The duckteens experienced their first blast of winter and were not too pleased about it. They had to stay in their coop (which, to be fair, has a decent-sized yard attached) until it was warm enough for their little flat feet to wander the yard.
Let’s talk turkey…specifically Thanksgiving.
I have a dilemma – I may or may not have a house full for the holiday. My go-to is usually to cook over the weekend and share photos and recipes of anything new that I tried. Then Thanksgiving is either quiet or I head out somewhere, usually with a Cranberry Upside-down Cake in hand.
Because of travel and work issues (I have several family members in healthcare – so you know their best-laid plans can be upended in a moment) we are playing Thursday by ear. I can whip up a holiday meal with a day’s notice, so I’m not worried about any of it.
I found an interesting recipe for a spatchcocked turkey that I want to try, but not excited to experiment on unsuspecting guests. I’m going to go shopping today and hoping I can find two small turkeys. Then I can cook one over the weekend and have the other on hand for either the big day or a few months from now. Then this weekend I can try the new recipe and document it if it turns out well. Or we can all have a good laugh if it doesn’t.
But all this means that I’m probably not going to go all out on various recipes before the holiday – but I will post a menu and links to the various recipes sometime this weekend and give you all a place to share your favorite recipes – maybe someone will find a new favorite to try.
I love reading your family favorites…and I’m thinking this year we share some blunders that have become family lore. Those are always fun – in hindsight.
This…is an open thread.
Worrying About Republican Retaliation Is Pointless. They Retaliate Even When They Have Nothing to Retaliate For
Adam L Silverman
Actual text discussion between TaMara and I before she posted this:
rikyrah
I am going to leave this here for you:
Stick with the recipes you know are tried, tested and true.
PS- the Duckteens are adorable :)
eclare
Thank you so much for the duck videos, they make me smile.
eclare
Thanksgiving wasn’t a really big deal in my family, so no stories. We traveled to see relatives at Christmas instead. In college I never went home for Thanksgiving.
TaMara (HFG)
@rikyrah: Couldn’t agree more! KISS is the best advice I give for Thanksgiving.
TaMara (HFG)
I think this day needs cookies. Gluten-Free Peanut Butter Cookies to be exact.
Phylllis
@rikyrah: I learned that the hard way via some fancy cranberry relish recipe a few years ago that was the poster child for inedible. Nothing but jellied cranberry glopped out of the can and messily sliced for us.
zhena gogolia
@TaMara (HFG): The NYT had a million new complicated recipes yesterday, and first I was thinking of cutting out some of them, but then I thought better of it.
Cheesy pizza stuffing? I don’t think so.
WaterGirl
Love the ducks waddling side-by-side as though they are walking down the aisle!
zhena gogolia
@Phylllis: I do the sugar-boiled-in-water-plus-package-of-Ocean-Spray. Works every time.
Ken T.
Glad to share a favorite recipe. Works for many meals besides holidays, and has been vocally welcomed in the north and south. Is this the place for that?
Martin
@rikyrah: I disagree, slightly. Experimenting should always be an addition, not a substitute. Always wondered what putting scallops in the dressing would be like – great, do that, in a 2nd batch of dressing alongside the tried and true stuff. Thanksgiving is a great time to experiment because people are usually more actively engaged with the food and will give it a lot more consideration. Just don’t deny them something in the process. In fact, we make it a tradition to bring one experiment to the table every year. Everyone knows it’s an experiment, nobody is obligated to like it, no pressure.
WaterGirl
@zhena gogolia: Cheesy pizza stuffing?
Otherwise known as “how to take two perfectly good things and ruin them”.
WaterGirl
@Ken T.: Yes, it is!
Oklahomo
My fowl envy your fowl. Since I live near protected wetlands and refuges and we get a ton of migrations passing through or wintering, anything outside the large, covered pen will get nailed by A) red-tailed hawks; B) black vultures; or C) bald eagles.
geg6
My favorite holiday!!!!! I despise Christmas with all my heart, so I’m always over-the-top happy about Thanksgiving, which is all about the things I love most. Food and family. All the stupid decorating and shopping and idiotic songs of Christmas get on my nerves more and more every year and I’d skip the whole thing if I could.
Last year was kinda sad, what with the pandemic and all. Only me, my John, my next older sister and her husband, all spaced out with windows mostly open. Now, everyone is not only vaxxed, but are boostered. So it will be us four plus my brother and his girlfriend, my younger sister and her husband and my younger niece, their daughter. Oldest sister and her husband have begged off due to their health issues and are just celebrating with their daughter, her husband and their two babies.
