Heheh, I’ve had the one made from canned soup once. Never again. However, once my sister-in-law went to the trouble of making it from scratch. I have to admit it was quite tasty, even if I wouldn’t make it for myself. It was something like this:
For myself, I never looked forward to turkey before my sweetie began preparing it. Now I would be disappointed if we didn’t have it. I still want cornbread dressing. I make it every year, and if it was just me, I’d still do it.
Some cooks just have it down. My brother-in-law smokes such good turkey that my wife will travel hundreds of travel miles and endure the chaos of her sister’s hosting a family gathering just to have some.
It’s not Thanksgiving without turkey for me, and sweet potatoes. I don’t like the marshmallow sweet potatoes though. I bake mine until they are super soft and molasses-y, then mash them with a little olive oil and sprinkle with toasted pumpkin seeds. (The oil was used to cook the seeds, so is warm and nutty and rich.)
I also need apple pie for breakfast the following day.
Hope this isn’t considered a threadjack. If it is, please accept my apologies.
From 1977 through 1985 my family, all of us residing in deep South Georgia, would caravan down to Shell Point, Florida, Thanksgiving morning.
Upon arrival, everyone was given an assignment. Some went to the local docks and purchased fresh mullet, shrimp, and oysters. Some stayed back and cut up a 40 lb sack of Russet potatoes for french fries, some prepared a couple of gallons of cheese grits and hush puppies, some unloaded the vat fryers.
Then, for the next few hours, we ate in an open-air pavilion directly on the ocean, laughing, telling stories and basically catching up since last Thanksgiving. All homemade and the seafood had been swimming in the Gulf of Mexico a couple of hours before.
It was all washed down with several gallons of super sweet South Georgia iced tea or lemonade.
Then after a buffet table of homemade desserts, never store-bought, we cleaned up and headed for home. Got there around 4:00 pm.
Those were fantastic Thanksgiving dinners and not one turkey or green bean was harmed.
Nah - and it sounds like an amazing way to spend the holiday! One often hears tales of arguments and tensions that ruin the day. Your family really did it up right!
Yep, my Mom used to wake me up to help her cook the turkey- mostly chop the celery, etc, but I learned all her tricks.
Now there is just the two of us, plus an occasional guest.
I do turkey, with bread stuffing, including celery, fresh sage, shallots, (instead of onions, but way way less) and most importantly Sage sausage- browned before putting in the mix (no pink left!)- with half in the bird, and half in a casserole for leftovers. Mashed taters, gravy. I make “turkey carcass soup” after the leftovers are gone, this makes for about two weeks of meals.
We have never had green bean casserole or sweet potatoes with marshmallows- once when i was a young man living alone, i was invited to a family feast that had those- the green beans were okay- but those yams were too damn sweet. We dont bother with cranberry sauce.
I have tried adding water chestnuts and/or mushrooms to the stuffing, but neither added much.
Yeah, pretty healthy too- and did you know that originally Popeye ate sweet potatoes, not spinach? It’s right there- “I yam what I yam!”.
Turkey hint- cook halfway with the breast down, then roll over and finish. Thus the white meat is more moist.
This year mom and I are dining out for Thanksgiving instead of cooking, but on the years when I do cook, my standard menu is as follows;
Turkey (brined and oven-roasted without stuffing)
Scratch gravy from the turkey drippings
Scratch mashed potatoes
Cornbread stuffing with sausage
Canned jellied cranberry sauce
Bread pudding
Green bean casserole OR sweet potato casserole, but not both
Baked mac & cheese
Scratch cheddar biscuits
Pumpkin pie cheesecake
An appetizer platter with the following; celery, baby carrots, broccoli florets, pickle spears, olives, ranch dip, Ritz crackers, and a Kaukauna port wine cheese ball
The baked mac is something I only started making recently, based on the following recipe I got from Youtube. It’s a six-cheese abomination that’s insanely dense and rich, and I usually top it with French fried onions.
