Kimberly Schlapman Shares Her Thanksgiving Tips
She also shares her favorite side dish!
Little Big Town’s Kimberly Schlapman is almost as well known for her ability in the kitchen as she is for her award-winning talents as a singer and songwriter. She wrote the best-selling cookbook Oh Gussie! Cooking and Visiting in Kimberly’s Southern Kitchen and earned a legion of culinary fans with her TV show Kimberly’s Simply Southern. She also has her own line of “Oh Gussie” cookware sold at Cracker Barrel Old Country Store locations.
So just what advice does she have for a tasty Thanksgiving? Well it all starts with the bird. “I do have a really yummy turkey recipe,” she smiles. “Turkey is tricky because it can be super dry, but I believe—and my mother-in-law taught me—that if you baste the turkey the whole time you are cooking it, you can come out with a mighty fine juicy turkey.”
Adding a flavorful sauce doesn’t hurt either. “In my cookbook, I have a recipe for peach sauce, so you make this peach sauce and then you inject it into the bird,” she says. “Then as you are cooking it, when that juice runs out of the turkey, you suck it up with a baster and drizzle it onto the top every 15-20 minutes if you can. It makes for a super juicy bird.”
To compliment the main attraction, Schlapman’s table will include many of the usual holiday favorites. “We have all the traditional stuff at our table dressing, ham, corn casserole, sweet potato casserole, all the casseroles,” she says. “My sister does make this really yummy thing with green beans. She has the beautiful long green beans and she wraps bacon around them and then she drizzles them with brown sugar. She just started that a few years ago and it is heaven. She can never make enough of them. She makes more every year and every year we eat them up like that.”
In addition to the great food, Schlapman says her family enjoys another tradition. “It’s not a recipe, but a new tradition we have as a family,” she says. “My sister always brings a craft for the kids and that has become a really sweet tradition. That’s her thing she does with them every year. That’s Aunt Paula and she has a really special little craft and they all sit around the [kitchen] island. It’s a disaster, but it is so much fun.”
