Lisa, who was an integral part of our Farmers’ family for many years,  shared this recipe with us many Thanksgivings ago. She adopted it from her Nova Scotian mother-in-law. We thought it was time to bring this time-tested recipe out of the WFM archives to share with you.

Bacon-Wrapped Turkey

Ingredients

• 1-2 pounds of great bacon, depending on the size of your turkey
• 2-3 carrots
• 1 onion
• 2 stalks celery
• 1 turkey

Instructions

If you don’t own a turkey rack, you can create one out of vegetables—the bonus is better tasting drippings! Remove the bag with giblets and liver and the neck from the bird, use these to make stock, preferably the day before. If you don’t want to mess with that, come in and buy our WFM turkey stock from the freezer; if you don’t want to make gravy, stop reading and come on in and buy our house-made gravy.

Rest the turkey on rough-chopped carrots; an onion with the top and end cut off, quartered, not peeled; and two stalks of celery. Drape bacon strips over the entire turkey, wrap the bacon around the legs and place in the oven. The bacon will cook and some pieces will fall off and some will stick to the skin. When the turkey is done, remove all the remaining bacon and set aside. By now the kitchen will be full of hungry folks waiting for a glimpse of the cooked bird. Place the bacon strips on a plate and shoo everyone out with the plate. It’s time to make gravy!

Great Gravy

Relax, great gravy starts with a little technique and great drippings and great stock.

• Place turkey stock in a two quart saucepan and keep warm.
• Remove turkey from the roasting pan and place on your serving platter, tent with foil, roast turkey needs to rest for 20 – 30 minutes after it comes out of the oven.
• Pour and scrape all the schmoo from the roasting pan into a strainer placed over a clean bowl, preferably glass so you see the drippings on the bottom and the fat which will float on top.
• Into the roasting pan, add two cups of hot water and scrape up all the browned bits in the pan. Pour this mix into the stock.

Ingredients

• 3 ounces of drippings
• ½ cup all purpose flour
• 4 cups of turkey stock
• salt and pepper to taste

Instructions

Put a 8 to 10 inch wide-inch deep saucepan over medium low heat; add 3 ounces of turkey drippings. When drippings are warm, add flour and mix to a thick paste with a wisk. Allow this to cook for approximately 4 minutes. It should smell a little like piecrust cooking. The goal here is to the raw flour taste out of the paste. Gradually, 1 cup at a time, add your warm stock to the flour mixture. Whisk until the mixture is smooth. Increase the heat to medium and whisk gravy until it is thickened.

Enjoy!