All that because spacker hasn't tried to put bacon on a turkey?
Aside from that, I don't think, really, that you'd need to inject a turkey with fat; it would be enough to lift the skin and tuck whatever it was underneath.
Much like you might do with sage leaves or the like.
max
['At least you didn't say no one could taste the difference between duck and turkey.']
Ducks don't need all that work and they taste better.
Wow, that was just last year? Seems like forever ago.
One of my Irish friends was always in charge of the turkey and put bacon on the top. Sinfully good.
I couldn't convince AB to go with this technique this year.
Cook's Country recommends salt pork, not bacon, for a less smoke-sodden flavor.
All that because spacker hasn't tried to put bacon on a turkey?
Actually I had to tone it down.
I had to check today to make sure the battery in my smoke detector is removable (it is) because my mom's turkey-cooking method uses such high heat that it creates a ton of smoke. The turkey turns out tasting pretty good, though, for turkey.
not sauls, but liver wrapped in mesentery (semjind orooson eleg) and roasted is very delicious
anything belonging to reproductive organs is not edible according to our canons
i was to look up another meaning of singer like is it some kind of turkey, but then there was the word persons
That is my favorite example of why FFC is a douche who happens to make brilliant movies occasionally. I believe I have cited it in the past as a reason why the authorial fallacy still holds.
Ducks don't need all that work and they taste better.
Yeah they do. You still wanna watch the legs though.
Cook's Country recommends salt pork, not bacon, for a less smoke-sodden flavor.
Or you could strip the fat off a fresh chicken and use the rest for stock!
Actually I had to tone it down.
Is there some kind of foodie-related Thanksgiving meltdown that no one informed me about?
max
['Well, this economic meltdown is just... He doesn't want to serve turkey???? BURN THE USURPER! KILL, MAD HONKY, KILL!']
You have, AWB, and I am quoting your quotation.
We're having baked ziti, because I'm hosting and that's what I decided to make. Suck it, turkey-industrial complex!
Who is FFC and what does he or she have to do with baconing turkeys?
"Lard" in French means "bacon". "Soupe" in older (but not necessarily Old) French means the bread you dip into the soup, or maybe the croutons (not crottes).
Francis Ford Coppolla. The whole "caul" thing is somehow the metaphorical equivalent of failing to appreciate proper turkey-preparation methods, I gather.
Caul fat is used to protect roasts from drying out, DS.
Armsmasher's advice on venison cooking (marinade, add fat) was useful, but beyond that, the venison I've been trying to cook has a musty (not gamy) taste. I'm wondering whether it's because field-dressed game isn't usually dressed right.
Venison courtesy of outer Wobegon's out gay huntsman, who lives in the most Wobegonish township in the entire universe, even though he's a Catholic.
The whole "caul" thing is somehow the metaphorical equivalent of failing to appreciate proper turkey-preparation methods, I gather.
It all remains quite vague, but that's okay!
18: I thought they used Hackman fat for that. My bad.
I would actually have preferred that it was a metaphorical equivalence thing too vague for me to get, but that's oh-tay.
Me too. This way is just rather grim.
Any caul will do, I'm sure. It's all about the meat.
field-dressed game
A hunter recently told me in detail about field dressing. I was fascinated ; it had never occurred to me one would do that to lower the weight for the carry out of the woods.
How did Coppola get into this? Anyway, FFC makes some unpretentious, inexpensive, and quite enjoyable table wines, which is good since he could have specialized in $200 Napa cabs for his rich buddies.
How did Coppola get into this?
Google Coppola and Caul, and all will be revealed.
And then watch The Conversation, one of my favorite movies.
CN's mind has been blown, apparently.
Why are the timestamps ten minutes fast?
Maybe 32 was a shout-out, as per "Detroit, what?"
We're living in the future, baby.
34: It makes everyone stop commenting a bit earlier so we all get a good night's sleep. Hale and hearty, ready for the day that awaits us tomorrow: that's just who we are around here, teo.
So I should get my ass into the kitchen and brine our turkey, right?
Is the brine currently in your ass?
Hale and hearty, ready for the day that awaits us tomorrow
YOU TAKE THAT BACK, STANLEY.
40: Pale and farty! I meant pale and farty! I'm so sorry.
