Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It could have been worse. Around 1985 when microwaves were pretty new, my aunt talked my mom into cooking the turkey in the microwave.

Ha ha ha

Around the same year, my aunt's oven stopped working suddenly on Thanksgiving morning. We had microwaved turkey.

Like all experienced cooks I went through phases of being ambitious and attracted to intriguing and luxurious recipes aka Thomas Keller and so forth. Learned my lesson the hard way. You cannot replicate much of fine dining in a home kitchen for a variety of reasons. I remember the first time I used foie gras at home - the recipe called for lightly poaching it. It melted and turned into liquid. Who knows how much money went down the drain.

Thanksgiving in particular calls for a very "plain" menu. You can only gussy up a turkey or stuffing or the brussels sprouts so much. It's only worth going to a certain level with a Thanksgiving meal.

Chalk it up to experience, laugh at it, and move forward. You have Christmas coming up or if you don't celebrate Christmas, have a great New Year's dinner party!

My meal turned out well, except for the green bean casserole. Per my husband’s request, he likes the casserole from our childhood-you know the one (mushy green beans, Campbell’s cream of mushroom soup, greasy fried onions). I tried to “upscale” it a bit-fresh green beans, cream of portabello soup, better quality onion crunchies, additional spices, etc. It was a flop. I guess you can’t mess with some classics. Fortunately, everything else was great, including the smoked maple turkey.

Anonymous wrote:Turkey is not an easy thing to cook (any hunk of meat that large is going to be harder). Stuffing actually placed inside a large bird is also a bad idea because og basic temp issues and because honestly the only thing that should be inside a bird is an onion and lemon. By making stuffed turkey traditional we are basically setting people up for failure.

My mom makes a terrific stuffed turkey and always has. (Well, except the one year the oven broke and we had to slice the half-cooked turkey up and microwave it ....)

She stuffs the hell out of it and roasts it breast down, even though the books say to roast breast up. The breast doesn't get dry. Roast it to 170-175, and done. The stuffing from inside the bird is so superior to the leftovers that get cooked unstuffed.

This definitely should be a great memory in the future. Maybe far into the future, but a good laugh nonetheless. Some of our favorite family memories are of food disasters. The time Aunt Ruth nearly poisoned us with the raw turkey. The crunch stuffing. The chewy Yorkshire pudding. The year my mom decided we'd have lamb instead of turkey. I can't think of a successful meal that people remember.

Congrats, OP! You are on your way to a great memory.

Anonymous wrote:It might be old fashioned but I love (Butterball) with the pop-up

My frozen Butterball was excellent! I only wish I had bought a bigger one for more leftovers.

OP do you know how fois gras is made? It’s banned in some places snd some restaurants refuse to sell it. I’m not saying go all out vegetarian but for the Loce of God do your research and look for food that is less barbaric to produce.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Do yourself a favor next year, get a turkey fryer (infra red, really easy) and all other sides are pre packaged. Honestly I've never had stuffing better than stouffers, etc. Get the idiot proof meal items.

This makes me so sad...

I didn't know there was any Stouffer's stuffing. Does this PP mean Stove Top?

I was wondering this, too!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Do yourself a favor next year, get a turkey fryer (infra red, really easy) and all other sides are pre packaged. Honestly I've never had stuffing better than stouffers, etc. Get the idiot proof meal items.

This makes me so sad...

I didn't know there was any Stouffer's stuffing. Does this PP mean Stove Top?

Anonymous wrote:Do yourself a favor next year, get a turkey fryer (infra red, really easy) and all other sides are pre packaged. Honestly I've never had stuffing better than stouffers, etc. Get the idiot proof meal items.

This makes me so sad...

Forgive yourself. It happens!

On a side note, I heated a ham this year and just made boxed stuffing, frozen corn with butter, frozen rolls, etc. this year and it was awesome to have so little stress over the prep of the meal. Normally I would never take those shortcuts but the meal tasted glorious for some reason. This was just my immediate family so no one cared. I did make the mashed potatoes and cranberry sauce from scratch.

Go watch “ Christmas vacation“ movie!!!
It couldn’t have been any worse than Katherine’s turkey!

I'm sorry OP. In the future, you will chuckle about it. We still talk about bad Thanksgivings past in a nostalgic kind of way.

My tips for the future would be to use a turkey bag, take it out when starts changing color and drumsticks look like they are starting to sag to the side, and just do stovetop stuffing. We also swear by Butterball turkey.

Anonymous wrote:It could have been worse. Around 1985 when microwaves were pretty new, my aunt talked my mom into cooking the turkey in the microwave.

Ha ha ha

It could have been worse. Around 1985 when microwaves were pretty new, my aunt talked my mom into cooking the turkey in the microwave.