Think for yourself. Question authority.
Since it's only two of us, we are relying a quaint, quite old restaurant from the 1800s. Going classic turkey for tradition. About duck - love it but my favorites are the Asian preparations - such as tea smoke duck. Roast duck is fine also but the Chinese ones - yum.
I love Turkey a few days a year.
We do a smoked Turkey that I buy and spend way to much on, but it’s awesome. White meat is juicy and dark meat tastes like ham. It’s fantastic.
Any protein is great if it’s cooked well.
Happy Thanksgiving everyone.
I don't dislike turkey in general as a meat but I make a very clear distinction between store-bought turkey (Grade-A HOT GARBAGE) and something that was raised with care by an actual farmer taking an interest in raising the birds right. If I could have any of you sample the bird I bought off a farmer in Michigan years ago and prepared myself in a dutch oven (I took the whole bird apart and arranged it inside the dutch oven so as to cook evenly and took it out at a much lower temp than what would be considered 'safe' by the USDA). That would have been a meal you'll never forget but the crap that I was always served growing up left me having a strong inclination to not even want to eat it though I was always hungry by the time the damn bird was doing cooking (overcooking).
Kosher, free range bird - seasoning salt and some canola oil:
How it's looking after ~3.5hrs at 200 in the smoker:
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I've now brought the temp up to 300 to push the bird past stall (stalled at 159) to my preferred cooked temp (165).
I kept it simple this year and just enjoyed a Peruvian chicken dinner courtesy of Wegmans, washed down with a fine Coke Zero.
I made Thanksgiving this year.
Smoked pork butt (didn't turn out as good as I'd hoped, I underseasoned it for the size TBH)
Braised cabbage and apples (good thing I'm alone in my office now)
Mac & cheese (the ATK recipe I've posted before, turned out excellent as always)
Mashed potatoes and cheated with jarred beef gravy
My wife made a cheesecake that turned out pretty nicely as well.
Sorta around sometimes for some of your shitty mod needs.
Mama would hang a turkey upside down on a post and chop his head off with an axe. Then she would wring a fat hen's neck and use chicken meat for the dressing. We are spending this Thanksgiving in a motel because of flooding from a blocked drain, which the plumber thought he had fixed. Just one of those things!
Bunch of run-around this year about who was going where, and so on. Finally I said we are staying home, grilling ribeye steaks, and anyone who wants to eat at my house is welcome. But there will be steaks, not turkey. Nobody took me up on it. Not sure what that says about either my likability, or my steak cooking ability.
Anyway we had ribeye steaks, sirloin kebabs, and a few fixin’s. I’ve said many times, I’ve never thought I could sure go for a whole turkey right about now.
Last edited by Clusterfrack; 11-25-2022 at 12:05 PM.
“There is no growth in the comfort zone.”--Jocko Willink
"You can never have too many knives." --Joe Ambercrombie