It’s the day before Thanksgiving and a new roasting pan is in the house and a turkey that’s going to be the guest of honour at dinner tonight!
Mom and Meghann were at a bit of loose ends so we’d figure we’d have a go at the traditional feast and hopefully have a much better outcome than one thirty-some years ago.
Your Assessment Of My Idiocy Is Accepted With Thanks!
By my reckoning, this is the first turkey I’ve roasted in decades since a rather unfortunately anaemic-looking bird was served to friends at university who were also at loose ends and stuck in the dorms for that Thanksgiving.
Whilst we’re in the mood to confess about harrowing abuses of oversized poultry at Thanksgiving, this particular travesty was also due to biffing a particular step in the most embarrassing way.
The turkey in question was cooked to proper temperature and it was tasty enough but the appearance bore a rather remarkable resemblance to a certain Sith Lord at the end of “Return of the Jedi”!
I’d prepped the turkey and was faithfully basting it through the cooking process and would replace the foil I’d tented the bird with after each basting. After a few hours, the turkey was smelling right and it looked like it was actually cooking but I was desperately waiting to see that golden brown colour that says “tryptophan be damned, I’m having turkey tonight!”.
I was even thinking of Darth Vader when I was looking at that poor turkey and came to the conclusion “I find your lack of colour…disturbing!”
Finally, I got so desperate that I rang up one of the best cooks I’ve ever known in my life to see if she could help me out as I was expecting friends over pretty soon and this bird looked just plain hideous.
Aunt Judy listened as I recounted all of the steps I’d done in prepping the turkey for roasting, seasoning and basting it, and the actual cooking in the oven. And that’s when she gave a gentle laugh that was roughly translated as “I just heard you confess the really dumb thing that you did and I’m going to try to let you in on that as kindly and as Minnesota Nice as I possibly can”.
And she did in the way only she could really pull off.
I’d put foil over that bird from the start and that’s why the colour was so disgustingly pale. I’d kind of forgotten that the foil goes on *AFTER* you’ve hit the desired shade of brown, not before!
She assured me she would not think the less of my intelligence or what passes for skills in the kitchen the next time I came home but I can assure you that she was amused nonetheless and there was a smile or two as I was in the kitchen helping her with the Christmas dinner that made it clear that she knew and I knew and that was all who really needed to.
I miss her in the worst way and not just because she was a fantastic cook!
My friends were kind enough to say all of the right things and ignore the much paler shade of brown I was able to get in the desperate last hour of roasting and basting. The turkey actually tasted perfectly fine…it was more a matter of doing your best to ignore what it actually looked like prior to the carving which went a long way toward covering the sins committed in the kitchen that evening!
When You Fall Off The Horse…
I know, I know…you get back on and keep riding.
Except the big problem was that I didn’t really need to after graduation where I’d never have enough people to make bothering with a turkey worth it and then someone far more competent in the culinary arts than I’d ever hope to be ensured the most I’d have to do is lift the bird into the bag and occasionally schlep the pan and eventually carve the turkey.
Thirty some years later, I’m finally going to get back into the saddle and try my hand at a turkey.
Let’s Welcome Our Guest Of Honour!
First thing is to get the bird into the roaster and it seems abundantly clear that next year, the turkey really needs to be smaller. This 24 pound (lb) tom is just barely squeezing into that pan! I’m thinking a 16 pounder ought to do right nicely and allow us to use the included rack to elevate the turkey for a proper roasting.
But we’re committed (or we bloody well ought to be) so after extricating the turkey from the bag, I ended up going for simple seasoning of kosher salt and the Greek seasoning along with melted butter. Maybe down the road I’ll get more creative but this year’s turkey was all about Alan Shepard’s prayer! 🙂
The trickiest bit was getting this beast of a bird into the nylon cooking bag!
Thank goodness for my sister having an extra set of hands to hold the bag open and the complete abandonment of anything approaching personal dignity as I’ve got a fair amount of my forearm inside the turkey’s cavity so I can push the bird into the bag with that one arm and use the other hand to pull the bag down and round to the end of the drumsticks.
Once it was in the bag and then the roasting pan, it was butter and seasoning time. I’d read about a technique of lifting up the skin covering the breast and drizzling the butter under the skin and it turned out to not be terribly difficult to do. Six slits in the bag and our bird is well on its way to the dinner table.
The part that stinks is when you can smell the turkey roasting and you’re still hours from it being done.
That didn’t stop us from nibbling on vegetables and the lazy variation on charcuterie in the meantime.
Three and a half hours later, it was time to check the temperature and here I was getting some mixed signals…the breast was well and truly done but the thighs was giving me borderline readings. This is where I think I needed a smaller bird that could sit in the roasting pan’s rack as the deepness of the pan likely shielded the thigh and lower part of the bird from the heat.
Fortunately for us, the colour of the turkey was absolutely gorgeous (and the light in the kitchen doesn’t truly doesn’t do it justice). The breast was dead-on perfect and that butter under the skin trick really did make a noticeable improvement in the taste compared to birds I’ve done in the past. After a thirty minute rest and a judicious amount of carving of the breast with the turkey tossed back in the oven to finish cooking the thighs and dark meat, it was time for us to enjoy a relatively simple Thanksgiving feast.
What it lacked in gourmet style, it more than made up with comfort and wonderful memories of Thankgivings shared through the years.
It also generated a whole heap of leftovers! That’s OK…Dad’s philosophy was that if you didn’t have leftovers for at least a week or two, you really weren’t playing the game the way it was meant to be played! 🙂
Here’s hoping your Thanksgiving is a time for reflection and peace…now more than ever! 🙂
