Sausage and Cranberry Stuffed Turkey Roll

Finally we have arrived to the final episode of the Early 2009 Thanksgiving Episode and as with any grand finale we finish with the star of the show, the turkey.

Since it is only myself and the wife we really don't need to cook a whole turkey, besides everyone else cooks whole turkeys and I wanted to do something different.  Our choice this year was to cook a turkey breast.  We searched store after store the weekend before Thanksgiving not having much luck until I walked down the street to our local market and found one, figures maybe I should have started there.  The turkey breast is a good place to start for two people but that is still a lot of meat plus a turkey breast by itself is hard to stuff and I wanted to do some sort of stuffing this year.  What to do, what to do.  After much thought I finally came up with the idea of filleting half the breast off the bird, pound the breast out, and then roll the stuffing up inside the turkey.  Another plus is I still have another half of boneless turkey breast for a future episode of Good Grub.

Once the one half the the turkey breast is ready it is time to think about the stuffing.  The cast of characters for the stuffing include:

I had an idea for stuffing that included sausage and cranberries, not just any cranberries but my cranberry sauce.  Now you know why I had to start this four part series with the cranberries.  I made the cranberries ahead of time with the stuffing in mind.  The problem I ran into was finding a recipe for stuffing that included cranberry sauce and sausage.  I searched  and searched the Internet with no luck so I did the next best thing, made one up myself based on some ideas I found from several other recipes.  As you can see I wanted to keep it simple, I'm all about simple, not only for the ease of making the stuffing but I also knew I wouldn't be able to fit a complicated stuffing into a rolled up turkey breast.  I also knew using traditional style croutons would be out of the question so I came up with the next best thing and made bread crumbs with the food processor.  I thought this was a good compromise for stuffing with the only question being should I toast them or not.  In the end I decided not to toast them I was afraid if I did toast them it might dry out the turkey breast and as we all know it is a fine line between nice moist succulent meat and dried out shoe leather.

After the ingredients for the stuffing were decided on it is only a matter of preparing them for the bird. Obviously the sausage had to be cooked ahead of time so I decided towards the end of cooking the sausage I would add the cranberries, sage and bread crumbs. 

It sure looked good and it even tasted good, good enough to make a meal by itself but let's not get sidetracked, maybe another day. 

The real problem we face now is how to get the stuffing into the turkey breast.  I did find a couple of recipes that described pounding out the breast, similar to what you would do with a chicken breast, and if I was going to stuff this bird that is what I was going to have to do.  Since I don't own a mallet for pounding our meat I used and can from the pantry, works for me.  First I covered the breast with plastic wrap and then pounded the breast out.  Next put the stuffing mixture on one end and then roll the breast up to form a turkey roll.

The only thing left to do is get get this bird in the oven but before I do that I decided to put some smokey bacon on the turkey roll up and see if it would help keep the breast moist.  I actually got this idea from Tyler Florence when we went and watched his cooking demonstration a couple of weeks ago in downtown D.C. I wasn't really sure about this step but I wanted to try it and beside if bacon is involved it can't be a bad thing.

After letting it cook for 1-1/2 hours at 350 degrees I pulled it out of the oven.

I think we are making progress now.  All there is left to do now is to get this thing on the table after we give it a little rest.  After a little nap time we can cut and serve.

Looks pretty good for something I pulled out of my ass head.  I'll have to give this a 3.75 out of 5 forks.  It had good flavor and the bacon gets credit for that. I think I overcooked the turkey just a little but the breast still was moist. 

I think to make it better next time I will use a little less sausage and a little more bread crumbs, cranberry sauce and sage but I think I am on the right track.  Next time I will brine the breast before I start too.  I almost always brine my turkeys because I think it makes them much more moist and juicy but I decided to cook this one with brinning.  Also why we are on next times I think next time I will omit the bacon because the skin doesn't get nice a crispy like turkey skin should be.  And besides I won't need the bacon once I get my charcoal grill back that will impart all the extra good smokey flavors I want.

Overall a pretty darn good Early Thanksgiving Meal with an overall rating of 4 out of 5 forks. 

My goal this year was to do something a little different than normal and I think I accomplished that.  In  Sportscenter fashion let's recap this years Early Thanksgiving Meal:

• 
  
  First we started with my version of cranberry sauce which is getting great reviews from other family members.
  
  
  
• 
  
  Next was the Honey Wheat with Rosemary Dinner Rolls based on a recipe I got from Big Sis's blog called Don't Blink.
  
  
  
• 
  
  Then the real surprise of the meal was Tyler Florence's Whipped Sweet Potatoes and Bananas with Honey recipe.  This is a definite must try even if you don't like sweet potatoes like me.
  
  
  
• 
  
  Any finally we finish up with today's Sausage and Cranberry Stuffed Turkey Roll.
  
  
  

Happy Thanksgiving and don't eat too much.