What Color is Your Turkey?

One of the great events to prove that you have finally made it to adulthood is to host a Thanksgiving meal at your home. Not long after I got married, I had such a chance. My husband’s sister was going to spend Thanksgiving with us. Normally, I am not a fan of cooking. I have problems with meals that take longer to make than to eat. Something just seems wrong there. Now, don’t make the mistake that some people do. Don’t equate my dislike of cooking with an inability to cook. I can cook…well, for the most part. I admit that I do have a lot to learn. Here is an example -- something that I am still teased about. Five years ago I worked at a small school. We decided that the teachers and students were going to cook a big Thanksgiving meal for our families. When it came down to what each class was going to do, I breathed a huge sigh a relief when my group was the beverages group. Woohoo! A few liters of soda and apple cider and we were good to go. That’s when the first grade teacher spoke up -- they were tasked with mashed potatoes. Did we really want these little children playing with knives? Darn, suddenly they got the beverages and my group got the mashed potatoes. Help! I had no idea how to make them. I suggested (strongly) that instant potatoes were just as good. I was denied! Oh, okay…how do I make mashed potatoes? One of the other teachers started telling me how in the middle of the school hallway. (Wait, I need to write this down!!) Basically she told me that we had to skin the potatoes, cut them up, and beat them with a mixer. Now in her mind she boiled them until them were soft before using the mixer. But she didn’t tell me that! My eyes got wide as I tried to imagine how to beat these raw chunks of potato with a mixer. I could completely see in my imagination pieces of hard potato flying across the room in all different directions. My teacher friend questioned the horror she saw in my eyes. “How do you keep the pieces of potato in the bowl as you mix them? Won’t they go flying?” I asked. At first she was confused. Suddenly she saw the extent of my lack of knowledge. “Oh no,” she laughed. At this point she gave me the FULL set of directions on how to make mashed potatoes. (I still think going Instant would have been just as good. Grin)

The first time I was in charge of the entire Thanksgiving meal (with my new husband and his sister), I was actually excited to cook. I planned out everything. I had a piece of paper with a timeline reminding me exactly when I was going to put what in the oven. I even asked the gals at work all of their ideas on how to make the best turkey possible. I don’t know what brand of turkey we had, but the one thing I remember is that it came with directions. That was such a wonderful thing. This also meant that I remembered to remove the bag of giblets -- something that my friends at work had mentioned more than once. In the last hour of cooking the turkey, I remembered one of the suggestions my friends made -- basting the turkey with honey. I quickly got out the honey and used it for the last 30-45 minutes. Oh, that turkey tasted good! In fact, the whole meal was great. By the way, I didn’t plan mashed potatoes for this Thanksgiving (probably because I had no idea how to make them….and I wasn’t a complete fan). They got made, though. My husband’s sister felt the meal would not be complete without them, so I let her take on that task.

Fast forward to the next Thanksgiving. This time my in-laws were coming! I had such a great success the year before that I thought I was completely prepared for this. I relaxed a bit and didn’t have a timeline printed out. The first clue that this was not going to be as easy as I thought was when I pulled the defrosted turkey out of the refrigerator and found that it lacked something very important to me. It had NO directions!! I totally laid into my husband on this one; he was the one who had purchased the turkey. How could he be so thoughtless as to buy a turkey with no directions when I had to make the perfect meal for his parents? Ha. Poor man. This was almost twenty years ago -- there was no internet to go running to when directions were missing. To be honest, I am not sure what I did. Maybe I referred to one of those food books that some people lovingly refer to as “cookbooks” or maybe I just tried to remember what I had done the year before. I do remember one thing I did. Since basting the turkey the year before with honey for 30-45 minutes made the turkey so tasty, I decided to baste this turkey with honey for the full four hours. Did some of you have eyes that just popped out? If so, you must have more cooking experience than me. Two things (other than a bit of cooking inexperience) were against me. First, our apartment kitchen was basically a hallway. It was very tiny. Second, the light in our oven didn’t work. Therefore when I would open the oven to baste the turkey every 30 minutes or so, I couldn’t see a problem building. Finally it was time for dinner. The table was filled with tons of Thanksgiving goodies, and all that was left was to bring the turkey from the oven to the table to be carved. My in-laws were seated at the table as my husband and I were in the kitchen removing the turkey from the oven. This is when I almost cried. As we removed the turkey, I noticed for the first time that it was completely and totally BLACK! It looked more like a burnt, melted appliance from a house fire than something we were all thankful we got to eat. My heart fell. I was less than excited to show my in-laws my failure in cooking. I had to though -- we brought the charred black turkey to the table and then held our breathe as we started to carve it. God is good. Even though the turkey looked terrible, the meat inside was incredible. The burnt exterior had held in the juices which made the meat so tender. By far, that was the best turkey meat I have ever cooked. Still -- it would be a “Jen” thing to have to serve a black turkey to her in-laws!

I have found that when I do something “Jen-like”, people like to tell me their horror stories. My favorite turkey story was one of those that was told to me after I served my charred turkey. I usually don’t share other people’s stories in my blog, but this is too fun not to share. The particular woman telling me the story had used the bag method to cook her turkey. I have never done this, but if I understand correctly, the turkey stays in a special bag the entire time it is cooked. My friend realized that due to other activities she had planned, she was not going to be home in time to put the turkey in the oven for its four hours. Therefore, she put it in the oven early. She decided to double the time (make it 8 hours) and split the heat in half. It sounded like a good idea to her, and by the end of the eight hours, the turkey smelled great. She put the bagged turkey on the Thanksgiving table and proceeded to open the bag. To her horror, 8 hours at a low heat made the meat so tender that it ALL had fallen off the bones. When she opened the bag, all that anyone at the table could see was the turkey skeleton! All of the meat was at the bottom of the bag. To make things worse, she had forgotten the giblets. The giblets bag did not fall to the bottom -- it was sticking proudly between a couple bones in the turkey skeleton! What a riot!