Thanksgiving for novices

Hey
First of all, i'm not american. None of my friends are either.
It's just that we have watched way too many thanksgiving specials in sitcoms thru the years and love turkey... It'll be a fun clicheed night.
And, well, we just wanted an excuse to eat winter dishes when it's 30ºC outside and we have a lot to celebrate.

I have a couple of questions tho (i'm a total thanksgiving rookie :p)
I read somewhere that brining the turkey overnight is a good idea to keep it moist
can i brine it and then marinate it with butter for an hour before cooking it?
I also read that injecting the bird with olive oil and orange juice were good ides to make the meat moist and tender...
Wouldn't this all be too much? I mean, brining, marinating and injecting stuff into a dead animal?

Also, exactly how hot should the oven be to roast the turkey?

Finally, How should i carve the turkey if it has stuffing? Is the meat carved so that each piece has some stuffing or is the stuffing spooned out and served as a sidedish? I have absolutely no idea...

Well, thanks for ur help!

I avoid all that fancy brining, injecting,etc. Not neccesary. I rinse out the cavity of the turkey, dry the inside w/a paper towel, rub salt in it, then spoon in the stuffing. (Put wings behind back) After that, I rub oil on the outside and cover loosely with foil. You roast it at 325 degrees F (160 C). Check the following for recommended cooking times-
6~8 pounds- 3 1/2~4 hours
8~12 pounds- 4~4 1/2 hours
12~16 pounds- 4 1/2~5 1/2 hours
16~20 pounds- 5 1/2~6 1/2 hours
20~24 pounds- 61/2~7 1/2 hours

Remove the foil the last 45 minutes. Turkey is ready when leg moves loosely in socket. You can baste while it's roasting if you want, but I prefer to just collect the juices for gravy. When the bird is done, let it sit 15 minutes before carving. Carve off pieces (start at breast and work downward) and scoop out some stuffing after. I make enough stuffing for 20 people so I have it in 2~3 baking dishes which I pop into the oven immediately after I remove the turkey. I'll be cooking my bird in about 5 hours! :-)

If you're not American then why bother celebrating a tradition that has absolutely nothing to do with your culture?

Why bother?
It's not a burden for me at all, it just makes for a good excuse to have my friends over for dinner.
For you guys it's a cultural traditional holiday, for us, it's just about the food =)

You shouldn't make the assumption that everyone here is American.

I don't think I did.
But anyway, I apologize if u felt I was implying that =)

There's no need to apologise. I just find it a bit odd that you would want to celebrate an event that is alien to your culture. Just roast the bird and enjoy.

I suggest reading the Serious Thanksgiving thread.

I am a big fan of brining and I discuss it in that thread. After brining, I loosen the skin by slipping my hand under it and rub seasoned butter onto the turkey. I cover the breast closely with foil (not tented, but wrapped tightly) for the first third or so of cooking. That way, the breast does not overcook when the dark meat is done.

Don't even think of stuffing the turkey ahead of time. That's asking or food poisoning. Cook's Illustrated suggests heating the stuffing before putting into the turkey--the stuffing must be too hot to handle. That helps everything cook master & more evenly. The stuffing goes into the big cavity as well as into the neck end. (I've seen European chicken recipes where the neck area got all the stuffing and the breast was sliced so that each piece got a bit of stuffing.)

You really need a meat thermometer to tell when the beast is done. Tent it lightly with foil and let it rest 20-30 minutes before carving. Take all the stuffing out before carving.

Thanksgiving dinner is usually served family style, so the stuffing and all the side dishes are served in dishes to be passed around or self service. The turkey may be carved at the table and a plate passed to each diner (you want white or dark meat?). Or the turkey may be carved in the kitchen & a plate of meat passed around. If you do this, the turkey should be shown off to the diners in all its glory. A compromise is an initial table carving, with seconds coming from a passed around plate. How to carve a turkey.

There are probably as many ideas for what temperature to cook a turkey, as there are turkey cookers. Some use a uniform temperature throughout. Some start high, then lower the temperature. Or, conversely, start low & finish with a blast of heat. How to roast a stuffed turkey Cooking times are shorter than Cocodrilo's

today the tradition of thanksgiving extends to all of our good fortun and positive events that have taken place in oour lives over the past year. it need not limit itself to americans only. so whats so bad about celebrating a positive event regardless of national origin?????