We also decided to go with a catered menu last year. A small catering company owned by a former chef at the restaurant my sister managed is located right behind her house and we had him do the food last year (with some additions of our own, like my homemade cranberry orange relish, the pumpkin pie and some extra sides) and it was delicious. It also took all the stress out of the day. We are doing the same again this year.
Tomorrow is my last day of work and then a week off. I love the idea of not spending all that time cooking and shopping. The only downside so far is that I am scheduled for a root canal on Monday afternoon. :-( Oh well, I’m sure to survive that.
TerryTime
@zhena gogolia: Try that with orange juice instead of water and half the sugar. A revelation.
Betty Cracker
@zhena gogolia: That’s my hubby’s contribution to the feast every year. It’s easy and really good. He puts orange zest in the homemade cranberry sauce, which makes it extra tasty. I never even knew I liked cranberry sauce until I had homemade.
Martin
@zhena gogolia: Yep. It’s the easiest fucking thing to make and a big step up from the can without being weird.
I will only offer this idea up. If you have an outdoor grill with a rotisserie (and ideally a smoker), cooking your turkey that way is hands down better than any oven recipe (I can’t speak for the deep-fryers – they may surpass the rotisserie). Anyway, not only does it turn out fantastically, but you completely free up the oven which makes everything else like a million times easier to do. It’s transformative just from a logistical standpoint.
Anyway
@Martin:
yes, I like to keep about 75% of the menu same-old-same-old and go with one or two new and exciting (radical?) things. I have a low boredom-threshold when it comes to recipes.
I want to make kimchi this year! Start over Thanksgiving , should be ready to sample by Christmas …
dmsilev
@rikyrah: If there’s a fallback, some experimentation is ok. I almost always do a new cake recipe for Thanksgiving, though I do try to test it out beforehand. But, if the cake turns out bad, we’ll have to content ourselves with mom’s apple pie. Oh, the humanity.
Mom likes to experiment with new salad recipes for the appetizer. She’s got a pretty good track record in choosing them, but again if one fails there are plenty of vegetables as side dishes as well.
geg6
@TerryTime:
Add a little Grand Marnier, too.
Betty Cracker
@Oklahomo: Vultures go after your fowl? Dang! I thought they were strictly clean-up crew.
eclare
Oh…I do remember a horrible Thanksgiving. After I moved back to Memphis, where my parents were, we visited my aunts in AR for the weekend. The turkey was bone dry, the gravy was from a *can*, and the main side was rice! No mashed potatoes, no sweet potatoes!
But the worst was a cooked cheddar cheese and canned pineapple casserole. I refused to eat it. That side of the family thinks canned pineapple is cuisine, I once was served it on white bread with mayo. Is this a generational thing? Or it was once a luxury item thing?
Old Man Shadow
Day after, I will usually break out the leftovers, lightly grease a pie plate, throw some stuffing in it and, well, stuff it down into a “pie crust”, then take 3-4 eggs add milk to your favorite custard consistency and beat them together, pour the future custard over the stuffing crust, add chopped turkey and shredded cheese, and bake at 375 until done.
When the custard is set, throw some fried onion bits and a little more cheese on top and broil the top for a minute until the onions are brown and the cheese is nice and melted.
Betty Cracker
@rikyrah: It also pays to avoid assigning critical dishes to inexperienced or indifferent cooks. One time a relative brought KRAFT MACARONI AND CHEESE to Thanksgiving. The horror!
Her excuse was her kids like it. Fine, bring some Kraft for them but bring real mac and cheese for everyone else, FFS. I think she’s been on Coke patrol ever since…
geg6
@zhena gogolia:
I found a Michael Symon recipe for a bourbon orange cranberry sauce that I’m contemplating trying. I usually use sugar, water, orange zest, a little orange juice and a little Grand Marnier. But his recipe basically (not quite but almost) is the same but with bourbon instead of the Grand Marnier.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
I’m smoking the turkey this year (did it last year, too).
Since I have the smoker going already, and since our usual past turkey routine involved putting about a pound of bacon strips for moistness, I’d like to do a pork butt on the rack above the turkey, to drip down on it throughout. I’d start the pork at about 2 am the night before. Does anyone perceive any issues?
Martin
@geg6: I’m the same way. We’ve finally managed to rein in Christmas to a more tolerable state. One innovation to Christmas for me was to buy something expensive I wanted and then tell my wife this was her present to me, and I love it. Takes all of that pressure off of her which made her miserable, which made me miserable.
