<p>What about pink turkey?</p>
<p>I know I shouldn’t do it for poultry … but to me a little undercooked is better than a little overcooked.</p>
<p>Plus I think if you soak the whole bird in brine you have a good chance of inhibiting any nasties in the first place.</p>
<p>great lakes mom, I’m having to scale back a lot – the kid will be lucky if he gets more than two different things! – because I woke up this morning as dizzy as a drunk sailor on drugs and a TiltAWhirl! If I manage to make the cauliflower pie, I’ll consider the meal a success! (I made stuffing yesterday; so glad I made it ahead of time!)</p>
<p>Agree with others that turkey is easy to make. </p>
<p>abasket, I love the Christmas nosh you describe! I get together with friends for a day (or two) after Christmas brunch, and in addition to the scrambled eggs, bacon, and quiche I provide, others bring all sorts of things (sometimes Christmas day leftovers!) so we have a wide variety of goodies from which to choose.</p>
<p>I never do a whole turkey, just a turkey breast. It’s so easy to just put it in a bag and stick it in the oven for a couple of hours. My two S’s love it. S2 has eaten leftovers for the last three meals! S1 loves the turkey soup I make with the last of it.</p>
<p>Last yr. I ditched the traditonal Christmas meal. We had eastern NC BBQ and slaw, marinated chicken wings,broccoli salad, corn pudding,rosemary potatoes and yeast rolls.
Dessert was a chocolate pound cake with choc. fudge icing topped with ice cream.
Everyone seemed to love it. Might do the same thing this year.</p>
<p>“swimcatsmom-the thing was 20lbs. It was a big bird. First, only and last time I made turkey. Never again. And spending all day over the stove basting the bloody thing with white wine and butter makes me never want to look at another turkey again.”</p>
<p>Basting a turkey constantly actually makes it drier. Everytime you open the oven you loose both heat and moisture. Loss of heat, means you end up cooking the bird longer than you should and the turkey comes out dry. Just throw it in the oven and walk away until the last hour.</p>
<p>We did the whole 9 yards for Thanksgiving.</p>
<p>I abandoned the big Christmas dinner w/bird years ago. We now have a brunch, followed by chili (put in the crockpot early) whenever everyone gets hungry.</p>
<p>I don’t mind spending Thanksgiving in the kitchen. Do NOT want to do that with Christmas. Haven’t since I realized I was missing new bikes and legos and fun with my boys.</p>
<p>PS - bird…</p>
<p>We did a 20 pound turkey… 30 minutes on 500, put foil on the breast, and 350 til breast meat is 160 (refuse to do this any more without temp probe/beeper).</p>
<p>It was the easiest part of the dinner. I think it took about 4 hours, but I’m not sure - we take it out when it beeps. (no basting, but I do put water in the bottom of the pan so the drippings won’t burn - for gravy - and that may help keep bird moist.)</p>
<p>I would love to make just a breast but I have turkey leg lovers.
I really don’t like the carving part…I have chosen recently to do this before we sit down…so stressful to wrestle with getting the legs off in front of a crowd. But then the turkey gets a bit cold and I don’t have any room in my oven! Any good carving tips out there? I have a really good knife…very sharp…but I still hate dealing with those legs!<br>
I think I’ll get that electric roaster for next year…the bursting oven but me over the edge this year.</p>
<p>Toneranger–
I let the bird rest for up to an hour before carving. I keep a large platter warm in the oven and when I carve, I remove each breast lobe first, and then take off the legs. I carve up a leg and then slice the breast lobes against the grain ON the cutting board.
