This is not a turkey but a turducken, prepared by our friend Philip. We’ll explain technique later in this Thanksgiving week 2023.
Happy Thanksgiving week 2023! I heard on NPR last night that you should buy a frozen turkey immediately (meaning this weekend, today) so it has time to defrost. So let’s get started.
Thanksgiving 2023 will be a little different for BMF. We’re traveling to a family reunion in Arizona and are in charge of the turkey, so the only thing to do is buy the turkey here in NY, fly with it across the country as it begins to defrost at a food-safe temperature, then prep it on arrival. No room for a brining bucket in our luggage so we will try NYT Cooking’s Dry Brine Recipe. (that’s a free link if you don’t have a subscription.)
If we stayed home, we’d be making a wet brined turkey with stuffing following the links in this Thanksgiving clips post. It’s from 2015 but I wouldn’t change a thing. Home made or store bought stuffing? Either is fine; the key is lots of butter, celery, onion and savory stock so the main function of the dried bread is to absorb this goodness. Home made or store bought cranberry sauce? We once did a taste test that will answer that question once and for all.
Cranberry Sauce Taste Test (winning fresh berry recipe is in the rear)
We thoroughly enjoy the multi-day ritual of preparing for the holiday meal, but apparently it stresses a lot of people out. If that applies to you, this post has tips for scoring a successful Thanksgiving while avoiding the angst. Which we know is real, perhaps because many folks rarely cook at home during the rest of the year. (In our first discussion of our shared meal at the reunion, the choices given were eat in a restaurant or order takeout from Whole Foods; cooking from scratch was not an option.)
Finally, on Friday we will build our Thanksgiving leftovers sandwich… a precise formula explained in the link. It’s key to have Durkee’s Famous Sauce for this process; there was some panic in the chat earlier this fall when Durkee’s appeared to be discontinued; currently it’s back in stock on Amazon (affiliate link!) with fast Prime delivery but don’t wait till the last minute.
I admire the batshit craziness of flying cross country with a frozen turkey to the turkey impaired southwest! “When the going gets weird, the get going”. HS Thompson
Thanks. Quite proud of myself since a couple of the other participants in the reunion have tried hard to talk me out of it. Food safety yada yada. The bird is in my freezer as we speak. I will remove it and put in a suitcase at 5 am tomorrow and toss in the back of my truck as I drive to the airport in sub freezing temps and check the suitcase so it will travel at chilly temps. Pick up a rental car, drive to Sedona, the bird should hit the fridge there approximately 16 hours after being removed from the freezer in Saratoga. It should be just beginning to defrost at that point and should be perfect brining temperature on Tuesday morning.
My proudest meat travel accomplishment was to fly back from Austin a few years ago with two full USDA Prime briskets purchased on sale at H-E-B. The TSA agent looked at the X-ray of my carry on and said “those are briskets, aren’t they?”
Your method is good, forty days and forty nights thawing in the fridge advice notwithstanding. I was more thinking wrestling the bird. If you can deal with two briskets, one turkey shouldn’t much of a challenge. A pop up timer might look like a fuse on the X-ray though… Happy Cooking!
I am now at my destination and the bird is just beginning to thaw out. Will toss in the fridge overnight and hope it is ready for dry brining in the morning. Absolutely no food safety issues. Also the birds at the local supermarket (Safeway) are pathetic and expensive so glad I brought my proud upstate gobbler.