I’ve discovered entirely too late in life that almost all of my happiness comes from others feeling happy. It’s almost impossible for me to generate it internally and independently.
WaterGirl
@TerryTime: I already do 3/4 the sugar when I just use water.
Given that, would you think even less than 1/2 the sugar if I did half OJ?
CaseyL
I always wondered how birds, especially waterfowl, could tolerate standing in snow and ice. I’ve read that those birds have a special kind of blood circulation in their feet that keeps their little tootsies warm.
Maybe the Duckteens, reared indoors, didn’t develop that ability?
Or are they complaining just to complain?
My friends, hosting a Thanksgiving for three (them and me), are trying to find a small turkey. They don’t like breast meat, and I do, so getting a just-a-turkey-breast or just-turkey-thigh, won’t work. I told them we can do something else for the main dish, it doesn’t even have to be turkey. So I’m not sure what we’ll wind up having.
Butch
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: We bought a smoker a few months ago and will be smoking a turkey breast. I won’t travel for the holidays (partly because we need a critter caretaker and I don’t think it’s fair to ask her to give up her holidays so we can travel, and partly because I just won’t) and it’s always just the two of us so we gave up on the big holiday meals a long time ago.
Miss Bianca
I was about to ask if anyone else was planning to eat duck, rather than turkey, for Thanksgiving and then soliciting favorite recipes, and then realized that that would be rather tactless in a post featuring the Duckteens.
Oops. Hey, cranberry upside down cake sounds good!
eclare
@Anyway: Yum! I wish you success on the kimchi!
Oklahomo
@Betty Cracker: The black vultures have been causing issues for the people with cattle, goats, and sheep, too. They will peck newborns to death and then eat them. People are getting permission from the game wardens to use noise cannon drive them away from pastures.
edited to add link: Livestock Threat
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I haven’t yet seen the first of the “Turkey is terrible, just admit it” posts that proliferate every November. I like turkey. And I think it makes the best left-over sandwich. The deli stuff doesn’t really compare. IMHO.
Martin
@Anyway: Good timing for your eggnog as well. I make it the day after thanksgiving and we have ready for xmas.
Here’s the recipe I use. Feel free to dial back the alcohol because holy shit is it a lot. I mean, it’s about 16 servings out of what is basically a liter and a half of bourbon – so about 3 shots per serving. I do temper it before bottling it to kill salmonella, which is important if you dial back (or eliminate) the alcohol. Just carefully get the temp over 150. This can also help evaporate off some of the alcohol content while keeping the flavors, or you can put the alcohol in after the heating. We’ve never had a batch go off, even the non-alcoholic variants for the kids.
eclare
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: That sounds heavenly!
All I can contribute is that I was on a BBQ competition team for a few years, and our cooker had rotating racks inside for just that purpose: so that the grease could spill down onto the other pork shoulders as they cooked.
Melt in your mouth pork.
WaterGirl
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: The deli turkey is an even worse example of the difference between winter tomatoes and summer tomatoes.
tom
We rotate Thanksgiving, and when I have it I do a roast leg of lamb. I’m not a turkey fan, roast leg of lamb is dead simple, and everyone really likes it. I don’t care at all that’s not traditional for T-Day.
Martin
@Old Man Shadow: Hmm. I’m a connoisseur of the post-thanksgiving sandwich but it’s always a bit of a challenge to architect. I hadn’t considered an intermediary step of binding the ingredients that way. I think I shall experiment this year.
Alas, my greatest thanksgiving appears lost to history, a batch of gravy I made years ago that was so unbelievably good that I actually mixed some with gin for savory cocktail, but I was a bit too hammered while making it to bother writing anything down or reliably recalling what I did.
A couple other ideas. Ahead of Thanksgiving (now-ish) you can usually get turkey wings from the butcher for a steal. Roast them now to make the base for your gravy so you don’t need to try to time it with your turkey cooking. Wings are pretty good for gravy making.
Take the fat rendered from cooking and combine it with some flour for a kind of beurre manie/schmaltz purpose. You can also heat that into a roux. Roll it up into balls maybe 1″ in diameter and toss them in the freezer (need to add some flour if you take the roux path). Take the skimmed drippings and put it in the fridge and the day before or day of you can combine those for gravy. I like to finely dice up some of the turkey meat for the gravy as well. The idea is that you start your gravy from the drippings and season however you like and drop in the schmaltz/beurre manie one by one to thicken until you get the consistency you like.