Pull the warm platter out of the oven and drizzle a bit of hot gravy on the platter. Place slices of turkey(all sliced before you are ready to plate) on the platter and drizzle with more hot gravy. The platter and hot gravy reheat the turkey just enough. (this way it doesnt matter that your turkey has cooled, in fact a cooled turkey will hold its moisture better and is much much easier to work with!)</p>
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<p>I never baste. Never understood theory behind basting. Like most land-dwelling vertebrates, birds have skin that is more or less impervious to most liquids. Thus, basting on the outside of the bird isn’t going to affect the meat on the inside very much.</p>
<p>I do four things to ensure a moist turkey.</p>
<p>1 & 2: As I already said, the most important is don’t over cook it, and the next most is turning the bird over onto its breast 1/3rd of the way through the cooking schedule. </p>
<ol>
<li><p>I have one of those cooking hypodermic injectors and so just before putting the bird in the oven I inject a mixture of melted butter and sherry into multiple spots on the breast. Because of this it’s not necessary to buy those expensive butterball/self-basting turkeys.</p></li>
<li><p>I cook with no foil tent and at 325 for the entire time, and just before I put the turkey in the oven I rub it all over with a light coating of mayonaise. The mayo browns up quickly during the early cooking and sort of seals up the skin to keep in more of the natural juices.</p></li>
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<p>^ love the mayo idea.</p>
<p>I do not baste either. I don’t chase the 15 cent per pound 30-pounder turkey grocery store deals. A good free-range organic turkey (as one local butcher told me, they never grow bigger than 15 lb) cooks moist and delicious without any basting. I do cover its legs with foil midway through the cooking process, and I don’t open the oven more than a few times. I use the lower end of the cooking time guide provided on the package, but I double-check the doneness of my bird with a meat thermometer.</p>
<p>I didn’t know that about the turkey basting making it drier. I am going to have to try to remember that for next year. I usually throw a stick of butter, a couple of cans of chicken broth, at least a whole huge clove of garlic peeled and a nice bottle of beer in the inner part of the turkey. We never have stuffed the bird. </p>
<p>My extended family all brings appetizers and dessert to our Christmas celebration. We usually have some nice cold cuts and smallish deli rolls to make mini-sandwiches with condiments for those who want something more substantial. </p>
<p>We were missing out on the fun with the kids when they were younger, too - and only wish we had abandoned the huge meal celebration, years earlier.</p>
<p>We were comparing T’day menus at work the other day. My coworker is African-American and is a GRIT (Girl Raised In The South), I am Caucasian and was raised in New England. Traditional Thanksgiving menus to me include pumpkin pie, turkey, pecan pie, mashed potatoes. Her idea of traditional foods include turkey PLUS ham, sweet potato pie, greens, red velvet cake.</p>
<p>Turkey. Thanksgiving means turkey here. I always toss thick slices of onion, carrot, and celery into the bottom of the pan to flavor the gravy. Cheesecloth soaked in butter stands in for the talisman of basting. (I’m not sure either one helps all that much) And we do stuff the turkey.</p>
<p>Thanksgiving is always turkey (we all like turkey and I think it is really easy.) Christmas is another story. Husband’s family always had turkey. Mine had beef roast and Yorkshire pudding. We don’t feel attached to any one tradition. This year I think I will be doing a pork roast for 15.</p>
<p>Heck yes! We have long eaten the food we’re truly thankful for on Thanksgiving. We’re not in love with turkey. I always make a couple of turkeys during the season when they are readily available fresh, but never on Thanksgiving.</p>
<p>I cooked a 21 lb turkey in 4 1/2 hours.
DO NOT baste - quit opening the oven, it just slows things down and dries it out. My H swears by the Alton Brown method of a quick sear at 500 and then covering the white meat and cooking the rest at a lower temp.<br>
We have a conflict because the high temp at first burns the initial drippings into charcoal and then you have nasty gravy. So, I add water to the pan and throw his timing off.</p>
<p>When it’s just our immediate family of four, my H makes duck, Chinese style, stuffed with glutinous sticky rice and chinese sausages. It’s not Peking style, so much easier. And H is not Chinese, so it really is doable! The only problem with duck is that if you’re feeding more than 3 or 4 people, you really need to make more than one duck. Even a 4-5 lb duck is really only enough for 3-4 people. It’s mostly fat. But we all love it.</p>
<p>Thanks to CC, I also had a fabulous turkey purchased from TJ and a wonderful corn pudding/casserole(that is not part of my Thanksgiving cooking routine). Previously, my own family only usually only prepared turkey meat once a year but in the last few years, I’ve incorporated turkey meat into our regular meal because of the health benefits it contains: selenium. I will not skip turkey for any year. There are ways to cook without basting, but I like basting the turkey so I will continue doing it.</p>
<p>[WHFoods:</a> Turkey](<a href=“http://whfoods.org/genpage.php?tname=foodspice&dbid=125&utm_source=rss_reader&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss_feed/feed]WHFoods:”>http://whfoods.org/genpage.php?tname=foodspice&dbid=125&utm_source=rss_reader&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss_feed/feed)</p>
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<p>It also beats taking flu shots and I have never had flu shots, have never been ill in the last 6-7 years.
<a href=“http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703819904574553812951678006.html[/url]”>http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703819904574553812951678006.html</a></p>
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<p>Why Turkey in particular? Do turkeys eat food high in selenium ions?</p>
<p>My mother used to make turkey Chinese style - marinated in ginger, scallion, wine and soy sauce. She used to make gravy out of the same sauce. First year H came to our house for Thanksgiving he was totally surprised by the taste. H is the cook in our family. He has deep fried a turkey, and barbecued a whole turkey.</p>
<p>Well, we sort of abandon some of the Tday stuff. We have the fam and the meal on Saturday. It’s so much easier that way! Traffic is lighter, no one has to have the argument about where everyone will go, and we get two or three days beforehand to clean, shop, cook, and rest before the event. On Tday Thursday we have a nice small dinner and then go to the movies!</p>