I managed to evade cooking a turkey for the first 30 years of my life, but this year, this Thanksgiving, there was nowhere to run…nowhere to hide. It was my turn to broil the bird.
If you’ll know anything about me, it’s that I have vegetarian tendencies. Basically, the only meat I will eat is either highly seasoned or processed (like chicken fingers or hot dogs or pepperoni on pizza…the healthy choices) because eating animals is kind of gross and I’d rather not do it. So if I do do it, I like to be able to forget that I’m doing it. And you know what? Sodomizing a 16-pound bird carcass makes it REALLY hard to forget.
Two days before our feast, I hauled the frozen turkey out of the freezer to thaw. It sat in the sink in cold water until the time came to it to shed its plastic sheath and be prepped for roasting.
I peeled the plastic away, took one look at the cold, gaping pores on the thick, translucent skin and I called for my husband to come and do the dirty work. Like the man he is, he ripped the neck and gizzards from inside the cavity, washed the bird inside and out, patted it dry and set to slathering it with butter. Our six year-old even helped.
I seared it, uncovered, in the oven at 425 degrees for 30 minutes, then draped it in bacon and let it slowly roast at 325 for the afternoon. It came out tender and delicious. (Or so everyone told me. I didn’t actually try it. I filled up on veggies and stuffing and dessert.)
Lessons learned:
1. When things get gross, call in the reinforcements.
2. Child labour is swell.
3. Bacon covers over a multitude of sins.
Are you a turkey-cooking goddess? I hope you all had wonderful Thanksgiving weekends with family and friends.
Hearkens back to your earlier days as a plant rights activist.
We made cornish hens… turkeys are just too damned much bird for our wee family. But, I might do a small one at Christmas… with bacon, of course. Heh.
cover it in bacon? you are a goddess!
i thought i was the only one!!! totally with you on this one, lady…. i’m vegetarianish ( although i’m even less into the highly processed stuff) and have avoided cooking a turkey. i’ve had a few given to me over the years, and i have “regifted”…. but alas… i got the free item from superstore a few weeks ago….. so i have a turkey sitting in my freezer as we speak…. i like the idea of feeding a big group of people…. so i’m thinking of borrowing our friends’ fryer and then throwing the whole thing on my husband…..
I’m going to do my first this Christmas….and I just may take that bacon idea!!!!
I like to think I’m a turkey expert. Of course, this time, I’m searching for the damn bag of giblets to remove it and couldn’t find it. Assuming it was not included I went ahead and roasted the darn bird…of course, it was found later. UGH. good thing the turkey prep people put it into parchment paper. I did double turkey duty this weekend. I’m good for a while now. Bacon is good.