After you’re done with the meal, take the drippings from the turkey you would have made gravy with and do the process above – it’ll freeze just fine for a year, ready for next thankgiving.
Doc Sardonic
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Don’t see any downside to doing that. I always used to stack my smoker with the fattier cuts on the top racks to cascade the drippings. One suggestion is that you can if necessary use some aluminum foil to help channel the drippings. I might also still add a few pieces of bacon to the turkey just for flavor.
Betty Cracker
@Oklahomo: Wow — murder vultures!
Omnes Omnibus
@geg6: I really don’t care for Thanksgiving, and Christmas is my favorite holiday of the no matter how much people try to commercialize and ruin it. The original Grinch and A Christmas Carol. Snow. The tree. Nothing better.
SiubhanDuinne
@Betty Cracker:
Are you crafting a butter turkey?
(No, I didn’t say “Butterball.”)
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@zhena gogolia: I use the recipe from Deborah Madison’s Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone which starts with cranberries, water and sugar and adds orange zest, ginger, and (I think) cloves. My dad for years made this hyper-complicated cranberry chutney that was, I’ll admit, flat out delicious but Deborah’s recipe is 90% as good for 10% of the work.
Omnes Omnibus
@Miss Bianca: Every year, I lobby for goose. Every year, I am disappointed.
Oklahomo
@Betty Cracker: I had to find a farmer because we could see a bunch of them harassing a cow and her newborn last year. Genuinely freaky. I had never heard of such a thing either until a few years ago.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
I’ve been spatchcocking my turkeys for years, mostly because I started cooking them on the charcoal grill (still warm enough and dry enough to do that here in the DC area most years) and I did a whole non-spatchcocked turkey once and it took like 6 hours and it was a drag tending the fire for that long. I can usually get a spatchcocked one cooked on the grill in 2 hours give or take. I think it cooks more evenly so the white meat is less likely to dry out. I use a dry brine a day or two beforehand and then a herb and butter rub right before putting it on the grill. Haven’t heard any complaints yet.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Other than lack of sleep? No.
Dan B
@CaseyL: The PCC in Columbia City had small turkeys. I bet the PCC nearest you should as well.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@CaseyL: The special circulation in waterfowl feet is als to warm the blood back up as it re-enters the body from the feet so as to keep their core body temperature up. It’s pretty cool. Also, how ducks, etc. can float on super cold water all day? Their feathers interlock to form a watertight seal so they don’t get wet. They’re pretty amazing creatures.
@Old Man Shadow: What I do is combine some veggies with the leftover turkey meat bits that are too small to make into sandwich meat, and then add the leftover gravy, get it piping hot and top with drop baking powder biscuits and bake in the oven until the biscuit topping is done.
Dan B
Long ago I was in cooking school. I went home for Thanksgiving and made Crepes Suzette for my family plus an aunt and uncle. I covered the table with a gold space blanket to reflect the flambe flames. I used too much Triple Sec and brandy. Scared the relatives and early burned the 50’s style flying saucer chandelier.
Betty Cracker
@SiubhanDuinne: Nope — butter sculptures are strictly an Easter thing around here. Publix usually sells butter turkeys this time of year, but I don’t know if they are now. I’ve been doing curbside pickup lately.
WaterGirl
@Dan B: Rut roh.
UncleEbeneezer
We have some turkey thighs and are going to use this favorite Buttermilk Roasted Chicken recipe. It’s fairly simple and delicious.
MisterForkbeard
@Oklahomo: There’s a vulture that’s been… making friends with my mom. It’s super weird.
Literally, it waits for her to leave the house in the morning when she walks down to get the newspaper. And then waddles behind her on the short walk down and up the hill.
CaseyL
@Omnes Omnibus: My ex, who was (is) a terrific cook, fulfilled one of his great desires when he ordered, and got, a goose for Christmas dinner. Like you, he’d wanted to cook and serve goose since forever.
Turns out geese have so much fat in them, you need to cook them for, like, a whole day. He didn’t know that, and this was in the age before the Internet, when you couldn’t just look stuff up online.
He put the bird in the oven at what he assumed was the right time, based on weight. And after that, we had an ongoing thing of him checking the bird, scooping out ladles and ladles of melting fat, realizing the meat part still wasn’t cooked all the way through, and putting the bird back in the oven. Rinse and repeat, with more swear words at each iteration.
