Sweet Nothings
NaBloPoMo, Scrine Comments (13)
It’s sad that so few people seem to appreciate the subtle humor involved in talking dirty to the turkey while stuffing it.
I don’t stuff my turkeys. I brine the living shit out of them, then pour this onion/apple/cinnamon mixture into their open cavity before shoving them into the oven. It’s kinky, sure, but not really dirty and certainly not ‘stuffing’. The stuffing is done separately and involves cornbread and sausage, exactly as God intended. Frankly, I don’t understand the point in stuffing a bunch of dried-out bread up a turkey’s ass. When the bird cooks, you see, the stuffing sort of sucks up the juices (from the bird, which defeats the purpose of brining it in the first place in order to make the bird juicy because the STUFFING JUST SUCKS THE JUICE OUT OF THE BIRD OH MY GOD IT’S A VICIOUS CYCLE OF JUICE SUCKING!!!) and what you’re left with is a pile of moist bread-like substance. Also, the stuffing never really cooks, so it’s moist bread-like substance that’s been encased in raw poultry, which ratchets up the ick factor pretty significantly.
There are those that swear by the stuffing of a turkey and I say more power to them. It’s just that I will never count myself among their ranks and will happily go about my merry way eating stuffing untainted by the briny ass of a dead bird. Well, I guess it’s technically not the ass. Whatever. It’s my blog; I win.
I’m convinced that Thanksgiving is a day of particular joy for people who love to cook. There’s no reason that I can’t on any given day of the year whip up the kind of carbohydrate annihilation that I’ll be creating tomorrow, but I think it’s the idea of doing it all at once in a single morning/afternoon that makes me giddy with anticipation. Also, the experimentation with the brine; I’ve found great combinations, but I’m always tweaking, trying to make it a little more lethal. I’m a food geek. There are worse curses.
Speaking of geekery…Finally, that you might know your enemy, I present you the amino acid tryptophan.
See how it flaunts its bulky side chain, waving its large double aromatic ring in your face. It laughs at you. ‘HA!’, it laughs. ‘BEHOLD MY BULKY RINGS!!’ This is what post-turkey sleep looks like.* Resistance is futile.
* I could explain the mechanism involved in how tryptophan knocks one on their well-fed ass, but that would put you to sleep now.
Sir @ November 26, 2008
Have fun cooking, Food Geek! :D
I did the cook-the-entire-Thanksgiving-feast-in-one-looooooong-day thing once. Then I stopped all that nonsense because if I’m not going to eat it, I’m not going to cook it. Not on Thanksgiving (though I will for regular dinners, sometimes).
Happy Pie (not pi) Day!!!
Kat is going to love this post.
Also, you are right about the stuffing.
I know that people like you exist (ha, that seems so unintentionally condescending), but it does always amaze me, to an extent. Last year I had to handle pretty much everything and I think I’m still tired.
I have everything ready to go, except for the potatoes and the squash which I will do tomorrow while the turkey roasts after we get back from our hike. My secret to surviving Thanksgiving with my thankfulness intact involves getting everything except the potatoes and the squash done a day in advance.
Oh, and stuff the turkey if you want, it’s a free country, but I’m only eating stuffing if it’s never seen the cavity of a bird. Because ew.
Happy Thanksgiving, Sir.
i did it yesterday. here’s what i did:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/eezpictures/sets/72157610166939514/
In Texas, when stuffing is cooked out of the bird, it’s called dressing. I LOVE DRESSING. IF I WAS DYING OR IN JAIL I WOULD EAT IT FOR MY LAST MEAL. I DON’T KNOW WHY I’M SHOUTING AT YOU. But sausage totally ruins it.
JenBun: Why in the hell would you not eat it? That’s absurd.
Abigail:It just seems to make sense that raw poultry and bread don’t mix. Or raw poultry and anything, really.
Jamelah The most difficult part is the waiting. The turkey brines; you wait. The turkey is done brining, you put it in the over and wait. Wait wait wait. Also, the Lions suck, so you can’t even watch decent football while waiting.
Shari: I did the pie and the biscuits (which double as the bread for the stuffing) last night. Today, the turkey brines, then gets cooked, along with the sweet taters and the DRESSING (via Ashley).
e: That looks like some damn fine eatin’. And that gravy. You had me at ‘separated pan drippings’.
Ashley: You are right about the dressing, but obviously smoking crack about the sausage. Put down the crack pipe, Ashley. Thanksgiving is no time for hardcore narcotics.
I am not smoking the crack (right now). But you know who is? The people I’m going to eat with in about, oh, an hour. Because why? Because they put jalapenos in their stuffing. JALAPENOS. Gross.
I have a Thanksgiving pet peeve and it is this:
When people say “turkey with all the fixins.”
I just hate the word fixins.
This felt like the right place to vent that.
Sir, I need to know your briniest thoughts if you’re willing to share. My favorite, combo, which I use on turkeys I smoke and on pork is: 1 cup kosher salt; 1/2 cup brown sugar; 1/2 cup molasses; a cup or two of leftover coffee; 1 cup water, 1 tsp. vanilla; some rosemary, crushed black pepper — boil; add ice cubes and cold water to cool down and brine overnight. No further seasoning necessary in the smoker. In the oven, just a little oil on the skin and some black pepper.
As for cooking turkeys in the oven (did one of those along with my smoked bird this year, just for variety), I will never ever again not use an oven cooking bag. Gotta raise the bird up and arrange the bag so the juices don’t poach the bottom of the bird too much. Unbelievable juiciness. And, surprisingly, they brown up just fine.
I’m anti-bread-based stuffing. I make a wild-rice/dried apricot/pecan stuffing that is the perfect thing to soak up bird juice and come out with texture, tasting like a bit of heaven.
Oh, and Kahlua yams. I’ve never fed them to anyone who would ever go back to any other form. This year I converted an avowed “I hate yams and sweet potatos” person.
‘mouse: Our brines are pretty similar, though I do like your coffee idea. Mine: 1 c kosher salt; 1 c brown sugar; 1 c molasses; one gallon vegetable stock; some black peppercorns, allspice, and ginger. Boil it. Chill it. Throw it in a bucket with a gallon of ice water and the turkey for at least 6 hours.
As for the cavity filler, throw one sliced apple, 1/2 an onion, a cinnamon stick, some rosemary and sage into a bowl, add a cup of water, then microwave it for 5 minutes. When it’s done, dump it in the turkey and throw the turkey in at 500 for 30 minutes, then 350 for ~2.5 hours. Voila. And after you clean and boil the carcass for the stock, I have a soup recipe that’s so good that it’s just stupid.
The stuffing is a sort of a cornbread, type of thing that requires the baking of cornmeal biscuits, which isn’t too big a deal as long as you’re into that kind of thing.
Finally, Rum-glazed Sweet Potatoes with Apples and Chestnuts. I leave out the chestnuts because I have no love of nuts in anything, really. This is not a healthy dish, by any stretch of the imagination, but I assure you that it doesn’t suck in the least. The Kahlua yams sound fairly amazing. I’ll gladly trade you recipes if you’re willing to part with it.
Exellent. Do you use your drippings from the bird for gravy? Not too cinnamon-y?
I’ll round up the recipe one of these days. If I forget, feel free to remind me.
The turkey talk got me less excited than most of your commenters, only because I am on the business end of cooking two entire turkey meals. On my own. With no help. Why yes, I *do* like playing the martyr, whyever do you ask?
No, the reason I’m posting is because I have a confession. That little bit of science there at the end? The diagram of the tryptophan molecules? Got me a little turned on. Yeh. What can I say, I love research.