Creole Roasted Turkey and Holy Trinity Stuffing with Da Pope and the Hot Nuns

Jazz up your turkey with this Creole seasoned butter rub recipe along with a New Orleans inspired trinity vegetable stuffing. The turkey is spicy but absolutely amazing.

This recipe has been my favorite way to serve turkey on Thanksgiving Day. I know that the title is a mouthful but this turkey is spicy, full flavored and powerful. You won’t find your typical butter and herbs flavored bird; this is a jazzed up and jiving turkey infused with the flavors of New Orleans.

What makes this Creole Roasted Turkey stand out from the rest is not only the Creole Seasoned butter rub but also the simple vegetable stuffing. I took what you generally find as the start to most of New Orleans’ iconic dishes, the Trinity, and amped it up with ‘da pope‘ and the ‘Hot Nuns‘. Of course, you know that da pope is garlic. The Hot Nuns are the pickled pepperoncini that infuse this Holy Trinity Stuffing with a zing that you won’t find in any other turkey stuffing.

A day or two before I cook the Creole Roasted Turkey, I start to prepare the Holy Trinity Stuffing; I dice the vegetables and mix in the hot pepperoncini and store it in the fridge until I’m ready to use it. While the Trinity sits, the vegetables and the pepperoncini start to mesh together. This bonding time causes the vegetables to take on the heat of the pepperoncini and become hotter and hotter the longer that it sits. It’s not required to prep the Holy Trinity Stuffing a day or two in advance, it just adds to a more robust flavor.

How can I prove to you that this Creole Roasted Turkey recipe is amazing

In 2014 I submitted this recipe to the food magazine Taste of Home for their annual Thanksgiving recipe contest. And this turkey recipe finished in 2nd place! I was told of my second-place finish in the summer of that year. A little after that announcement, they mailed me a complimentary copy of the magazine. I’m still extremely proud of the fact that my recipe finished that high in a contest and made it into a food magazine.

The real kicker came in the form of an email as Fall rolled in. One of the editors of the magazine, who was a taste-testing judge in the competition, emailed me to not only congratulate me but to let me know that she absolutely loved the recipe and choose it to make for her family at home. Now that’s some major kudos there.

If you save your Taste of Home magazines, this is the issue (Thanksgiving 2015) and the wonderful photo they took of the turkey after they made it is on page 69.

For this Thanksgiving, try my runner-up, almost a winner, Creole Roasted Turkey with Da Pope and the Hot Nun! When you do, please let us know what you thought about it in the comment section below. Take pictures of you and your family enjoying the turkey and share it on social media – and don’t forget to tag me on it using #RedBeansAndEric!

Creole Roasted Turkey and Holy Trinity Stuffing

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Ingredients

• 1 turkey 14-16 lbs
• 2 sticks of butter softened
• 3-4 tbsp Creole seasoning
• 1 large onion cut to 1-inch pieces
• 1 green bell pepper cut to 1-inch pieces
• 2 celery sticks chopped
• 10 pickled peppers
• 3 garlic cloves minced

Instructions

• Preheat oven at 400°.
• Cut the vegetables to 1-inch pieces and mix with garlic and pickled peppers; set aside.
• After removing the necks, gizzards and liver from the turkey, rinse the turkey under cold water then pat dry.
• Spread the softened butter over the entire turkey. Rub the Creole seasoning over the body of the turkey and shake some in the cavity.
• Place the turkey breast side up in a roasting pan. Place the vegetable stuffing mixture in the cavity of the turkey.
• Bake in the oven for 20 minutes. Lower the oven temp to 350° and roast for an additional 3 1/2 hours, or until the juices run clear.
• Remove from oven and let the turkey sit for 10 minutes before doing anything to it.
• Remove the turkey from the pan and carve.
• Serve with stuffing vegetables and with the pan juices as a side. Enjoy!

Notes

You can cut the vegetables the night before and combine them with the garlic and pickled peppers for a hotter stuffing. The longer it sits together and the flavors meld, the hotter it gets.

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Thank you for stopping by!

Keep the red beans cookin’!

Eric

Red Beans and Eric

Eric Olsson is the food blogger of RedBeansAndEric.com. He publishes new recipes and interviews weekly. He has developed recipes and written articles for the famous Camellia brand in New Orleans, Louisiana. He has been mentioned in Louisiana Cookin‘ magazine and has had recipes featured in Taste of Home magazine – with his Creole Turkey recipe being runner up in their annual Thanksgiving recipe contest. He lives outside of Detroit, Michigan, with his wife and four children.