I don’t even remember at this point whether the bird was ever fully cooked, or he gave up and tossed the whole thing because otherwise we’d never make it to his parents’ house on time. (I don’t remember eating any of it, so either he did toss it or the final product wasn’t memorable.)
Good luck, but if you do ever get a goose, be sure you know how to cook it ?
Dan B
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?: OT: You asked about induction cooktops. We have two. Default is 5.0. I change to temperature. 5.0 is 300°. I turn it up to 360° to get things hot. Once boiling I turn it down to 220 or lower depending. The unit seems to measure the temperature of the bottom of the pan, not the temperature of the contents.
CaseyL
@Dan B: Aha! I’ll see if they’re still looking for one, and offer to check PCC. Thanks!
zhena gogolia
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Same here.
zhena gogolia
@Omnes Omnibus: We’re having goose (at a friend’s). I’d rather have turkey.
I’m going to get a turkey breast and make it just for us on the weekend.
geg6
@Omnes Omnibus:
LOL! All the things I hate about Christmas are your things you love.
My John makes me put a tree up in the formal living room. It’s pre-lit. I don’t both with with bulbs or anything else on it. You can see the tree from the road in the window all lit up. That’s the extent of my decorating. And don’t get me started on the music or the movies/tv shows. I will be watching or listening to literally anything else. The only good thing about the whole thing is that I get two weeks off paid.
Dan B
@CaseyL: If not the butcher in Columbia City, Bob’s Quality Meats can get one. It’s a bit of a trek for you though. Bob’s prices are quite reasonable for a specialty shop.
Major Major Major Major
Ducks!!!
schrodingers_cat
My favorite festival is Diwali. But since we have to work it doesn’t feel like a holiday at all. I like the Thanksgiving sides more than the main meal. I am not a fan of turkey.
JMG
Thanksgiving is maybe my favorite holiday. I love Christmas, but Thanksgiving is so much less stressful and (most important) there aren’t weeks/months of commercial lead-in. Our traditional recipes are non exactly cutting edge, but Alice makes a splendid mashed turnip, and I am proud of the oyster stuffing I learned from my paternal grandmother.
PS: Turkey tastes great IMO. And no roast LOOKS better when it comes out of the oven to sit and rest before carving.
trollhattan
Oh God, the turkey is here a week early in the form of David Fucking Brooks, who in the David Fucking Brooks fashion begins with a cogent observation and then draws the exact wrong conclusion.
Trump understood no such thing, you mullethead.
raven
I’m making a big ass 20 pounder for four people. Serious gumbo will follow/
Ruckus
Thanksgiving? Christmas?
What are these strange words? I’ve heard then before but they seem to have lost all meaning. Maybe that’s what happens when you are the oldest left and what little extended family is left is spread out all around the country.
SiubhanDuinne
@Betty Cracker:
I was teasing, because I always adore your quirky and personable butter lambs! I didn’t know there actually was such a thing as a butter turkey. Had I known that, I wouldn’t have bothered with the feeble joke.
oatler
My parents are long gone but there’s one memory that will live in my heart forever: I NEVER got enough mashed potatoes and gravy.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@Dan B: Mine doesn’t have temperature settings (well the oven does but the cooktop doesn’t) – there’s a power boost setting for boiling large pots of water and then H (which is 9) down to L (which is 1) so basically I have 1-10. Are you saying that the range is measuring the temperature of the bottom of the pan so that if it’s set at 3 the bottom might get to 300 degrees and then the burner cycles off until the pan bottom drops below that temp?
The issue I’m noticing is that the liquid in a dish is boiling or simmering – hot enough that it’s breaking the surface tension, which unless the laws of physics are suspended means the liquid is at 212 degrees Fahrenheit. But, the dish overall is warm, not boiling hot. I don’t know if it just boils stuff more quickly and so I’m testing the dish before enough time has passed that heat has transferred from the liquids to the solids and fully heated the solids or what. But it does seem like anything below 5 is more or less a version of a “keep warm” setting, and to really cook something I have to be at 6-9. 10 boils a pot of water so fast it’s unbelievable.
Omnes Omnibus
@JMG: A standing rib is the best looking roast. Fin.
Anyway
@UncleEbeneezer:
I made Braised-in red wine-turkey-legs (from Serious Eats) one year -it was delicious. This was after the main event at a friends’ place.
TaMara (HFG)
Back from shopping…in before the hordes.
