5 of 6? 4 of 6? You decide what you’re up for. Each additional side that is seared is an incremental step towards building additional layers of flavor.
Tuesday night when I’m trying to get full and veg out on the couch, I’m probably only searing 3 sides. Sunday late afternoon when I’m drinking a good beer and listening to music while prepping, I’m going full soigné on my technique.
Weird anecdote, I helped build a temperature probe-related cooking product and we had to include up to 18F temperature deltas in the Beef presets.
You cook a steak to 135F, let it rest for 5 minutes, cut it in half and it reveals a doneness of 148F. Consumers will blame the product, not the physics of cooking, so there was a 13F offset for medium rare.
You’re not going to see as much carryover if you cook something at 350 in the oven vs 450 or grilled over an open flame.
Think of your meat as consisting of layers. The surface layer loses heat to the external air and to the subsurface layer, but mostly to the air. The subsurface layer is cooler than the surface, so it loses heat towards the center, which is cooler.
The next time you want to experiment, leave your thermometer in during the entire resting phase. Also, consider tenting with foil.
Things I’ve never eaten -
Whole turkey (had turkey meat before)
Stuffing (not even sure what that is)
Mash potatoes with gravy (don’t really know what gravy is either. Can I just have butter?)
Cranberry sauce (come again?)
Sweet potatoes with marshmallow (are you out of your mind?)
Green been casserole (wtf is that)
Pumpkin pie (I guess that one sounds decent, I just don’t like winter/pumpkin spices)
My Thanksgiving mashed potato recipe. Cut up potatoes and boil. Hand mash with potato masher. Add butter at a ratio of up to one box (4 sticks=1 pound) per five pound bag of potatoes. Might go with only three sticks this year. Add cream for desired texture. Add salt and pepper to taste.
I always tent but it’s normally done haphazardly. I guess I can just leave the probe in and see what happens.
We’re actually trying something new this year (steam oven and convection), but I assume even this method won’t really change how the bird’s temperature changes as it rests.
Is the turkey in the USA something different from what we can buy as turkey(Pute) in Europe? My mom stopped buying turkey after talking to a former breeder who said the life of a turkey is hell because of the huge unnatural bred breasts.
Stuffing is really just something used to fill the cavity of another food while cooking. For American Thanksgiving, it is usually bread-based inside a turkey, although it’s now considered better to cook separately. Have you ever had something that could be described as couscous-stuffed chicken?
Gravy is just a thickened sauce usually made from meat drippings.
Cranberry sauce is basically cranberry relish, but sometimes in a jellied form.
Sweet potatoes with marshmallows was literally invented by people trying to sell marshmallows, but sweet potatoes plus sugar is a regular combination. See: candied yams.
Casserole is used generically in the US to refer to a one-dish baked item, usually held together with a binding agent. In green bean casserole, this is traditionally cream of mushroom soup.
It was mostly rhetoric. Not that gefiltefish is any better, but this holiday food just sounds bad across the board.
My Thanksgiving cranberry recipe. Get can opener. Open can. Use butter knife to slide onto a plate.
Optional second cranberry recipe. Vodka plus cranberry juice. Don’t be too picky about proportions, but probably somewhere between 1:2 and 1:4. Serve over ice.
It’s heavy on starch and sweet, so very American.
Where are you moving to?
None of it is bad except maybe for some dire casseroles based on canned soup (don’t ask). But none of it is particularly great either.
Samin Nosrat tells a story about her first American Thanksgiving where she put cranberry sauce on everything because the meal had no acid components, and I think that’s a key observation of where American food often fails in general. I think it also explains why we put so much ketchup (and mayonnaise) on so many things.
Yuv’s on to something as a lot of Thanksgiving food is trash. However, with many Thanksgivings under my belt, I streamline my consumption to only the elite stuff:
Turkey (Dark meat only), Stuffing, Gravy, Rolls. That’s it. Just repeat until full. Everything else is taking up valuable space.
-Potatoes are OK, but if I can have stuffing, then there’s no need for potatoes.
-My wife does a good Green Bean Casserole, I’ll normally eat the leftovers of that the next day. It reheats well. A lot of Green Bean Casseroles are terrible, so my default is to avoid.
-Cranberries and Sweet Potatoes – LOL
-Pumpkin pie - I normally eat a whole one by Friday. It’s not my absolute favorite dessert, but I do like it a lot and having it once a year is just about right.
My biggest problem is the lack of fresh vegetable which actually makes me ill after a while. But like i can see the appeal of a southern bbq dinner. Still nothing to break the sweet-salty-fat combo, but some stuff are legit tasty.
Thanks giving dinner, granted having never eaten one im full of shit, just sounds weird as fuck
There’s generally always a salad of some sort. I’ll eat some of that too, depending on the options. When we host, I always have it since it’s I know it’s good. If it’s somewhere else, it depends.
You can have fresh vegetables. Green beans don’t have to come from a can, nor do they have to be made in casserole form. Brussels sprouts in some form are one of the more common vegetable-oriented Thanksgiving side dishes. I often make roasted winter vegetables as part of a Thanksgiving spread.
The vegetable dishes seem to be more a matter of choice rather than tradition, but I think most people have the sense to include something as a matter of balance.
While i enjoy green beans, i meant raw vegetables. Fresh was phrased poorly.
Portland
It’s possible that Asian restaurants or other non-American places will be open but I’d expect the vast majority of places to be closed. In the past when I worked (like I am today) my wife and whosever parents were in town would get a meal at Boston Market but all the ones here have closed.
Stuffing -also known as dressing in some parts of the country- is great. But yes this is a quintessential US meal with lots of meat, carbs, and sugar. I got a free meal at work today and that should tide me over until next year. Agree with melkerson that pumpkin pie once a year is about right.