You don't have to slave to have a good Turkey

Published on November 13, 2003 By JillUser In Home & Family

I have to giggle at ads that say "Don't slave over an oven all Thanksgiving". They want you to order one of their turkeys to be delivered. With modern technology, you can hardly go wrong with a turkey these days. Buy a good turkey (I recommend Butterball) with a pop-up timer, set your oven for the recommended temp (they give directions on the packaging) and roast for the recommended amount of time per pound. They self baste. All you have to do is wait for the popper to pop. Oh, the most important step is to make sure your bird isn't still frozen!

Once you have mastered those basics, you can add to the results by rubbing the bird with olive oil or crisco for a nice browning. You can experiment with stuffings. It really isn't slaving at all. I hope I'm not ruining things for women who are trying to get out of cooking a turkey

I get up, rinse, stuff and rub the bird, put it in the oven, set the timer and go back to bed. Now that is my kind of slaving!

Happy Thanksgiving to All!

Comments

KarmaGirl

on Nov 13, 2003

When you said "I get up, rinse, stuff and rub the bird" All I could think of was your husband's nick name being "Bird". It was just kind of funny...

Anyway, I agree. The Turkey is the easiest part of making Thanksgiving dinner. I would say the biggest time sucker is pealing all the potatoes and cutting them up to boil for mashed potatoes. My way around that- make your husband do it LOL

JillUser

on Nov 13, 2003

My answer for the potatoe dilema, either make a make-ahead recipe (I got one from a family member a couple of years ago) or invite someone and tell them to bring the mashed potatos

CariElf

on Nov 13, 2003

Last year at my grandma's house we used those heavy duty divided paper plates, plastic silverware and paper cups. My grandmother was agahst, but my aunts and mom (who usually do most of the cleanup work so that Grandma doesn't have to) were very pleased. The only stuff they had to clean up were the dishes and utensils used to prepare and serve the food. Since we have at least 20 people at Thanksgiving dinner every year, this was an immense timesaver.

I think that last year we also cheated and used instant mashed potatoes for the first time. This year, I'm going to recommend that we use the instant potatoes from GFS because they taste a lot more like the real thing, and they're very easy: just add the powder and salt to boiling water. No milk, no butter, and I very happily didn't read the container for nutritional information when I made them.

I should also add that every family is responsible for a side dish, and my mom and some of my aunts help my Grandma make pies. We've also got microwave cooking schedules down to a science, since my grandmother's oven traditionally fails on Thanksgiving. Thank goodness for the pressure cooker, or whatever that thing is that we cook the turkey in.

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