learn that if you add too much juice, it will taste more like tomato soup.” With broth and tomato juice combined, you should have enough to cover the wings.
8. Bake as follows:
Start baking on high heat, such as at 400 degrees for 1 hour so the juices at the bottom boil.
Once boiling, turn down the temperature to around 350 degrees F depending on your oven.
Cook for approximately 14 minutes per pound. For a 16-pound turkey, this would roughly equate to 3 1/2 – 4 hours. The turkey is truly done cooking when the internal temperature reaches 165-180 degrees F depending on the depth you stick the meat thermometer. A breast should reach about 170 degrees while a thigh would reach 180 degrees.
Do not go by when the store-bought cooking monitor pops out of the bird. It usually pops out very early after a few hours according to Grammy.
9. Baste every 30 to 60 mins throughout the cooking process. Some people start with covering their turkey with a lid or foil and remove the covering in the last hour to give a brown crisp. Alternatively, we found on accident you can wait to add covering to the turkey until after it has browned to the desired amount and still get great results.
10. Remove turkey and carve!
For the last, arguably the most important step, be sure to save the mix of broth, tomato juice and turkey drippings left in the bottom of the roaster to make the gravy!
To learn how to make the orange gravy with the turkey drippings and to double-bake the stuffing, check out my upcoming companion posts! If you prefer stuffing untoasted, you can also just eat the dressing straight from the bird as long as the internal temperature reached 170 degrees F.
Extra Tip From Grammy
On the second day, when eating leftovers, add a little water to make the gravy last longer. Because… there’s never enough! Yum!
Another Tasty Tradition
Run out of ranch? Or just interested in a rich and easy homemade dip to add to the traditional veggie plate while you wait for the turkey to cook? Check out my post on an easy and versatile aioli recipe! Then use the leftover dip to easily coat bagged precut cabbage and carrots to make slaw in mere minutes for another extra win! Your guests will thank you for a splash of tradition upgraded with a tasty twist.
Stay tuned for other must-have traditional family recipes!
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