Not one of your better efforts, w-lfs-n. Anyway, are people pretty much agreed on brining being a good thing? I've brined the last couple of years, but not having not-brined in recent memory—which is to say, I mostly cooked other birds for Thanksgiving until a couple of years ago—I have no basis for comparison.
Why are the timestamps ten minutes fast?
Oh, hush. You're not supposed to say anything about it. See Standpipe's blog.
It makes everyone stop commenting a bit earlier so we all get a good night's sleep.
No it doesn't.
In other news, boy am I ever not writing my personal statements for my grad school applications. I've been procrastinating by reading Anasazi America (actually pretty relevant) and Unfogged (not so much).
I brine my turkeys, although not in advance. I find that weeping bitter tears as I toil over the bird usually provides the necessary salt, moisture, etc.
42: Not one of your better efforts, w-lfs-n.
I thought it was pretty relevant. I have brine in my ass right now, and goddamn if I'm not about to assault a turkey with it. And it's not even Thanksgiving up here. That's just how we roll.
46: Do you guys still have Black Friday then? Or is it all Boxing Day sales?
I have been dry "brining" the last several turkeys that I have done. It pretty much entails rubbing a bunch of salt under the skin and in the cavity the day before cooking. Probably not quite as good as an actual brine, but a lot less hassle. I usually use a hot oven starting breast down and flipping to finish browning. Also Matthew is wrong turkey is in fact quite tasty.
47: Nah, it's pretty much a straight segue from Halloween to Christmas. One sometimes sees Halloween decorations up next to Christmas decorations, I'm not even shitting you.
My ass could not hold enough brine for this big motherfucking turkey, which is like nearly 17 pounds. It's a heritage turkey, which is good because we'll be having white people over. Also, I should stop dipping into this pickled herring I got for tomorrow, but curse you, pickled herring, you're just too damn delicious.
And why the fuck is it called Black Friday?
51: wikipedia suggests two reasons, one of which seems obliquely racist:
The term "Black Friday" originated in Philadelphia in reference to the heavy traffic on that day. More recently, merchants and the media have used it instead to refer to the beginning of the period in which retailers are in the black (i.e., turning a profit).
I had assumed it was the latter.
My ass could not hold enough brine for this big motherfucking turkey
Never underestimate what the human ass can hold. Have the Internets taught us nothing?
51: Black people get out and shop that day.
Oh. Well, it sounds grim. And are we going to be declaring non-official holidays now based on market affairs? I find it all distasteful.
And are we going to be declaring non-official holidays now based on market affairs?
Never before in human history has commerce denominated a day!
A cursory glance doesn't turn anything up, ben, but I'm tired.
Black Friday first became a holiday shortly after the American Revolution. The English, jealous of the worldwide attention garnered by American holidays, decided to create their own, English, commemoration of the peace and prosperity of the New World. They seized upon the popularity of the English novelist Daniel Defoe, whose fictional tale of Robinson Crusoe epitomized these values.
The proponents of this holiday named it for the character Friday, to call attention to the important role played by the Natives in the New World story -- the better to downplay the heroism of the colonists, they thought. They called Friday "Black" because they didn't know any better.
The fatal mistake that they made was to put the holiday just after Thanksgiving. They thought they could diminish the attention to Thanksgiving by doing so, but of course the result as we all now know was that Black Friday just became a day of recovery from the gluttony of Thanksgiving, its original purpose soon forgotten. It also became a traditional practice for people to go shopping on that day, because Americans got the day off as a result of Thanksgiving, and so the name of the holiday took on a secondary meaning as the Friday on which retailers recover from their debts and go into the "black."
58 is awesome, and yet I started saying "boo!" aloud at "Daniel Defoe," who was no longer very popular around the time of the Revolution.
DON'T fucking make me start Thanksgiving with an image of someone shitting brine all over a turkey. You motherfuckers are ruining my appetite already.
So, is anyone else working on Friday?
Actually, I rather like shitting brine all over a turkey.
60: 2girls2turkey, PGD. Believe it.
I'm trying to figure out if I should try to get a little more sleep or just not bother, since I have to leave for the airport in not so many hours.
Don't bother with sleep. Stay here with us.
Yeah Sifu, it's all warm and cozy here. Not like LA, where the sky is falling, the the manholes are spewing refuse... wait, 39,42, etc already covered that.
I'm working Friday. Retail never sleeps.
I just found a machine learning blog; that argues in the don't-sleep direction.
