Braised Turkey Jjim with Bacon, Shiitakes, and Chestnuts Recipe

[Photographs: Vicky Wasik]

Galbi-jjim—a Korean soy sauce-based braise of beef quick ribs, brown sugar, root greens, ginger, garlic, jujubes, mushrooms, and chestnuts—is one among my favourite issues to eat in the course of the winter. It is a cozy, cold-weather braise with a gravy that is so scrumptious I discover myself spooning it over every little thing. This model makes use of turkey legs and wings rather than quick ribs, and, to compensate for the turkey’s relative leanness, I add richness to the braise with bacon lardons and a beneficiant quantity of butter.

The braise will get a salty-sweet push-pull from the normal mixture of soy sauce, plenty of black pepper, ginger, garlic, jujubes, and dried shiitake mushrooms. Straying from basic galbi-jjim, I flip to sake and root beer as a substitute of brown sugar so as to add a background sweetness to the braise. Radishes complement the black pepper, and carrots complement the radishes. As soon as the greens and turkey are tender, the meat is picked off the bone whereas the gravy is thickened with a cornstarch slurry. The braise is completed with peeled roasted chestnuts (the store-bought variety, we would not ask you to peel your individual chestnuts), and a sprinkling of pine nuts to offer the dish a decidedly autumnal really feel—an ideal match for a Thanksgiving meal. So excellent, actually, you could have bother going again to a regular roast turkey with gravy.