A friend stopped by last week for a visit. Kjel, our tortoise, was due for his weekly soak. I filled my boat cooler with very hot water, about 5 inches deep, and put him in. I explained that the soak helped with hydration and encouraged defecation.
After about 15 minutes Kjel took a huge tortoise shit. That was when my friend realized this was the same cooler I take pontooning, and he’d had food and beer from it on many occasions. I told him I always rinse the cooler out after Kjel used it.
This. We order our bird from the turkey farm a month before T-Day. We actually have an appointment for pick-up Thanksgiving Eve Day. The bird is ready for the oven, but often still at room temperature.
Salt is magic, as any cook or chef will tell you. It performs miracles when properly applied. It does a great job of breaking down cells, bringing out flavor, etc. In the case of turkey, though, it seems to be too much of a good thing.
The only deep fried turkey I was exposed to was at an acquaintance’s home. What a mess; oil splashing all over the sheet of plywood next to an open propane flame. When it was all over, the turkey was still raw in the middle. Hard pass.
Well it’s still not magic…cooks use it to do exactly what they’ve learned it will do. It’s chemistry, or food science.
My point was that saying something was prepared like “X” and the result was poor, doesn’t preclude the possibility that it was poorly cooked otherwise. IME with dry brining, if my turkey came out dry and/or tough, I would assume it was my fault for cooking too long or at the wrong temperature. Blaming the brine doesn’t make sense.
ETA had a similar experience with deep fried turkey… friend didn’t realize it had to be covered the whole time. Black on the outside, red on the in. A correctly prepared one is fine, but apart from the skin isn’t significantly better than any other good method as far as I’m concerned.
Just occurred to me that I didn’t recall seeing anybody mention homemade cranberry sauce. Apologies if I missed it, but that’s a requirement every year.
See one of my previous posts. I agree, and this is from someone who grew up thinking that the canned stuff with the marks on it was what was meant by cranberry sauce.
I think I’ve posted this before. The first time we ordered from the farm, I had no idea of the cost. I was standing in line and they were ringing up the order for the guy ahead of me. The total was, I think, around $110. I thought to myself, dang, he must be getting three birds.
I’ve made I think 3 turkeys, and every time I do, I look up like five different sets of instructions on dry-brining, and kluge something together based on all of them. Generally it’s salt, pepper, thyme, and something else like lemon zest or garlic. The bird has always been delicious.
But my signature dish is dill rolls, whose recipe is something like this:
They’re phenomenal just out of the oven, and the next day, they make excellent turkey sandwiches for breakfast.
We are going to my son’s. My DIL always makes something she calls pilgrim potatoes, which is a mashed potato casserole on steroids. My mother used to make a sweet potato and marshmallow casserole. And apple pie since she didn’t like pumpkin.