What bugs me about brining is that many of the recipes I see for it do not mention that many/most commercial turkeys already come, essentially, pre-brined, being injected with “up to x% chicken broth” (or variations thereof.) Brining these turkeys doesn’t really do anything.
I’ve stopped deep frying anything for that reason. Unless you do it all the time, you end up with a lot of leftover oil that needs to be stored and/or disposed of. Restaurants have fryolators and can reuse that oil all day. Way more efficient.
My brother sometimes deep fries a turkey for us. But he’s already frying two for his wife’s family, so he’s got everything set up when he does one for us.
Only ever had a deep fried turkey once. Watching the huge mess it made was enough to put me off ever trying it. On top of which, it was raw in the middle. No thankee, podnah. My son smoked a turkey last Thanksgiving. It was dry and tough, as he left in in the smoker too long. And again, you get no drippings for gravy. Not a fan.
I contained any mess by setting up on gravel outside.
I started with a freshly slaughtered bird from the turkey farm at room temperature. Timed my cooking and had a perfectly done bird.
My gf likes gravy, so I make a roux and she takes it from there. No gravy for me, thanks.
Yeah, we did the deep-fried bird once, c. 2008? It did not live up to the hype. There was nothing wrong with it, nor was there anything exceptional with it. It was just turkey. (And I’m someone who actually loves turkey and looks forward to turkey the most in a Thanksgiving meal.) A spatchcocked bird in the oven over high heat (425-450) tastes equally as good to me.
Made my 12 cheese lasagna from scratch, once. I ground the beef and pork, shredded all the cheese. Made from scratch noodles, regular wheat, beet, squash and spinach. Sauce made from mostly tomatoes that I grew. Even the spices, thyme, oregano, basil, were chopped up fresh. All that work then I watched 2 of the invited guests turn their noses up at the lasagna. To them anything but white pasta noodles are “yucky”. Their 6 year old son that was an allegedly picky eater, loved it. I think the only picky eaters in that family was the parents. Tomatoes are now on my can’t eat list so that means no more of my lasagna.
I think it was his first time doing it. He had too much oil in the fryer and it was splashing all over the piece of plywood he had under it. I kept waiting for the whole mess to burst into flames. I don’t doubt that it can be done properly, but this wasn’t it.
As Erma Bombeck once said: “I come from a home where gravy is a beverage”.
That happens! Typically people set up outside and then rain starts. They move into the garage and burn their house down.
Chiles rellenos was my immediate reponse, too, and for all those reasons (though I didn’t make a tomato sauce). And after I eat my C-/D+ chile that took all day and partially fried my own fingers (probably, lol), there’s the wreck of a kitchen to clean up. Chile skins and seeds, cheese flecks, eggy bowls, busted toothpicks, batter drips are ON TOP of the big mess from deep frying.
Yeah, speaking as a retired actuary, that’s a fairly common cause of house fires. Doing it on gravel well away from any structures is the way to go.
When my brother has brought us a deep fried turkey i also roasted one, so I’d have gravy and stuffing. I like my heritage breed roasted turkey more, but the kids like the more heavily seasoned fried bird
My Father-in-law, for two glorious years, did a fried turkey and a smoked turkey in addition to baked turkey for Thanksgiving (this is my MiL’s holiday, I live in a town with a bunch of in-laws who each have their “event”). Now, both were a solid, good, turkey - B to B+, and I enjoyed them immensely, because my MiL’s baked turkey is a bland, drippy mess of C quality.
But it was absolutely a pain in the neck for him, meaning a lot of work early in the day or day before getting it all set up, and the older folks in the family (most of them) gravitated to the wet baked turkey, and the 4-5 of us younger folks (minus the several vegetarians) didn’t eat enough to justify the work. 
I love good chile rellenos, but agree, to make them for just myself from scratch feels like too much work - cheaper to have a pro do it for me, AS LONG AS it’s not these crappy giant ball of dough version with a pathetic, underripe core of sad chili within.
In a recent thread though, I linked an internet recipe for Chili Relleno Casserole that is far less work, although you do miss the crispy exterior:
(FTR I add a touch of smoked paprika and a heavy dash of extra cayenne to the egg mix to kick it up, and use roasted hatch or thick-fleshed anaheims, never poblanos, which have a tendency to be bitter/green-bell tasting, rather than hot, fruity and sweet)
This comment has come up several times. Why would a box mix cake be any different then scratch made? Isn’t it just all the dry ingredients mixed together and you add the same eggs/milk/butter whatever?
I really don’t know, but I prefer the texture of scratch cakes, and I’m guessing the ratios of ingredients I use are different to whatever the box mixes are.
My wife likes seafood, and I can eat it now and again.
So quite some years ago, we got a pack of frozen whole small squid, can’t quite remember why now.
It took FOREVER to thaw it out, and then I had to try to cut it up into pieces to remove all the tentacle bits and cut the rest into pieces usable for cooking.
Not doing that one again…!
If you add the milk, butter, and eggs it might be identical. It would also save perhaps 5 minutes, tops. I mean, how long does it take to measure the flour, sugar, salt, and baking powder? Most cake mixes include dried versions of at least one of those ingredients.
Huh‽ The tentacles are the best part.
These were small squids. The tentacles were thread sized… not talking about calamari here. The only pieces with any substance on them were the body.
We ate it eventually but the prep wasn’t worth it…
I first made croissants from scratch the Saturday before Easter in 1983. I remember that because of what elso happened. Late at night my father had a heart attack. Mom, a nurse, didn’t wait for an ambulance, she drove to the hospital with him, saying “I didn’t pay a lot of attention to traffic lights.” I stayed behind to call the hospital, to let them know he was on the way. I could be calm because it all wasn’t dramatic like on tv or film. Later that night all the family was gathered in the waiting room and to me we looked like zombies, So I went home and got the croissants intended for Easter dinner and we ate them there. Food can be a healing thing,
I love to do baklava too, and while I have had some retail stuff I prefer making it myself, but I don’t do the phyllo myself, I buy it. Love phyllo for spanakopita too.
Once in a while I do pumpkin pie from scratch but it is much easier to use canned pumpkin.
Probably I will not roast another goose as I really didn’t like the one I made and see no reason when there are other meats to roast
As a young’un, I horrified the adults at the table by complimenting the chef on the lumpy mashed potatoes. I was used to Potato Buds (aka potato-flavored wallpaper paste) and really liked the small, tasty lumps distributed throughout.
I also found out that phyllo dough often starts out as a lump of dough the size of a standard dinner roll, and in time is stretched out to the size of a bed sheet. Thanks, but I’ll leave that to the pros, or the machines.