Only one bird though, so I still may try the spatchcock recipe on the family – it’s only a little different than the traditional bird I spatchcock – except there is bourbon!
As we will discuss over the weekend, unless someone is deep-frying a turkey, I only spatchcock anymore, since it’s practically fool-proof. And use the backbone parts for making stock for the gravy and stuffing.
TaMara (HFG)
@CaseyL: Domestic ducks are good down to about 24 degrees, any colder and that mechanism doesn’t work well and their feet can freeze. So we always wait until it’s about 24 to let them out. Very few days is that an issue here…
CaseyL
@TaMara (HFG): So that’s it!
They need booties, then.
Benw
The duckteens are sqweeee!
Since we don’t do a turkey main course, we’ve usually experimented with different vegetarian main courses, and kept the sides all the tried and true faves! Last year was veggie pot pies which were pronounced yum by all; a shocking win!
This year we’ve also got family health issues, so we’re stripping T-day down to three favorite sides: cheesy mashed potatoes, apple sage stuffing with vegetarian apple sausage, and garlic and butter brussels sprouts, plus the usual store-bought canned cranberry sauce and oven rolls. And Martinelli’s apple cider, of course!
Miss Bianca
@oatler:
I hear ya.
VeniceRiley
Less cooking time means moister bird. I am planning my future around spatchcocked turkey.
Bon Apitit TV did one and it looked amazing and easy to do
ETA: No room to properly cook until I move. We have ordered the feast p/u reheat from Polly’s Pies.
Yutsano
@Benw: Apples in stuffing must be a Northeast thing. I also live in the land of the apple ? and we never do anything like that.
I might do something fun this year just not sure what. Maybe an apple/pear ? galette.
rikyrah
@geg6:
I am getting catered too.
Friends of my sister are excellent cooks – the entire family. So, we ordered the dinner from them. They usually fry our turkey every year, but, we went all in with them. I don’t want to cook anything.
raven
@VeniceRiley: The bigger the bird the easier it is to bone.
Ken T.
Here it is: Corn Souffle (can be tripled to use a whole can of evap milk)
1 can cream corn
3T flour
4 oz evaporated milk
2 eggs
Seasonings the chef prefers (I use some Tony Chachere and the secret ingredient: Nutmeg) to taste
4T butter (I use less so it is not so rich)
Heat oven to 375
Melt butter in casserole dish (microwave is good so the bowl isn’t too hot to handle)
Pour mixed ingredients into melted butter
Bake for 45 minutes and begin to check
butter will pool in the center, but disappear as it browns.
Bon appetite!
schrodingers_cat
I might do a roast chicken or perhaps lobster. We will see,,
dmsilev
@CaseyL: When my mom was a kid, her father used to bring home a goose now and then to cook for dinner. My grandmother made him do both the cooking and the cleaning-up, because how much of a pain it was to deal with all of the fat, and in the 1950s “man does the cooking and cleaning” was a big big deal. Still, he liked goose so it was an acceptable bargain to him.
Sure Lurkalot
Here’s a good cranberry recipe with jalapeños and tequila. While it says to cook for 5 minutes, it takes 15-20 to thicken up. Even so, it’s quick and easy.
12 ounces fresh cranberries
zest of 1 orange, finely grated
juice of 2 oranges
2 tablespoons tequila
1/2 cup sugar
1-2 jalapeno peppers, seeded and finely minced
INSTRUCTIONS
Makes about 1 1/2 Cups
Add enough water to the orange juice to make one cup of liquid. Combine cranberries, orange zest, juice and water, tequila, and sugar in a large pot. Bring to a slow boil, stirring occasionally. When the cranberries begin to pop, add the chopped jalapeños and cook for about 5 minutes, stirring frequently. If the sauce seems a little thick, add a bit more water. Remove from heat, transfer to a bowl and chill.
mrmoshpotato
Duck
TalesTeens! Woo-oo!VeniceRiley
@raven: I promise to never spatchcock a quail. :-D
mrmoshpotato
@Sure Lurkalot: ? Spice up your ? cranberry sauce?
Ohio Mom
@zhena gogolia: When I saw that recipe, knew immediately that Cheesy pizza stuffing was something Ohio Son would love but No, it will not appear on Thanksgiving. I’m saving that recipe to cheer up the January doldrums.
My BIL is a newspaper writer who went from being a movie critic to a food editor (after the paper decided to out-source movie reviews to a wire service). From him I have gained a deep appreciation how hard it is to come up with food stories in this internet age. I recognized Cheesy pizza stuffing as a desperate attempt to stand out and stay relevant.
zhena gogolia
@Ohio Mom: I know, I don’t blame them. And every once in a while I get a recipe from them that’s a real keeper, like brisket with cranberries.
