Thanksgiving’s main wow factor is the food. How can you assure your Thanksgiving party that your food is at the top?
After Christmas, Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday! Not only are you getting together with family to give thanks and be grateful for all we have been blessed with but the food is incredible! There are symbolic foods that make me think of Thanksgiving: turkey, any casserole and mashed potatoes. There are many ways you can cook a “perfect” Thanksgiving meal but these are my favorite, and correct, ways you can cook the star of the show foods to perfection!
Turkey over ham might be a hot take but it’s the right answer. The star of the show is the turkey and in my home, it’s what we pride ourselves in making. We have done turkeys many different ways, messing with flavoring and cooking differently, but from what I can remember, we have cooked the turkeys in the oven for most of our Thanksgiving dinners and have deep-fried them once.
Deep frying a turkey was the coolest to watch and didn’t take very long. My father took an orange bucket from Home Depot and brined it for 48 hours. Once it was time for frying, my family took the turkey outside my uncle’s house and almost an hour later, dinner was ready! You would think that frying something takes a lot of the moisture out but this turkey was so juicy and flavorful that it was almost the same thing as cooking the turkey in the oven.
Oven cooking the turkey is my favorite way to cook a turkey because it is a long-withstanding fall tradition and also because how can you cook our signature bacon quilt on top to perfection without burning it? One year, we had an idea to add some bacon on the turkey, because why not? Bacon is the cherry on top of all savory foods. It became a tradition and Thanksgiving staple in our family, it is the show stopper I look forward to every year! We’ve had people come who don’t like turkey and think ours is amazing.
In order to achieve the perfect oven-baked turkey, start by rubbing your desired rub on, in and in between the turkey and skin leaving it to soak in overnight. The next day, the quilt of bacon is made and laid over the top of the turkey. We start the oven at 500 degrees for 30 minutes where the legs go in first so the turkey breasts don’t get dry. Next, lower temp to 350 degrees and cover the turkey breast in foil so, again, they don’t get dry.
Cook until the internal temperature reaches 161 degrees. Then you remove the turkey and cover the whole bird in foil so the temperature can reach the final heat destination of 165 degrees internally. An 18-pound turkey can reach 161 in two hours so it doesn’t take very long. It is very important to note that you shouldn’t open the oven at all unless you’re removing the bird and don’t baste it, let the turkey work its magic alone!
Oh, the casserole. I know that some people make different kinds of casseroles and many variations of the same one but for me, that’s one dish I can leave off the table. Instead of cooking a casserole, we make my favorite veggie dish of asparagus, Brussels sprouts and of course the special ingredient, bacon!
Sauté the cut-in-half veggies and chopped bacon in a saucepan and cook until the bacon is fully cooked and the Brussels sprouts are soft but not mushy. So many people complain about how gross the veggies are but when you cook them correctly and add something no one can resist like bacon, it is a dish people copy for their dinner table.
This is one dish that doesn’t need bacon to be great. Mashed potatoes are one of my favorite foods no matter the time of year. You can either make them from scratch or make them from the box, which is the correct way to make them. I’ve had this debate with my family on whether homemade or boxed mashed potatoes are better and there still is no final answer. The best boxed mashed potatoes you can make are Idahoan Red Premium Mashed Potatoes.
Depending on the recipe, homemade or from scratch can be fluffy, lumpy with small clumps from the actual potato and buttery while making from the box is faster, has no lumps making it completely smooth, and goes great with all kinds of gravy, not just one kind. If you make this dish and don’t make the gravy from scratch, then that’s just giving up halfway. Being the most important meal of the year, our home cooks to perfection pleasing both the boxed people and the homemade lovers.
As this extremely important meal comes closer, it isn’t how the meal should be cooked we should focus on but instead on each other. Giving thanks to those around us and showing our gratitude for one another and everything we have.