For many folks, Thanksgiving is synonymous with Butterball turkey. A Butterball’s promise of juicy, succulent, and tender meat—no matter how you cook it—is hard to pass up. And if it’s your one shot in the year to cook a turkey, why stress when you can depend on a sure thing? We love that! We just wanted to make it even better. This is our take on a Butterball turkey—super-juicy and tender, but not watered down in flavor, and certainly not overcooked. You can call it the Betterball ..read more

Not all pozole is created equal. A deceptively simple soup, packed with plump kernels of hominy and tender morsels of meat and served with an array of raw vegetables and crunchy stuff like tortilla chips and fried pork rinds, pozole can run the gamut from bland to holy-smokes-this-is-good. Our pozole rojo might just be the champion of the latter camp. With a rich pork stock serving as the base, heirloom corn kernels transformed into perfectly cooked hominy, and a rust-red mole made from dried pasilla and guajillo chiles, it’s packed with flavor. Add in our secret ingredient—[link https://www.c ..read more

Trimming a brisket properly is the first step in making a great [link ultimate-smoked-bbq-brisket barbecue brisket]. Trimming helps the brisket cook more evenly, producing even bark formation; golden, rendered fat; and juicy meat. The goal for barbecue pros is to produce a smoked brisket that’s cooked in a way that every single slice will satisfy discerning paying customers. So, if you want to serve competition-worthy brisket, start by trimming your brisket like a pro ..read more

Silky [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/how-to-make-a-quick-pan-sauce pan sauces] and rich [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/turkey-gravy gravies] can make a good meal great. The beauty of pan sauces and gravies is they’re not just delicious liquids, they’re delicious <em>emulsions</em>. That means they’re made up of tiny globules of tasty fat completely surrounded by and suspended within water (fortified, hopefully, with some of the tasty brown bits of fond scraped up off the bottom of the pan). But if that emulsion breaks, which can happen in the blink of an eye ..read more

The trickiest part about serving barbecue, whether it’s [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/ultimate-smoked-bbq-brisket brisket], [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/texas-style-barbecue-ribs ribs], or [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/bbq-pork-shoulder pork shoulder], is serving it while it’s still warm. Smoking meat is a technique that [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/bbq-brisket-timeline operates on its own schedule], or rather, the meat’s schedule: It takes hours and hours to transform [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/decoding-tough-and-tender-cut ..read more

A good pumpkin pie has a crisp, flaky crust and a silky-smooth custard filling. Unfortunately, most pumpkin pies miss the mark. This recipe gets you a perfect pumpkin pie. There’s no tricks, no gimmicks; in fact, it’s nearly identical to the recipe you’ll find on the can of pumpkin purée. Getting this pie right just comes down to technique and a few tweaks. We blind-bake the pie crust properly, so it’s nicely browned, super flaky, and crisp. (Just like with our [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/ultimate-quiche Ultimate Cheese Quiche]!) For the filling, we boost the amount of egg yolks ..read more

A [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/a-better-way-to-turkey-cook-that-bird-sous-vide-for-the-best-feast-ever holiday roast turkey] isn’t complete without a great [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/turkey-gravy gravy], right? And for the best gravy, you need to start with great stock. We’ve designed this recipe to work with the bones and trim leftover from [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/turkey-butchery-how-to-separate-breasts-thighs breaking down a turkey] for any of our killer sous vide turkey recipes. Since you’ll probably need the turkey stock, stat, we use a pres ..read more

Everybody loves a juicy and tender [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/diy-butterball-turkey Butterball turkey] or Costco rotisserie chicken. But most people only eat turkey once a year, and only the elite have access to Kirkland’s exclusive members-only club. So, we engineered our own Butterball-inspired chicken! This is the best rotisserie chicken you’ll ever have, no spinning rotisserie setup required. The key to a Butterball bird and grocery store rotisserie chickens is all in the brine, which is enhanced with a secret ingredient: phosphates. Specifically, sodium tripolyphosphate (S ..read more

How do you transform a chicken into a Michelin-starred dish? You make poulet farci, a fancy French term for a fancy chicken-stuffed roast chicken crown! Inception chicken, incroyable! You get all the best parts of a [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/ultimate-roast-chicken perfect roast chicken]—browned skin and juicy breast meat—but with the added bonus of a luxurious mushroom-and-herb-flecked farce, made with the dark meat, layered between the skin and breast. It’s an absolute showstopper of a dish and makes for the perfect holiday centerpiece for a small gathering ..read more

The best chicken stock is homemade—no question. But sometimes what you need isn’t “the best”; sometimes you just need something that works well enough. Convenience, sometimes, is king. We take an all-of-the-above approach to chicken stock—we always recommend making and using your own [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/pressure-cooked-brown-chicken-stock brown] or [link https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/pressure-cooked-blond-chicken-stock blond] chicken stock, but we sometimes list boxed chicken stock as an acceptable sub, and we sometimes call for chicken bouillon powder. That doesn ..read more