Benw
@Yutsano: ooh a galette sounds yum!
Years ago, we did Martin’s suggestion and made an “experimental” batch of the apple sage stuffing alongside the usual, and were blown away, we never went back :)
The Lodger
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?: What is your altitude? Water boils at a lower temperature 5000 feet above sea level, such as in the Denver area.
jeffreyw
mrmoshpotato
@eclare: ? The first paragraph is horrible. The second is worse! ?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@zhena gogolia:
Love cheese, love pizza…ah NO.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@WaterGirl: ?
Sure Lurkalot
I live amongst in-laws and no one particularly likes turkey. Every year is different, last few have been boeuf bourguignon, cioppino, leg or rack of lamb, rolled pork roast.
This year it’s beer braised short ribs with leeks, carrots and parsnips, buttered caraway noodles, stuffing with currants and pecans. My SIL will bring stuff too. She’s a great baker.
WaterGirl
@Omnes Omnibus: How does one cook a standing rib roast?
WaterGirl
@rikyrah: Your talk of family reminds me… How is your sister doing?
trollhattan
@WaterGirl: Leaning to one side, of course!
Meanwhile.
Emphasis mine. I wonder if the judge has OAN on 24/7 at the house because Fox is too squishy.
Ruckus
@eclare:
That’s not eating, hell it’s barely survival, and only that if you are stranded on an island, without running water or electricity.
In the navy I saw people who ate like cattle at a trough, put it in front of them, they wolfed it down. They wouldn’t have eaten that. Now this was on a ship that came within minutes of a mutiny by lifers over what we were severed for dinner. There was open talk of breaking into the gun locker and actually taking over the ship. By serious lifers. There wouldn’t have been talk, just action if we were served that.
Ruckus
@trollhattan:
He sounds like a writer/producer for them, rather than an actual judge.
Yutsano
I noticed people mentioning the fact that goose is fatty. I might have a solution: a smoked goose. The options I looked up for a whole goose ran into three digits. A tiny bit rich for my blood but as a once a year thing some folks might think it’s worth it.
Omnes Omnibus
@Ruckus: How many actual judges do you know?
NotMax
@WaterGirl
Foolproof, courtesy of Chef John.
sab
@rikyrah: That is my family’s position also. We have had almost the exact same menu passed down mother to daughters for at least four generations. Since the actual cooking by the current cook is such a huge production, it really helps to eliminate any unnecessary decisions. Same old shopping list. Same old timetable.
sab
@Omnes Omnibus: Yes! Our dilemma is cook it with potato chunks or yorkshire pudding un the roast pan?
Anonymous At Work
This’ll be my fourth year doing a spatchcocked turkey, and 5th spatchcocking a turkey. I usually make 2 small ones and eat turkey for a week and experiment with different brines.
Never going back. Why use an oven for 4 hours in Florida when you can get it done in under 2, stuffing included?
Ruckus
@Omnes Omnibus:
I’ve known a couple and served on juries but I’m not talking about all judges, just this one.
I’m not even talking about any or all of his decisions – only what news reporting I’ve seen on this one. And in my experience he seems rather less neutral than I would expect or have seen judges to be.
Martin
@trollhattan: Fuck you for making me defend this, by the way. Brooks thinks they’re all delusional for what it’s worth.
But Brooks is just describing a run of the mill fascist playbook. Yeah, he cokes it up with all sorts of vocabulary that it’s not deserving of, but culture war + populist anger covers Hitler to Pol Pot to Putin. Trump stumbling into it isn’t some grand bit of credit to his keen insight because it’s really just the grand canonical version of how a narcissist operates in their daily life. It’s not that Trump steered the GOP as part of some great political insight, he just did what came naturally which happened to align to the moment the GOP was already in. Their success was the product of strapping two drunks together and them actually managing to walk a few blocks. Trump was cognizant enough to recognize that this was a good time to run, the disaffected Republicans that were tired of losing threw their lot in with Trump because what the fuck – it’s not like Rubio is going to do what they wanted, at least Trump represented a good hateful departure from the status quo.
