This will run through the holiday. What is your favorite family tradition and/or item on the menu? Share recipes and such, like always with this thread.
Hell yes! Favorite Thanksgiving foods are my dad's tried and true grill roasted turkey and mom's garlicy mashed potatoes- all drowned in gravy from the turkey pan and washed down with bottles of red wine. This year my mom will be roasting a duck and I'll be putting a bacon wrapped venison loin on the grill too. Now I'm hungry. Spoiler: Turkey recipe Put the bird in a roasting pan, liberally coat it in mayonnaise (no shit, it keeps it moist), add an inch of water to the bottom of the pan plus some chicken bullion, and further season/herb up the bird however you want. 20 minutes grill time per pound for a smaller one, 15 for a bigger (12+ lbs), aim for 325 degrees grill temp. You want indirect heat so arrange the charcoal around the edge of the grill. For some additional delicious smoky flavor put a small pie pan in the center with some water and finger-sized hickory chips, and have a couple handfuls of moistened chips ready to add to the grill whenever you check on the bird as well as some water in case it starts to dry up in the pan. Remove it when the internal temp hits 155 and let it rest for at least 20 minutes before carving. Spoiler: Mashed potatoes All I know is this involves more butter and cream than a person should normally consume in a dish but it doesn't matter. Traditions are a morning pheasant hunt with buddies and watching National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation to finish off the day. Shitter's full!
Life is brutish and short. Drink pumpkin beer out of a chalice for lunch. My Thanksgiving meal is as follows: Fried Turkey in a beer/jerk brine, andouille sausage dressing, white trash green bean casserole with the bullshit fried onions on top, and a can of disgusting cranberry jelly. Dessert is a pecan pie made with Steen's cane syrup and Noah's Mill bourbon. Also have a bottle of champagne and a bottle of Louis Bouillot rose champagne. Man, that cranberry jelly. I have recipes for fancy cranberry relish, but all I want is that gelatinous mess out of the can. Holy fuck it is amazing. Who is the comedian who garnished this shit for the photo? It's seriously the worst thing on the planet and someone thought it needed proper plating.
I have a Jell-O heart mold that I got from Archie McPhee years ago. That would be the perfect way to get rid of those silly can ribs imprinting. Flop that sucker on the buffet tablet with some giblet gravy and you'd be golden.
That's the only cranberry sauce there is, as far as I'm concerned. You can take your homemade gourmet shit straight back to hell .
I could not agree more. Got my can earlier this week. I've tried the chutney like shit and it's bunk compared to the pure goodness of the red ribbed log.
Every year I feel like you come into the Thanksgiving Drunk Thread and blow your load over cranberry sauce. Not that Im disagreeing with the sentiment.
Philistines. How freaking hard is it to dump a bag of cranberries, a cup of sugar and some water in a pot and boil it? That's all you need to do to make real cranberry sauce that doesn't taste like aluminum. My wife makes a great gravy, sautéing the giblets with the drippings from the turkey pan. Now if only my mother still made her patented Mary's Wallpaper Paste/Mashed Potatoes.
Very little is the same from year to year except that we generally don't travel, we have some form of turkey, stuffing, gravy, rolls, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, Beaujolais Nouveau. Everything else varies depending on my mood. The past few years we've done a full turkey brined Alton-Brown style. This year with the kid at her dad's it's just me and Mr. Bell, and I saw something interesting on pinterest that I would like to try - roasted turkey thighs. We are both already big fans of chicken thighs, and this would take far less prep and time to deal with. Having said that, I can't wrap my head around not having turkey leftovers (I'm already daydreaming about the sammiches), so I am thinking of finding the smallest turkey bone in breast I can find and throwing that in the crock pot just so I have turkey leftovers. Is that dumb - to do roasted thighs in the oven and a breast in the crock pot instead of just doing a whole bird? I haven't talked it over with Mr. Bell, he's been on a business trip. I don't think he will care either way as long as it tastes good. He will not eat the leftovers, so that part is irrelevant to him. For sweet stuff, I satisfy those cravings in the week up to t-giving. Last night the kid and I had a local pie shops' pumpkin pie with salted caramel sauce. Next week a local cupcake place will have thanksgiving flavors, and they have two I always get because they are freaking amazing - pecan pie and sweet potato. No one in my house likes pecan pie or sweet potato casserole, so that's the easiest way I can fulfill those cravings without leftovers.
About 5 times harder than spending $1.50 on a can of red gelatin like stuff that may or may not have actual cranberries in it.
My favorite dishes are green bean casserole (I LOVE that stuff!) and dressing. I have wet dreams about that dressing. I once helped my mom make it, and I try to forget just how many sticks of butter are involved. It's disgusting. Canned cranberry sauce. What's not to love? It's good, it's the perfect texture and there aren't any disgusting nuts to pick around.
We are actually camping in our family's yard this year for Thanksgiving. Starting tomorrow, I hook up our camper and begin the 440 mile drive to middle-of-nowhere Alabama. I'll watch this tonight so I know how to behave when I get there. I will channel Eddie as best I can. I like it cause I can go to my fucking camper when I don't feel like being around anyone. It should be good.
I have a tradition where I watch Aliens every Thanksgiving. I've been doing it ever since I was a kid, and I don't know why.
It's because I do. You ready for this jelly? Just ordered Indian food to go with my sparkling wine. The world's an ok place so long as there are bubbling wine, oysters, hot peppers, and you never have to leave your house or interact with the outside world. Simple stuff.
Wouldn't it be more satisfying if you just opened the top of the can, left it in the can, hollowed out a hole, and just started jamming your dick in and out?