Celebrating a positive event is fine by me, gengis. Thing is, is the world ready for the globalisation and commercial exploitation of American traditions? In Australia (with due thanks to Hollywood) kids now celebrate Halloween.

<blockquote>Quote
<hr>Don't even think of stuffing the turkey ahead of time. That's asking or food poisoning.<hr></blockquote>That depends. My mother and her sister both made a very simple stuffing, using toasted bread that had been broken into small pieces (the toasted bread was put in a brown paper bag, then a rolling pin was used to crush it). The only other ingredients were chopped celery and onion, which they mixed with the bread and moistened sufficiently with water that it more or less held together.

Some recipes for stuffing call for sausage, and some call for egg to be used as a binder, and it is those ingredients that can lead to food poisoning if they are in the bird too long before it is hot enough to cook them.

I'm going to be home alone this Thursday, and I'll be having a Cornish game hen, stuffed the way my mother would have done it, plus mashed potatoes, broccoli, and jellied cranberry sauce. Thanksgiving dinner when my parents were alive would have included both mashed potatoes and sweet potatoes, corn, and the cranberry sauce as well as the turkey and stuffing. I like broccoli, so I've abandoned corn.

About the post at #2 ("If you're not American, then why bother...?"), I would remind the poster that maberk89 is American: South American. I agree with the poster at #2 that Thanksgiving is not part of maberk's tradition, but if we were all bound to avoid things outside our own tradition, we in the United States would never have eaten pizza, or crepes, or dozens of other things that routinely appear on our tables.

DD
It's 1:0 to maberk. He's better articulated than most of the posters (on other branches). He's 18.

Mariano,
Talking about the language. It is a well elaborated topic, but why are you saying "Wouldn't this all be too much? I mean, brining, marinating and injecting stuff into a dead animal?".
You can't put stuffing into a live animal, can you?

And as for cooking. I'm a newbie to turkey cooking, but the results have been good (or excellent as friends say) so far. Btw - I stuff my turkey just before putting it into the oven.
Take these three simple rules:
- as many hours as kilograms. If the 'animal' weighs 4 kilos, cook it in the oven for 4 hrs. Like Cocodrilo#1 said, in 160 C (upto 170).
- brine many times (can't be too many) so the meat get moisture, and the skin doesn't burn
- when about to be ready cooked, stick a toothpick in the meat in a couple of places. If the meat juice is clear, the turkey is done.

Off topic.
My Spanish is very rudimentary. What did Karin do? The mother looked like she's having heart attack.

Before language nuts correct me, should I rather say in correct English "he is more articulate..."?

NorthAmerican,
I also use toasted bread for stuffing, toasting bread cubes in frying pan, with broth (making sort of croutons). Then I mix it with chicken lever and mashrooms, cooked in frying pan, and add chopped parsley.

This Drovers Dog sounds like a fussy old stuffed turkey. Over cooked.

Maberk, hope you enjoy a new tradition that is to give thanks for your bounty, whatever that may be.

Don't forget the gravy.

You can't put stuffing into a live animal, can you?

Well, the name of this branch suggests you can ;)
Thanks for the compliment by the way hehe

Off topic:
Karina appears to have run away from her house... the show where the hilarious scene takes place is actually an Argie show called "Gente que busca gente" (which is, in my opinion, grammatically incorrect because the expression is "buscar a alguien" and not "buscar alguien"...) where ppl go looking for their missing relatives... Coincidentally that person is in a separate room backstage... How very surprising...

Fieldgate: Yes, "he is more articulate" is correct; "he is better articulated" makes me think that his elbows and knees might function better than yours or mine.

Putting the stuffing in the bird just before you roast it is probably the best way, especially if chicken livers are involved. (Your addition of chopped parsley sounds good.) Reading your description caused me to realize that I had lied, however inadvertently, in my post at #10; I said "stuffed the way my mother would have done it," but in fact I used chicken broth, rather than water, to moisten the stuffing.

Why celebrate something that is not part of your culture? In my mind, Thanksgiving is a lovely celebration intended to express thanks for bounty, friendship, good fortune, assistance from others, etc., something I think we can all share. The fact that the celebration is in honor of a supposed event that occurred geographically in a place that is now the US but that at that time was not has nothing to do with the underlying sentiment, IMHO.

I'll be celebrating tomorrow at a table with US, British, and Costa Rican friends. Nice. Over the years, the gathering has included Peruvians, Nicaraguans, Canadians (who celebrate in October, I had turkey twice that year), Salvadorians, French people, Germans, Brazilians -- we all found something to express thanks for.

