What Goes On Behind My Thanksgiving Curtain

I am the Wizard of Ish.

Ah, Thanksgiving.

Is there anything better than having family all gathered together around a table, snarfing down turkey and gobbling up stuffing like a bunch of wild boars?

Um…no. No, right?

No! No, there is nothing better.

I wonder if the people who sit at my Thanksgiving table know exactly what goes into the preparation of the holiday turkey. I normally don’t share the magic behind the curtain, but in keeping with the spirit of holiday giving, I’ll tell you all my secrets.

Gather round, my giving-of-thanks friends, and I shall enlighten you.

Me if I were a man in a wig with a blazer

The work begins the night before. When all you losers are just hanging out, watching re-runs of The Office like it’s a regular Wednesday night, I am already in the kitchen, guzzling cheap Riesling from the bottle while cranking Post Malone on repeat.

Don’t judge; on this night, I am the OG of my house.

First, I remove the turkey from the refrigerator. Come to mama, you big, beautiful gobbler.* Hiccup.

After I take him out of the fridge, I drop Tom Turkey into the sink, where I cut off his netting and plastic wrap. Once his pinkish-white skin is exposed, I gag a little because, well, it is nasty.

The Riesling helps with this.

It’s right about this time that I discover the inside of the bird is still partially-frozen. This happens to me every fracking year, no matter how early I buy the thing. Every. Fracking. Year. I truly believe there is a hex on me, a jinx that renders turkeys in my care eternally less-than-thawed.

I curse at this juncture, loudly and with great flourish, because I know what comes next.

When I reach my hand into the carcass to remove the neck, that organ is frozen to the bird like a disgusting, bloodied, impossibly-tethered flesh popsicle. My knuckles get scraped — every fracking year — from rubbing against the icy interior of the turkey’s core. I tug and pull with my fingers wrapped around the slippery tube of neck-y disgustingness, but that body part does not like to budge. At all.

I chip at it with a spoon. I saw at it with a butter knife.

I stab at that fricking piece of crap neck with a pasta fork until eventually it breaks free, spraying me in the face with whatever fluids have melted inside of the bird’s body cavity.

Pissed off turkey and his awful neck

As I repeat this process with the translucent bag of innards that are shoved in the other end of the animal, I can’t help but wonder: what kind of sadist decided to chop all of this out of a turkey, then jam it all back in?

I follow suit with the sadist, though, and shove celery and onions inside one poultrified orifice and a weasel-ton of butter in the other. Then I bag that bad boy and put him away, knowing he’s all ready to be cooked in the morning.

Voilà.

On Thanksgiving Day, I am all chill-vibes. I don’t stress-out until the turkey is done, but as soon as that little button pops up, so does my blood pressure.

Because the truth is that a. I cannot carve a turkey, b. I don’t think it’s even possible to carve an aesthetically-pleasing turkey in real life and everyone who claims that they do is lying, and 3. Carving a turkey is the worst.

Is the top part of Bird Hunk the breast or the back? Is this thing here a leg or a wing? Without toes, it’s kind of tough to tell, right? I’m a clueless noob. If I could just hold the turkey upright and pretend he’s strutting around, I would have a kickass visual aid.

But people frown upon that.

So I attempt to hide my ineptitude from the world. I lean over the roasting pan with knife in hand, making myself as wide as possible to form a protective dome around my work and discourage onlookers.

Then I hack. I saw. I decimate that meat, shredding and shaving and doing whatever grunt work is necessary to get that flesh off of the bone and onto a serving plate as quickly as possible.

My turkey-cooking performance isn’t pretty, but that’s okay because the meat tastes downright adequate when I am finished. Fine, even, if you drown it in enough of my store-bought turkey gravy.

So now you know. Go forth with this newfound behind-the-curtain turkey knowledge and slay your own Thanksgiving.

Just don’t forget the Riesling.

*Tip: When shopping for your Thanksgiving turkey, find the biggest one in the store. Size is all that matters. Everyone knows that the chick who gets the biggest bird is the winner, which is why I dig through the frozen bins until my fingers have first degree frostbite. Last year I tweaked my back a little carrying that 26 pound beast to the car, but the 3-day limp was so worth it. #winner