№10 — Thanksgiving turkey
Even though (US) Thanksgiving is still a few days away, Chris and I decided to try cooking a turkey anyway — mostly because we don’t celebrate Thanksgiving in the first place and we don’t care about the correct date. Also, we have never cooked a whole turkey before and I have not really hosted that many people for dinner before, so it was a new challenge in many ways.
I started the turkey endeavour weeks ago reading up on different ways to cook the turkey. As I did not want to set my building on fire, deep-frying the turkey was out of the question and thus, we settled on the old-fashioned method of cooking it in the oven. I even purchased a meat-thermometer to find the perfect temperature and devised a game plan for the big day.
The cooking itself began roughly 30 hours before the actual dinner, when I placed the turkey in a brine of spices, salt and sugar. I did not have a pot or bowl large enough to hold the turkey, therefore I emptied my vegetable drawer in the refrigerator and repurposed it as a brining device.
On the big day itself, we prepared the stuffing, sage and onion and sage and mushroom, the green beans and the sweet potato mash while the turkey was slowly roasting away in the oven. We also tried making an apple pie and a pumpkin pie. While the former was tasty but taken out of the oven a little bit early, the latter was just weird. I have never tried one, so maybe that is how they taste.
In the end, guests arrived, Juli was carving the turkey very professionally and everything was quite tasty. Nevertheless, the last 20 minutes before eating were very stressful, handling guests, turkey and sides, keeping everything at an edible temperature.
I learned multiple things from this experience: brining a turkey is a good idea, an insta-read thermometer is easier to handle, and you will always need more time for preparation. In retrospect, I should have started an hour early (2pm instead of 3pm) to make the final few minutes less stressful. Still, it was a great evening — again next year?
Click here to see my list of past experiences and ideas what to do next. If you have a suggestion for future new experiences, feel free to comment or drop me a message.