I don’t think Brooks is giving Trump much credit here. You’re asking the word ‘understanding’ to do a lot of work, when Brooks really keeps steering the whole thing back to the other organizers who probably have a lot more valid claim to being introspective as to what they’re actually doing. Trump’s ‘understanding’ was little better than a political Skinner box – he pushed the button, the crowd cheered, so he keep pushing the button. And it need not be any more evolved than that for Brooks’ statement to work.
Cruz and Rubio deserve no such credit to Brooks, because Trump was at least being true to who he is. He’s always been a shitty person so there’s no expectation that we could have demanded more. Don’t go too hard on the idiot, they can’t help they’re an idiot. But Cruz and Rubio both show a calculation taking place. This is clearly a strategic decision for them so presumably they know better, they just don’t care.
Rubio and Cruz in the primary didn’t see the benefit in pushing the button – they decried Trump as bad for the country, but later chose to imitate him.
I think his bigger bad take is this one:
They aren’t working class parties, because cities are not just filled with liberals running around in suits and ties. He’s failing to see that just as manufacturing moved out of cities in the 50s for certain economic and cultural reasons, a fair bit of that has moved back to cities for similar reasons. There’s a few million people in LA that would be shocked to learn they aren’t working class, and rich metro cultural elite of Fresno, a CA city not much smaller than the vastly more liberal city of Austin TX suggests there’s a bunch of other dynamics at work here, the main one being the continued mass migration in the US and elsewhere from rural to urban. It’s not that there is some grand cultural shift taking place – cities are offering more opportunities and 80% of people now live there. Of course the rural folks are being outvoted.
For all the assertions of an uneasy alliance between Google and the left, its Democrats actually levying antitrust investigations and legislation against the power of the tech bigs, not Republicans. Just because a bunch of conservative TV network executives can no longer gatekeep the most effective cultural distribution system, and that’s been passed onto a bunch of tech companies whose greatest failing is leaving the gatekeeping to the public doesn’t mean there is any such alliance at work, just that the GOP lost a lever of power, not that Dems picked one up or seek to.
Carol Van Natta
My late partner and I brined and roasted a goose every year for Thanksgiving because we weren’t turkey fans and my late mother loved it as much as we did. The process is time consuming but the result is wonderful.
Alas, it’s just me and the cats now, and I’d have a better chance at winning the big lotto than finding a singleton goose breast. Our Northern Colorado town likes to pretend it’s very cosmopolitan, but it really only excels at beer and bike trails.
For Thanksgiving, I’m taking a sour cream pumpkin pie to my friends’ family gathering and partaking of ham and other nummy things. If I’m feeling frisky on the weekend, I might roast a couple of chicken thighs and make some delectable basil cream sauce to go over them. The cats will enjoy salmon treats.
P.S. The duckteens are hilariously teenager-ish. Thanks for posting the video.
John Cole
Just get one turkey and twice the amount of liquor you usually have on hand that way if the turkey sucks you just get your guests hammered.
Shana
My favorite Thanksgiving story comes from a friend who went to someone’s house for Thanksgiving for the first time. My friend is a terrific cook so was hanging around the kitchen while her hostess was cooking. The turkey was done and she took it out of the oven, transferred it to the carving board to rest and promptly poured all the turkey juices down the drain, opened a couple of jars of prepared turkey gravy and warmed them on the stove. My friend was aghast and horrified. When asked why she didn’t just make gravy from the juices the hostess was surprised to learn you could do that. They never went back.
This year we’re visiting our younger daughter who is in her first year of law school at my alma mater, the University of Illinois. I don’t think she’s ever done a Thanksgiving dinner before but I’m sure she’ll do fine. We come in the day before so I’ll do the pumpkin and pecan pies, at her request.
Shana
@Omnes Omnibus: Calvin Trillin has argued for years that the traditional Thanksgiving meal should be spaghetti carbonara.
sab
@Shana: OMG! I’ve been making the pan dripping gravy since I was ten years old. So easy a child standing on a chair can do it.
What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us
@The Lodger: I’m in the DC area so close to sea level.
The Lodger
@What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us: So it’s definitely your stovetop then.
sab
Wrong holiday, but December is coming. I haven’t made gingerbread ( not the cookies, but the actual bread) in years. Definitely on my to do list this winter.
soapdish
I know I’m a day late here, but spatchcocking is the the best way to make a turkey if for no other reason that *all* of the skin gets cooked awesomely and the meat basically cooks evenly for all the parts. Combine that with the dramatically reduced overall cook time and everything about it is better and the only thing you lose is the Norman Rockwell image of serving a whole turkey. Which, really, if you’re plating the slices anyway, who cares?