As a kid: Turkey, bread stuffing (dried bread with celery. Onion, sautéed, sage, chicken broth, a nd turkey drippings,) home made gravy, mashed potatoes, squash or sweet potatoes they had brown sugar and butter but never marshmallows. Rolls, real butter, banana bread, cheese, grapes and walnuts as apetizwes. Apple and pumpkin pie.
Now, same except no squash or sweet potatoes, walnuts. I never seem to have time for banana bread. Add ham Hubster doesn’t like turkey, and corn bread dressing, crumbled home made cornbread no sugar, 4 chopped hard boiled eggs, a bunch of chopped green onion, salt pepper, and chicken broth. We also have deviled eggs and pickle wraps. And corn as vegetable. I miss squash and sweet potatoes.
My daughter is making it well some of it at her house. For some bizarre reason she likes instant potatoes. No just no.
Oh yeah, my mom used to make radish roses for my sister and my dad, and she also had cranberry jelly from the can: my sister loved that stuff.
We have a pretty traditional Thanksgiving meal. Turkey, mashed potatoes, corn, cranberry sauce from a can, stuffing (not in the turkey), buns, green bean casserole, candied yams (I don’t eat ‘em), apple & pumpkin pies. Sometimes my BIL brings his deviled eggs. My niece’s husband brings his peach cobbler and ice cream. I always try to have something chocolatey too. For years, baked potatoes were on the menu along with baked sweet potatoes/yams. At some point we switched to mashed. It might have been because some of the potatoes exploded in my mom’s oven one year!
I just saw a TikTok where noodles over mashed potatoes was mentioned as a Thanksgiving staple! Loads of people agreed in the comments. I have never heard of it. Commenters were saying it’s a thing in Ohio, and other midwest areas. I’m in MN, it’s not a thing here!
First apartment was near a military base; neighbor was a military mechanic from TX & taught me how to use a smoker so one year I tried a smoked turkey as a second, side turkey / experiment. Not only did everyone like it better but it had the added benefit of freeing us space/temperature in the oven; since then there hasn’t been a turkey cooked inside. Early on I switched to turkey London broils (3-4 lb boneless breasts) so I don’t need to get up at stupid o’clock on a cold morning since they cook so much quicker. I’ve been doing it for decades now; even made multiples & packed one up & took it to friends when we went there for a number of years & made one exclusively so that we’d have a second Thanksgiving dinner at home the next day because otherwise it was just one meal, no leftovers.
Thanksgiving lunch is smoked salmon since that cooks quicker than the turkey. Also in the smoker is turkey Andouille sausage because Sat is Round II of Cooking - smoked turkey jambalaya!..with one breast smoked specifically for that. If you don’t like it with a bit of a bite, tough $#!+, I do!
Personally, I lurves me a good pumpkin &/or pecan pie but I always feel dessert that night is kind of a waste waist. Between stuffing, mashed, sweet, more stuffing, bread of some kind, sometimes crescent rolls, sometimes a good rye bread - (something to spread warm roasted garlic on) & the tryptophan in the turkey, I’m already in a good food coma & usually don’t even want dessert.
If you cook everything to 165 it will be overcooked. That temperature is published because that’s the temperature at which poultry is safe with zero resting time. But the USDA instructions for commercial kitchens (which are generally the source of sous vide cooking instructions) give time and temperature combinations, and if you rest your roast (which you should do anyway) you can pasteurize your poultry at much lower temperatures. Check pages 36-39 of this document for details:
But i always start by cooking the stuffing and put it in the bird when it is still hot, so it generally reaches temps at about the same time as the thick part of the breast. I generally use two meat thermometers for a stuffed turkey, one in the flesh and another shoved into the center of the stuffing.
Yeah. The authorities are so afraid of the clueless cooks roasting still partly frozen turkeys they’ve trained a generation of decently skilled home cooks to roast their birds well past well-done. Which the turkey companies have partly offset by injecting pounds of water into the birds to try to keep some moisture still in the meat at 165F.