I'm working Friday: doing some data analysis to see if I have all the crap I need to write up and escape this hellhole.
68: The lack of hyphen in the first independent clause is suggestive, laydeez machiiiiinez.
My family is allegedly going to leave at 8 tomorrow morning. I'm skeptical.
Teo, I am four for four on the personal statements I've written forwith people. If you want to get into grad school, just let me know.
71: My family will be timely: Mom and Dad will almost certainly arrive an hour early; Brother, close to an hour late. Strategical move: I'm leaving the salad-making and roll-baking activities for Mom. She's not fully willing to relinquish these Thanksgiving dinners to me, as far as I can infer.
I'm pretty sure my mom and aunt are planning to do most or all of the cooking themselves. My role in this is largely limited to providing the venue.
Not that I have any desire to cook a turkey myself, of course. I actually agree 100% with Yglesias on this. But tradition is what it is and, furthermore, it's pretty appropriate given the location this year. The Anasazi loved them some turkey.
Turkey is just darn tasty. I don't get that whole thing.
In fairness, I mostly just don't like poultry in general.
I'm with you, Sifu: those Armenians are just way off base.
Speaking of which, my sister's veganism should add another twist to the festivities this year.
Screw the veganism. Just feed your sister.
Yeah, you know, all the sides are lovely and can be executed free of animal-taint.
Animal taint is hard to come by.
85 is crazy talk. You can't make cranberry sauce without tripe!
I think they've got it under control. In any case, not my area of responsibility.
They sometimes include it in the giblets package.
Can, Sifu. Not should. Mmm, cranberry saucesage.
You can't make cranberry sauce without tripe!
Really?
I conclude that Sifu is having me on.
||
Holy shit, Mumbai.
(it's the stuff about 8 or 9 inches past the lede, when the scope of the attack - the chief of the police anti-terrorism unit getting shot in the street, the hostages - becomes clear, that gets me. Feliz Acción de Gracías!)
|>
Happy Thanksgiving, you grateful people.
And (worryingly) W-lfs-n is right - bacon on turkey is obvious.
I'm looking for exciting vegetarian Christmas dinner options, if anyone has any recommendations.
95: My people have always enjoyed the blood of Christian children. Vegetarian blood, that is. Otherwise it wouldn't be kosher.
So doesn't bacon keep the skin from crisping?
I've always deep-fat fried the babies first. And then I've administered a double layer of bacon. Don't tell my rabbi, okay?
Oh, sure, I can just imagine the 10 year old's face when served with crispy baby and a glass of blood. "Unfogged made me do it! They're vegetarian babies, I swear!"
Being a parent is a deep and meaningful task; feeding your children well, helping them learn, and so on, and you lot are simply making a mockery of the entire process.
96: I always thought "kosher" was about the slaughtering. Like, using the right knife?
Being a parent is a deep and meaningful task; feeding your children well
To crocodiles!
my mum got bored with cooking turkey at xmas and started experimenting with the traditional alternatives*, a new one each year: duck, goose, pheasant, grouse, pigeon and widgeon** (that's all i can remember)
*turkey is in fact only quite a recent tradition in the uk at xmas -- goose is canon, or chicken
**it helps if you live in the middle ages (or "shropshire" as geographers misleadingly call it)
re: 95
When we were vegans [when I was a kid], Christmas dinner was usually some sort of vaguely meat-like soya steak, with the usual Christmas trimmings. So I can't really help you there.
102: We do the same thing on major holidays. We started out wtih Cornish game hens and by now are now on to doing yearly ethnic themes (Jamaican, Turkish, Korean, Japanese, North and South Indian etc).
I'm looking for exciting vegetarian Christmas dinner options, if anyone has any recommendations.
The mango curry recipe from Madhur Jaffrey's World Vegeterian is fabulous.
The bacon should be taken off the turkey in last half hour or so to let the skin crisp off. Although there is an argument that the crispy bacon is superior to the skin anyway (or, at least there is in our house). It should definitely be good quality bacon though.
106: In fact, that's our preferred way of cooking bacon - we use disposable turkeys to give it that extra crispy texture and slightly poultry taste.
time to toss a spinier stone among the gathered army of the children of the hydra's teeth: what is the only true and correct stuffing for a turkey?
Cornish game hens aren't really Cornish. Some say that pasties (meat pies) are, though.
