November 8, 2007

Two Weeks Until Thanksgiving!!

It is hard to believe that we are two weeks away from Thanksgiving. It reminds me of what happened a few years ago when I decided that I was going to cook Thanksgiving for my family.

Each year we celebrate Thanksgiving by my mother's house in Wisconsin. Usually everyone brings something and my mom makes the turkey. Well this particular year, I decided that I wanted to try some new recipes. So, I told everyone to just show up, do not worry, I was going to cook everything. Things were going good, I had all my recipes and my mom bought most of the ingredients a week before (since I was traveling from Illinois). Then the phone rang, it was my mom. "Hi, I bought the sausage for the stuffing last week, do you think it is still good. It kind of smells funny". Knowing food safety, I knew it was no longer any good. Fresh raw sausage is only good for about 1 to 2 days. So, I told her to throw it out and we can get some the day before. No big deal. Everything was good.

We arrived home the night before Thanksgiving. It is always nice to see the family. After some friendly greetings, my mother told me that we might have a slight problem with the turkey. She had it in the refrigerator thawing for the past two days, but it still seemed really frozen. Would it be ready to cook? I checked it and it did seem really really frozen. So, we decided that we would get up early and start thawing it in cool water in the sink, changing the water every 30 minutes of course. That method seemed to work pretty well, so I started to cook the turkey on schedule. Throughout the morning I checked the temperature. I notice that it wasn't moving very much. The skin was getting pretty brown, so I tented aluminum foil over the turkey to prevent it from getting too brown. I started all the side dishes, things were going great. However, 30 minutes from meal time the temperature reading on the turkey was still only around 120 degrees. This was not good.

Well, about an hour and a half after we were originally supposed to eat, the turkey was finally done. The side dishes had already been pretty much eaten, and no one really cared about the turkey anymore. Turns out, the turkey was still frozen on the inside and it needed extra time to cook (or thaw). It still tasted really good, or so I thought. It didn't matter though; it was an hour and a half late. People start to turn on your ideas when they are hungry. Needless to say, I have been banned from making Thanksgiving.

Moral of the story, make sure you thaw your turkey if you don't want it to take longer to cook. Thawing takes longer than you think. Allow about 24 hours of defrost time for every 5 pounds of turkey. Example: a 20 pound turkey will take 4 to 5 days to thaw.

For more ways to ensure that you have a food safe Thanksgiving, see Turkey for the Holidays. It can help make your meal a success.

Watch for more Thanksgiving related recipes and tips in the next few weeks. Oh, and don't worry. My family did agree that the food was good; they just have to tease me since I am the youngest of the four siblings. No matter how old you are, you will always be the youngest.

Posted by Jennifer McCaffrey at 10:24 AM |