Boring? Pumpkin pie is a vegetable that I eat for breakfast. 
My family has never been big on desserts. Appetizers, OTOH…really, we’ve got a appetizer spread that would knock your socks off. People save room for the turkey, then they’re absolutely done. Most of the desserts go untouched.
Nobody likes pie. I don’t care for it myself because I’m not a flaky crust fan. We do have a chocolate pudding trifle, though, that everyone goes nuts over. Ditto the chocolate chip meringues. We also have obligatory small pastries/brownies/cookies, all of which mostly go untouched.
If a traditional thanksgiving, I consider pumpkin bread pudding for dessert nearly a must have.
This year I am not cooking a traditional dinner. I am thinking either pot roast or lasagne. It is just 2, maybe 3, of us. And I am just not feeling the urge to do all of the post-dinner turkey work. Leftover turkey, turkey broth/soup are all awesome, but dear me it is a lot of work when I’d rather just sit.
I haven’t found that brining makes a huge difference in the Thanksgiving Day bird, as long as you don’t overcook it. It does, however, make a big difference in the leftovers (in my opinion). If for some reason I’m in a time crunch, I buy a kosher bird; it’s essentially pre-brined.
Beyond brining, I don’t do anything special other than making sure that the bird is as dry as I can get it before it goes in the oven, and trussing it to get more even cooking. I don’t stuff; it takes too long to cook and it’s too hard to get every component to the proper temperature without over/under-cooking something.
With all due respect, I can’t see what the bag does for you. If you don’t cut slits, you’ll steam the bird and you won’t get crispy skin. If you do cut slits in it, we’ll, what’s the point?
I’m thinking about spatchcocking the turkey this year, and cooking it right atop the dressing. I just seem incapable of doing exactly the same thing each year.
[quote=“Labrador_Deceiver, post:16, topic:674388”]
Scubaqueen, that’s an interesting recipe. If you bake it the night before, how do you reheat it come meal time? Another 30 minutes?
LD: i usually take it out first thing in the morning, let it warm up a bit then shove it in the oven for 30 or so. if you don’t have the time, heat it up in the microwave instead.
yeppers the knorr soup would be an excellent choice!
Absolutely. My BIL insists on a honking, ginormous bird, even though at the most we’re feeding five to six sometimes seven people total at the table.
Why, you ask?
Turkey sammiches, of course!
For some strange reason, I have both an electric turkey ‘fryer’ and a propane one. I like the electric one as it gets the bird done very quickly and it comes out nice and brown and you don’t have to bother with oil. The propane one I bought mostly for homebrewing, but I’m planning on getting out of that as it takes too much time and money and effort.
We had our Thanksgiving yesterday. It was nice and the turnout wasn’t too bad, we ended up with 15 people which is enough for my aunt’s small house.
The previous Johnsons are right: not only are the suggestions pretty good, it’s an excellent example of genuine frontier Thanksgiving gibberish.
Now,as to the notion of “wiggling the leg” to see if the turkey is done: bad idea. Do yourselves a favor and buy a quality instant-read thermometer; a Thermapen, if you can afford it. This thing is the bomb for everything from turkey to chicken breasts to sausages. Worried about the stuffing? Check the temperature.
Also, the worry about salmonella has become an obsession, but whenever you handle the raw bird, wash your hands before touching anything else, just to be safe. Or wear examination gloves and throw them away each time after handling the bird.
My suggestion each year for people who are having guests: make extra gravy ahead of time. Buy some turkey thighs and drumsticks, baste them good and roast them until done. Add a cube of unsalted butter to the drippings you get, and set the pan aside. Remove the meat from the turkey parts and drop the bones into a pot of water with some onion, celery, garlic and some dried sage. Boil, then simmer for a few hours until you get a good stock. Heat up the butter and drippings, add some flour and cook, stirring constantly, until the roux starts to brown, then start slowly adding stock and perhaps more sage, whisking until you end up with gravy. Salt to taste. Refrigerate.