The bird we call the "turkey" is often given a foreign geographical designation, being called "dinde" (or some equivalent meaning "bird of India") in many languages (including Turkish); "peru" in Brazil (and in India, from the Portuguese); "bird of Egypt" in Macedonian; "Dutch bird" in Malaysia; some derivative of "bird from Calicut" (India) in Dutch and in the Scandinavian languages; and "bird of India", "bird of Ethiopia" or "bird of Rum" in Arabic dialects . (Note that Rome shows up again: "Rum" = "Rome" = "Turkey").
And there is another turkey-like bird called a "Guinea fowl" which was occasionally mistaken for the turkey during the early days.
The composer D'Indy's name may have meant "turkey".
I'm working tomorrow because the douchebag who was supposed to be writing the script I was supposed to be animating this week decided to blow it off for a higher profile job and is incapable of delegating lest the project turn out well and someone else get credit, and then the client changed the music, curse him. I will also be working Monday and Tuesday, when I was supposed to be on vacation, but fortunately it was to be a "staycation", to use the disgusting neologism, anyway, because despite the fact that I spend half my life slaving away at the money farm I don't have any fucking money, and I just need to stay home and get some painting done anyway (did I mention that I hate painting?), so I can just move it back a few days. Happy Thanksgiving. At least I don't have to cook the turkey.
Krugman:
A thought I've had: there have been some complaints from movement progressives about the centrism/orthodoxy of Obama's economics appointments. To some extent this was unavoidable, I think: someone like the Treasury secretary has to be an experienced hand who can deal with Wall Street, and I haven't heard anyone proposing particular individuals with clearer progressive credentials to hold that position.
Josh Micah Marshall:
For the leading progressive economic voice to be saying this is obviously good for Obama. But Krugman also has a challenge for the President-elect, pointing out that the new economics advisory board unveiled today offers him "a very good place to give progressive economists a voice."
Especially when you consider that Krugman himself is pretty centrist, this is a lesson in the limits of democratic government. No President can function who isn't able to work with Wall Street and the military establishment, either of which is capable of destroying a Presidency, or giving it a damn good shot at least. The reason why "President Kucinich" was a pip dream wasn't just because he couldn't have been elected, but because he wouldn't have been allowed to govern.
Though I'll allow that Krugman and DeLong do seem to have changed their minds about a few things since the Clinton free trade debates.
Being a parent is a deep and meaningful task; feeding your children well
To crocodiles!
I *told* you that was an accident!
Mango curry sounds great - will add it to my festive list. Probably should have something that will go with a roast dinner on the actual day though.
I've never been able to sell an oyster stuffing around here. Last year we had lobsters on day 2, just like the Pilgrims, but this year it's dinner at the guacamole place. As the Pilgrims would've also done if they'd been going to a hockey game.
Happy Non-Turkey Day to you too, Di.
max
['Chicken.']
It's Happy Scavenging Day in this household.
You know that feeling where you wake up early and without a hangover, but you still can't just enjoy the day because deep down you know that a mere 5 hours of drunken sleep will leave you useless by 4 pm? Any language which has a word for that gets to not be superfluous in the New World Order.
henley suggests an approach to stuffing that sounds more like survival techniques in everest's death zone (it involves skewering pieces of bread to one another -- but not to the upper slopes of the bird -- to form a "tent")
he also outs the "oysters" -- not charliecarp's oysters of the sea, but the cut of the fowl -- as a turkey's butt cheeks
It's Happy Scavenging Day in this household.
This year the vulture is just perfect!
i'm drinking hot chocolate which is not sweet except little marshmallow pieces, should have read the labels more attentively, maybe it was some kind of diet hot chocolate, it's as if i drink just something brown and flour tasting, very strange
Health chocolate, eh? Or maybe lite chocolate.
it's spoiled my afternoon
but Happy Thanksgiving all!
deep down you know that a mere 5 hours of drunken sleep will leave you useless by 4 pm?
Isn't that why they have football on television?
My newly-married Vietnamese-American coworker is going to go to both her mother's house and her in-laws' house for traditional Vietnamese feasts today. I like me some turkey and all, but man! I wish I was going with her.
hangover is 'shartax' in my language which literally means turn yellow (bile), if it's combined with excessive sleeping - nogoorox which means turn green (condensed bile, i guess)
now i feel some sweetness in the hot chocolate, coz it got a bit not hot and marshmallows are gone so now i can feel it, good
sorry, please delete the previous comment coz it could be appetite interfering
Sounds like late-stage cirrhosis.
re: 115
One year we had a 'nut loaf' that was actually nice. With gravy and roast potatoes and all the rest. I don't know what miracles rendered the nut loaf less minging than they usually are but I do remember it had chestnuts in it.
