Well, helped save Thanksgiving anyway. I don’t want to take all the credit!
The semester is rapidly cycloning to a close (which is why this post is over a week delayed…), and amidst all our final projects and fretting about our research seminars, my cohort and I got to celebrate Thanksgiving. I’m lucky enough to live close enough to home to get to visit family for the holiday, so I packed everything up, threw Nanea in my backpack just in case there were any good photo opportunities for Instagram, and headed home anticipating a nice, unfortunately blog post free weekend.
Little did I suspect that I was going to end up providing something a little bigger than the cookies I wanted to bake.
The semester is rapidly cycloning to a close (which is why this post is over a week delayed…), and amidst all our final projects and fretting about our research seminars, my cohort and I got to celebrate Thanksgiving. I’m lucky enough to live close enough to home to get to visit family for the holiday, so I packed everything up, threw Nanea in my backpack just in case there were any good photo opportunities for Instagram, and headed home anticipating a nice, unfortunately blog post free weekend.
Little did I suspect that I was going to end up providing something a little bigger than the cookies I wanted to bake.
So we had a bit of an accident this Thanksgiving: my mom accidentally ordered an uncooked turkey instead of a cooked turkey. She’s not a big fan of cooking it herself, and I don’t blame her. You’re stuck baby sitting it for hours, when it’s a meat that people are generally meh at best about, and tend to eat in like, fifteen minutes. So basically, a whole lot of work for very little pay off.
Plus, you have to get really up close and personal with a turkey corpse, so that isn’t necessarily fun either.
But I had never done it before, and am always up for a challenge, so I volunteered to handle the turkey corpse and get it all nice and tasty for people who don’t actually care about turkey all that much.
Sounds delicious, right?
(In case you couldn’t tell, this is going to be a more tongue in cheek post than usual.)
Basically, to start off, you need to remove the neck and the innards from your turkey, the latter of which usually come in a bag. People often use these to make their turkey gravy, but that’s not a big tradition in my family. I put on a pair of gloves, pulled out the neck, and started trying to find this mysterious bag, but there was nothing inside the bird besides the neck. A little weird, right?
After thoroughly washing the bird out in a large bowl – or turkey jacuzzi, as my mom put it – you can get ready to put it in an oven bag. This helps trap the moisture and can help prevent the turkey from being dry. The bag we used recommended dusting flour on the inside of the bag to help prevent it from exploding too.
I stuck the turkey in the bag, and stuffed it with a quartered orange, celery, onions, and lots of fresh rosemary and thyme. These aromatics help flavor the turkey! I then massaged softened butter all over the bird before doing the same with a really wonderful blend of herbs and spices my mom had gotten as a gift earlier in the year. It had a lot of pepper, and even some dried lavender, which really smelled amazing.
Once that was done, we sliced some vents in the bag, tied it up…
And put it in the oven to cook for three hours.
Or, you know, at least three hours. Our turkey thermometer didn’t pop, so we ended up having to test it with a meat thermometer. But when it gave us a good internal temperature reading, it was time to take it out of the oven!
And it looked great!
My mom insisted that Nanea help carve the turkey.
While she finished carving up the turkey, the rest of us helped reheat and organize everyone’s favorite part of Thanksgiving – the sides!
Looks like we had a pretty good spread, right?
I got lucky: the first turkey I helped make turned out to be pretty tasty, if I do say so myself. It wasn't dry - or, you know, any drier than even a well cooked Turkey usually is - and although it was really gross having to handle the dead bird and wash it out, I've gotten a lot less squeamish about handling raw meat than I was when I started this blog. I also honestly had a good time prepping it, as it's been a long time since I've gotten to really experiment in the kitchen.
That being said, I totally empathize with people who hate making turkey though. It does take a really long time, it's eaten super fast, and at least in my family, it's no one's favorite part of the meal. It's sort of just... there. Because it's traditional. And while I like it, I do think the effort versus reward is a little unbalanced. One of the reasons I like baking more than cooking is that if it takes you an hour to make a cake, you probably will have leftovers to enjoy for a few days afterward, versus a meal that's scarfed down in fifteen minutes after you've slaved over it for three hours.
But I think I'm going to call this one a success! I'll leave you guys with one last bit of historical trivia: Thanksgiving was originally traditionally held on the last Thursday in November, but in 1939, that made it literally the last day of the month. Retail executives approached President Franklin Roosevelt about this and pointed out that this only left 24 shopping days before Christmas, which they felt wasn't enough for their businesses to make a profit. Roosevelt signed an executive order changing Thanksgiving to the fourth Thursday of November, saying he felt the decision would help benefit the economy.
And people got mad. FDR was accused of showing Hitler like despotism, and many states refused to abide by the change. But, ultimately the decision became final, with a joint resolution stating that Thanksgiving can't fall on the last two days of November.