On feast day, throw the giblets and the neck into a pot of water and simmer most of the day to make additional stock. Remove the giblets and let cool, then mince them up. Make gravy in the same way as before with the turkey drippings, the new stock and the giblets, and then mix in the gravy you made ahead of time. I prefer minced giblets (minus the gizzard) and chopped neck meat in my gravy, but some people seem to be squeamish about it. You can always strain it out if your guests don’t like it. They’ll never know the difference.
This reminds me: last week I heard the supermarket cashier shriek, “Oh! So adorable!” while staring down into a shopping cart. Assuming she meant a baby, I glanced over, and discovered that it was a very small (probably eight pounds) turkey.
No shit, 8 pounds when we raised our turkeys was maybe 5 or 6 months old … though when they are 18 months old they tend to be 40 pounds:p Turkeyzilla was huge, we had to make a roasting pan and set it on a few bricks in the bottom of our oven because if we tried putting the rack on the bottom set of slots the top of the breastbone was touching the elements in the top of the oven.:eek:
My question - why did so many of us grow up with canned cranberry sauce when it is SO easy to make from fresh cranberries?
When I tell people I’m making it to bring to a potluck style dinner they are almost always impressed that I’m making it “from scratch”, when there’s literally nothing more to it than boiling water, sugar, and cranberries together for a few minutes - so why did the canned stuff become so popular?
(I realize some people have strong preferences for one, or the other, or neither (I actually like both) - just don’t understand why the canned stuff was all I or most people I know ever had growing up, when the “real thing” is dead easy to make - were fresh cranberries not as readily available or ??).
I think maybe fresh cranberries were not as readily available in olden days.
Tomorrow I start baking. There will be pumpkin pie, mince pie, and apple pie, but the one dessert to rule them all is the Indian pudding. It amazes (but secretly gladdens) me that almost no one seems to like Indian pudding.
Because people like the taste of cranberries but not the solids?
Actually they are probably the residue of the old fancy gelatin presentation pieces of the pre-jello era. They were a sign of the ability to process a foodstuff that took a fair amount of time and effort. [You can melt and remold cranberry jelly actually.]
I will admit that I like to process cranberries into chutney, then puree it to make it smooth instead of leaving it lumpy.
The cake hating is a lie.
Seriously, DC, your posts jumped out at me because they were consistently negative. Jumping into a Thanksgiving thread to repeatedly bring up things you don’t like? How sad, especially when one of those things is turkey.
After a couple of those posts, you admitted you’d never even tasted a turkey done right. I suggest you try a juicy turkey (kosher or brined would do) before you say it’s ‘never good’ and asking why people would ever eat it?
Our kosher turkey from Trader Joe’s was great (except for having to pull out pinfeathers). We followed an old Martha Stewart recipe where you soak a cheesecloth in melted butter and white wine and drape it over the bird. Then you keep it saturated, which makes the house smell wonderful… and you always have an open bottle of wine at hand!
Most of our guests ended up in the kitchen with me, sipping ‘the turkey wine’ ($6 bottles of viognier) and sampling random cheeses that everyone brought.
ETA: My favorite dish of the day is cranberry sauce ‘from scratch’. I use half the sugar called for, and add orange peel, vanilla and nutmeg. Mmmm… first dish we ran out of today. I’ll make more for leftovers.
Man, I made a fabu turkey, great dressing and yummy gravy- except that the gravy wouldn’t cooperate and wasn’t ready until after dinner. Meh, since I loves me some cold leftovers with hot gravy. The bird was juicy with really brown skin. I tried a really hot oven this time. Fresh store brand, nothing fancy. No brining. Fresh herb rub, some basting.
Taters were a slight disappointment, as we got those teenytiny little guys and didn’t mash them. Tasty, but not what we wanted.
Is fabu anything like tofu?
No, it’s short for FABUlous , and anything tofu is not fabu.