Some mushrooms supposedly have a meaty texture and flavor. I've heard that about chestnuts too.
Chestnuts are extinct in the US, as many species of elm soon will be. We still have a Chinese elm here, but hundreds of enormous elms died about 20 years ago.
I'm making chestnut lima beans for Tday dinner. They ain't chestnuts, but they taste like chestnuts.
chestnuts are very sweet -- not really a meaty flavour roast or parboiled i wouldn't say
in the old days we (my sister and i as children) roasted them on an open wood fire, peeled them and mashed them -- this is tiresome though, they're tough to de-shell and you always get slivers of the sheel up in the quick of your fingernails
now we parboil them -- you chop them in half and squeeze the watery flesh out
you can get em roast on the streets in central london once winter starts, sold off little metal little braziers which give of a chokey burst of carbon monoxide* to passersby
*actually i don't know what the gas is -- CO is odourless, isn't it? this has a very distinctive, throat-constricting poison feel and smell
My old roommate who was English and vegetarian (and totally, full-on Goth) used to make nutloaf for our Thanksgiving potlucks. It was an outrageously complicated process.
also: not yet extinct in the US
Thanksgiving Day is by far my favorite American holiday. My grandmother was a terrific cook of the stereotypical American food of 1950s, especially turkey. (Oddly, she also loved TV dinners, and whenever I visited her she'd try to convince me to have one as a treat.)
I have to work tomorrow but it's supposed to be hella slow. Today is dinner at the home of some friends, then videogames. Saturday I drive up the mountain for the family spread, complete with a turkey that always tastes good. I simply love turkey.
Also, it was always my understanding that it was originally called "Black Friday" by the people who work there and have such an incredibly terrible day ahead of them.
Chestnuts roasting on an open fire,
CO nipping at your nose,
...
Long story long: there are several reasons to plant American chestnuts now:
..........
learn about how quickly the fungus can attack and kill a tree with no intervention.
Apparently chestnuts always die in their teenage years.
apparently the equivalent blight in europe has several natural (fungal) enemies, and so has never taken hold in the same way: i assume -- as they're inexpensive and pretty plentiful -- that it's european chestnuts not american chestnuts we're consuming here in london and shropshire; do't know if there's a flavour variation
more different stuffing talk!
aha! the "european chestnut" is also called the spanish or sweet chestnut! so probably there IS a flavour variation
Ugh. Today is one of those days when all food tastes disgusting, so I have NO IDEA if what I'm bringing to the party is edible.
Isn't that why they have football on television?
I think so. Apparently the Lions all feel even more useless than I do.
The chestnut thing always baffled me as a child reading about it in books, since Ireland only has horse chestnuts (conkers).
146: All explained at my link.
Turkey success! Cut out backbone and flatten. Remove wingtips, use with neck, gizzard, backbone etc. for gravy stock. Remove drumsticks, pack in salt overnight (then smoke over apple chips for two hours the next day). Deeply flavored brine (brown sugar, salt, apples, onions, carrots, celery, bay, fennel greens, heated to boiling and allowed to cool) for 4 hours, air dry overnight. Rub and stuff under skin half a pound of butter, assorted fresh herbs, and two sliced lemons. Place in roasting pan on top of sausage stuffing. Roast at 500 for half an hour, 375 for half an hours, baste with butter and gravy stock, cover with tin foil and roast another hour and change, still at 375. Remove from heat, cover with tin foil, and allow to rest.
Perfect. Crisp skin, juicy white and dark meat done at the same time. (I served one of the smoked turkey legs, used the meat from the other to flavor the collards.)
149: That's great, Chopper. I burned the tomato sauce for the ziti, which I realized last night. (Left on too long in a slow cooker.) I sprung to action this morning and got a new sauce going. Everything turned out great.
And when my mom asked if I knew what kind of Dutch Oven I might want for Christmas, my roommate started giggling incessantly. Awesome.
Gravy made with veal stock and foie gras: unsurprisingly good.
I don't think cognac in mashed potatoes sounds like a good idea, but Snoop does. How can Snoop be wrong?