Maber, have a great dinner and a great time with your friends.

I forgot to add that I live in Costa Rica and am a CR citizen.

I always stuff my turkeys, and have been doign so for 22 years with no problems. I make my stuffign ahead of time (I made mine yesterday) and stuff the turkey when it is completely cold. There is nothing like the stuffing INSIDE the bird- collects all the juices, and the pieces that stick outside get all nice and crispy! Don't forget to stuff the neck cavity!

#17- Bravo! For me, it's mostly about preparing an excellent meal for good friends. There will be only 2 Americans tonight, and a Canadian, Peruvian, and a lot of Japanese! :-)

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<hr>I forgot to add that I live in Costa Rica and am a CR citizen.<hr></blockquote> But aren't central American countries wannabe states of the union anyway?

The germs that might cause food poisoning are usually not in the stuffing ingredients; they are in the cavity of the turkey. They can start breeding in that nice, moist stuffing and get to high enough levels that they aren't fully done in by cooking.

Nutrax: My post at #10 was not intended to dispute what you said at #7, but to explain what I thought was the reasoning behind it; namely, that certain ingredients in the stuffing can lead to problems. I did not know that the germs are in the cavity of the bird itself. Ugh! What will I eat next year?

It maybe all a bit late now, but i would cut the legs off and peel off the skin, strip the leg meat off the bone and mix it with stuffing and then stuff the leg skin and sew up like sausages. This way you cut the cooking time and have less of an ordeal when it comes to carving it, you could also do it with the neck skin if you get a full bird, stick it all in a roasting bag and Bob's yer Uncle.

It's 7:38 AM now on Friday in Sydney OP, now what are you going to do with the turkey leftovers?
Turkey croquettes, turkey noodle soup? Turkey and cheese sarnies?

Oops, thought you were in the lucky country.

A daycat.

Drover- your life must be quite sad if you treat everything this way. We love to celebrate- Chinese New Years, May Day, Fat Tuesday, Cinco de Mayo, Palauan Independance Day, all the Jewish holidays, and bloody well why not? To some degree it is a recognition that we live in a small world and isn't it nice that all these people have days that they set aside to have a good time. And yes, some of the holidays also have deep religious or national meaning- I'm not hurting anyone by not digging deeply into the underlying meaning.

5 waldos dont worry about drovers dog all he can do is lift his leg on everything that in itself says a lot about a person and their life or lack thereof

How many Australian holidays and festivals do you celebrate, 5Waldos?

Any we can find out about Drover. Care to share some that we can incorporate?

OK, try this for starters and let's know how you get on, Waldos.

See what you can organise for Dec.4th. That's the auspicious and celebratory occasion for the much heralded and time honoured annual - North Hobart Mormon Tabernacle Ladies' Auxiliary Lamington and Pavlova Drive. Good luck with this one as it would have about as much cultural significance for Americans as Thanksgiving does for Australians.

And, gengis can I humbly suggest you raise your own cultural consciousnesses by occasionally shoving your head up a dead dingo's arse?

<blockquote>Quote
<hr>It maybe all a bit late now, but i would cut the legs off and peel off the skin, strip the leg meat off the bone and mix it with stuffing and then stuff the leg skin and sew up like sausages. This way you cut the cooking time and have less of an ordeal when it comes to carving it, you could also do it with the neck skin if you get a full bird, stick it all in a roasting bag and Bob's yer Uncle. <hr></blockquote>

We were lucky if Uncle Bob was still on his feet when it came time to carve the buzzard.

OK maberk89 - What dishes did you cook, and how did everything turn out? Ours was great!

I can't believe no one posted the obvious. Roast it breast side down. Seriously, once you try it you'll never cook a turkery any other way.

It doesn't make for a nice presentation, but what would you rather have, a golden brown bird or moist succulent breast meat?

drovers dog or relevant parts of the south of a dog moving north. as suspected you are pathetic,uninteresting unable to make an intelagent comment sure mark of a tardo or at least socially inadequate. congrats your picture now hangs on the headcover of the journal of proctology see you later lloyd

And no wonder he is so sad- doesn't know the difference between a holiday and an event. So sorry Drover.

gengis, is also several full stops short of a coherent sentence.

How would you categorise the Chinese New Year in America, Waldos? Public holiday or event?