Pandemic Thanksgiving Advice For First-Time Cooks

Speaker 1: 00:00 This will be a Thanksgiving like no other, for many people. The spike in COVID cases across the country means the usual travel and family gatherings will not be happening. Americans are devising all sorts of imaginative ways to spend the holiday using technology, to bring family together virtually, but it's left many people with the realization that if they want a home cooked Thanksgiving dinner, they're going to have to make it themselves. And some for the first time in their lives, journey me with some first Turkey tips is San Diego freelance food writer, Karen Golden, and Karen, welcome back. Speaker 2: 00:39 Thanks Marina. It's good to be back with you. Speaker 1: 00:42 If you generally travel to relatives at Thanksgiving, you may never have had the experience of putting together a Thanksgiving dinners. So what's the first thing you need to do to get organized, maybe a list. Speaker 2: 00:55 You need a list. You need a calendar. Um, because the, the trick to all of this is preparation and knowing when you're going to do all the tasks that need to be done, a lot of this has to do with just how many dishes you're going to make and what dishes you're going to make. So you need to go to the market. You need to do food prep. You even need to know when you're going to set the table, um, and having a little calendar in which you can just put down, okay? At this time, I need to be doing this at this time. Someone else in the household needs to do that. That makes it so that you don't have to think about it. You don't have to tear your hair out at the last minute, because you know, you didn't turn on the oven at 10 o'clock in the morning to put a pie in so that you could get the Turkey in by 1130, that kind of thing. So you have to start at the end and work backwards. Speaker 1: 01:58 Now, if only two or three people are going to be at your Thanksgiving table, how big a Turkey should you get? Speaker 2: 02:05 Well, it depends on whether you want leftovers and how many. And remember that a big Turkey is nice, but if you can get an eight to 10 pound Turkey, then you have hit, you know, gold because everybody is looking for smaller turkeys because of the pandemic. So try and find eight to 10. You're not going to find smaller. If on the other hand, there's nothing saying you have to have a whole Turkey. You could have whatever pieces that you enjoyed best. Maybe you get a Turkey breast, or maybe everyone loves the dark meat. So you get the dark meat and some wings, if that's how you want to roll. And there's nothing saying you have to have Turkey. Um, you could get a beautiful chicken and roasted chicken. So there are a lot of options, but smaller is best also because it depends on how many side dishes you're going to be serving. And you'd be amazed at how, how much people eat the sides, nipple on the Turkey. Speaker 1: 03:21 What are some typical newbie mistakes that Thanksgiving cooks make? Speaker 2: 03:26 There are several, one is taking on too many dishes, especially if they haven't made them before. My feeling is that, well, Thanksgiving is typically the best potluck meal of the year. If you're not going to have other people in that, you know, bringing dishes to the house, reduce the number of dishes that you make and buy things that you want. So have a couple that you'd love to make. And then the rest don't feel guilty about buying them. Pre-made it's fine. The other is cooking way too much food because people don't eat nearly as much as we think they do. And if you want to have leftovers, then do it for leftovers. The other is not planning well enough. You need time to shop and to prep and to cook, and you need to have space for storage, both the freezer and the fridge. You need to think about what serving dishes you have, uh, for what you're making. Are you going to clean while you cook between courses to make room, do you need to have ice and go out and get ice? And do you have a place to store it? It's like a choreography. You need to have all of that thought out to make it much easier. And finally, you need to make sure that you correctly time, whatever it is that needs to be in the oven, really break apart, take apart the meal and the components of the meal and figure out how it needs to be done. Speaker 1: 04:55 Now you have a suggestion for a perfectly cooked Turkey that works especially well with smaller birds. Can you tell us about it? It's got a weird name. Speaker 2: 05:05 Yeah. It has a weird name. It's called spatchcocking, which apparently is an Irish old Irish term that goes back to, uh, dispatching of the bird. Um, it's a very simple, straight forward thing. I've tried so many ways of making Turkey and had so many fails. This is foolproof. And what you're going to do is take your Turkey, your eight to 10 or 12 pound Turkey, and cut down the backbone. Most people say cut off the backbone. That's easier. I kind of like cooking the backbone. So if you're going to take it off, you know, keep it and maybe cook that to roast that too. But what you do is you cut out the backbone and flatten the Turkey and then straighten it out and put it a level in which you have physical body leverage with the heels of your palms, to be able to push down on the breast of the Turkey. Speaker 2: 06:08 The idea is to break the breastbone. So it lies completely flat. And then what you'll do is you'll season it. You can, at that point, if you do it a day before you can brighten it, if you light brining, otherwise just, uh, get a large baking sheet that has a rim put foil on top and put the bird on the foil and first upside down so that you can season the underneath and then flip it over and season the top. You're going to have very even cooking. You're not going to worry about whether the breast is cooked before, you know, the thigh, the skin will all be nice and crispy. It's just, it's miraculous. It's wonderful. How Speaker 1: 06:52 Long does it take to cook that way? Speaker 2: 06:55 It depends on the size of the, um, Turkey, but I found that I cook it at four 50. I season it like with garlic, salt and paprika. I rub in some oil, you could use melted butter, squeeze, some fresh lemon juice. You can use any spices that you want and put it in for about an hour and 20 minutes and don't baste it. It doesn't need basting and then pull the Turkey out of the oven and measure its temperature with a meat thermometer. And the breast should hit 150 degrees. The sh thigh should be one 65. If you've hit that, turn off the oven, pull the Turkey out and lightly tent it with some foils so that it can rest. If it's not at those temperatures, put it back in the oven, try again in five minutes. And ideally you want to let it rest at least 20 minutes before you carve it. Speaker 1: 07:55 And finally, Karen, your advice, if I understand it is that people, you know, who are thinking about putting together their Thanksgiving dinner, maybe aren't too familiar with how to do it, should really start buying their Thanksgiving dinner ingredients this week and not wait until next week. Is that right? Speaker 2: 08:13 Oh yeah. I, every time I go to the market, I have my list and I pick up things that I think I need that I have space for. I'm not going to get a Turkey now because, um, I don't have room I'll order a Turkey now that I can pick up a day or two before Thanksgiving. But yeah. Um, you know, depending on what kind of stuffing you make or, uh, match, but you'd be surprised you could buy your potatoes for mashed potatoes. You could make the mashed potatoes, you can put them in the freezer and then the day before, let it defrost and then heat it up in a microwave and it will be perfectly good. Something my mother has been doing for years. We do the, do the same with a grain salad buy. If you're going to make a Farrow salad with roasted vegetables, you could roast the vegetables ahead of time. So go and buy the vegetables you need. Now it's just less stuff to worry about and less competition for all the same foods that everyone is getting. If you start now Speaker 1: 09:16 Exactly well, I've been speaking with San Diego freelance food writer, Karen Golden, Karen. Thank you very much. It's very helpful and happy Thanksgiving. Speaker 2: 09:26 Thanks Maureen. Happy Thanksgiving to you too.