So there you have it! My first Thanksgiving turkey, and a little bit of context to what kind of Thanksgiving Nanea would have enjoyed. Hope your holiday was as successful as ours!
Plus, you have to get really up close and personal with a turkey corpse, so that isn’t necessarily fun either.
But I had never done it before, and am always up for a challenge, so I volunteered to handle the turkey corpse and get it all nice and tasty for people who don’t actually care about turkey all that much.
Sounds delicious, right?
(In case you couldn’t tell, this is going to be a more tongue in cheek post than usual.)
Basically, to start off, you need to remove the neck and the innards from your turkey, the latter of which usually come in a bag. People often use these to make their turkey gravy, but that’s not a big tradition in my family. I put on a pair of gloves, pulled out the neck, and started trying to find this mysterious bag, but there was nothing inside the bird besides the neck. A little weird, right?
After thoroughly washing the bird out in a large bowl – or turkey jacuzzi, as my mom put it – you can get ready to put it in an oven bag. This helps trap the moisture and can help prevent the turkey from being dry. The bag we used recommended dusting flour on the inside of the bag to help prevent it from exploding too.
I stuck the turkey in the bag, and stuffed it with a quartered orange, celery, onions, and lots of fresh rosemary and thyme. These aromatics help flavor the turkey! I then massaged softened butter all over the bird before doing the same with a really wonderful blend of herbs and spices my mom had gotten as a gift earlier in the year. It had a lot of pepper, and even some dried lavender, which really smelled amazing.
Once that was done, we sliced some vents in the bag, tied it up…
And put it in the oven to cook for three hours.
And it looked great!
While she finished carving up the turkey, the rest of us helped reheat and organize everyone’s favorite part of Thanksgiving – the sides!
Looks like we had a pretty good spread, right?
That being said, I totally empathize with people who hate making turkey though. It does take a really long time, it's eaten super fast, and at least in my family, it's no one's favorite part of the meal. It's sort of just... there. Because it's traditional. And while I like it, I do think the effort versus reward is a little unbalanced. One of the reasons I like baking more than cooking is that if it takes you an hour to make a cake, you probably will have leftovers to enjoy for a few days afterward, versus a meal that's scarfed down in fifteen minutes after you've slaved over it for three hours.
But I think I'm going to call this one a success! I'll leave you guys with one last bit of historical trivia: Thanksgiving was originally traditionally held on the last Thursday in November, but in 1939, that made it literally the last day of the month. Retail executives approached President Franklin Roosevelt about this and pointed out that this only left 24 shopping days before Christmas, which they felt wasn't enough for their businesses to make a profit. Roosevelt signed an executive order changing Thanksgiving to the fourth Thursday of November, saying he felt the decision would help benefit the economy.
And people got mad. FDR was accused of showing Hitler like despotism, and many states refused to abide by the change. But, ultimately the decision became final, with a joint resolution stating that Thanksgiving can't fall on the last two days of November.
So there you have it! My first Thanksgiving turkey, and a little bit of context to what kind of Thanksgiving Nanea would have enjoyed. Hope your holiday was as successful as ours!
Now if only I had more mashed potatoes to enjoy...
I did not know that about FDR and Thanksgiving.
ReplyDeleteBecause we haven't had an oven in years, I only get a 12 pound turkey which cooks relatively quickly in the roaster we have (3 hours max). All I do is leave the neck and gizzards in the bottom of the pan, set the turkey on top of some long carrots and celery stalks to elevate it, fill up the cavity with whole onions (you don't even need to take the dry skins off) and whack the top with white wine or stock and a mess of Nature's Seasoning. The skin crisps up without any butter too.
One thing I always do though is to cook any fowl oriented as it was in life (so breast DOWN). I read once that this helps the bird self baste via its own circulatory system. Since I've never basted a bird in my life and it never comes out dry, I have to say that I think that works!
So glad your first turkey came out great!
Ooh, we'll have to remember that for next year! Thanks for the tip. :)
DeleteI found your blog recently, and I finally read an episode; this one. LOL! I LOVE cooking turkey. Yep, it's a lot of hard work, but to me, the best part of all is SMELLING the aroma as it bakes. Ah....and I live in Canada, where Thanksgiving is the 2nd Monday in October. To me, this is a lovely tradition; no where near Christmas and so much better than Halloween. (in my opinion) I always bake a fresh turkey and I always baste it. Mmm....your photos are very nice indeed. I'll be back to read the rest of your blog.
ReplyDeleteThat does sound a whole lot less stressful! The last three months of the year do tend to have a lot of stuff going on all at once, hahaha. I hope you enjoy the rest of the blog!
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