Wow, what a planner you are! Great tips. Im also roasting a 12 lb bird since we did parts and had no leftovers. Nabbed a sale priced one too, perk.
So glad it worked out well. Your report is such a helpful playbook for anyone who finds themselves cooking Thanksgiving dinner while away.
And a thousand times yes to the use of thermometers, whether away or in your home kitchen! With my trusty Thermapen at hand I never had to guess if a dish had reached the proper temperature. I am a relatively recent convert to using a probe thermometer and now I wonder what took me so long.
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I do love my thermapen - they are expensive but very handy and read a temp so quickly. I did bring that with me and would again.
The probe thermometers I really only use at Thanksgiving (I have the style the has a probe that goes into the bird with a cord to a unit that sits next to the oven and broadcasts to a remote unit so you can tell the temp from a distance - most of you probably know that, just a description for anyone who needs it) but it is very handy to have. I often have a hard time getting the probe in the “right” part of the thigh, so I always check with the thermapen when it says it is done. But knowing the progress of the bird is helpful when planning a big meal.
I have two of those probe thermometers and I think I would bring them both next time. One for in the bird and one hanging from a rack for the other (monitoring the oven temp). The reason being that this oven was very strange and I wish I could have monitored the oven temp without having to keep opening the oven for a standard oven thermometer. Being off 25 degrees is a big deal when doing a long roast on a turkey - and when I was doing the sides (after the bird was out) I ended up having to crank up the oven to get it back up to temp because it was so slow to recover from taking the bird out and putting in the side dishes (I only knew that because I ended up taking the probe out of the bird and hanging it in the oven when the sides were cooking - glad I did that). For my oven at home I don’t have to monitor it nearly as much as I did in this kitchen.
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My Therapen is my favorite kitchen tool. I use it daily and for everything. Such a great gift too.
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So impressive!!
You totally rocked that out and kicked butt! And great feedback and tips for anyone doing this in the future
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Very impressed.
When we travel to my inlaws in Birmingham I used to bring a couple good knives and tongs for a meal the day after thanksgiving. Seems we have just been going out these last couple of years. Less stress for the inlaws
As for me, traveling during Thanksgiving is great! When we tried to go to Tanzania for Thanksgiving, we saw that it is not a holiday for them at all. Surely, our agent was happy to assist us in the celebration and there were a lot of Americans in the hotel. We greeted each other and Thanksgiving was really unforgettable.
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